Kuala Lumpur

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Kuala Lumpur

We flew from the island to Kuala Lumpur, and the Genting Highlands. You can immediately see that this would is much more advanced than all the other places we have been to. Large super highways, beautiful landscape and the buildings in the city itself breathtaking.

We traveled to the highland by taxi with a 1 hour stop at a grocery store as we were told there was no place to buy food up there. The timeshare that Jim and Yvonne got is located 2 hours outside Kuala Lumper ,3 bedrooms with a full kitchen, a 4 Star resort with 2 pools etc. We stayed with them in Vegas last year in the same type of facility and were looking forward to some down time.

When we arrived we were all very disappointed. The place looked like it has not been used as a resort in about 5 years. The condo was huge, but dirty and smelled like sewage in the kitchen, mold in the living area and rat droppings in my room. The pools were operating but not kept up at all, again huge but no loungers and broken tiles and rust.
It did not matter about the pool as it is only about 25 degrees here and cloudy most of the time. We are very high in elevation here so it is covered by fog(actually we are in the clouds) 50% of the time.

You would ask why people would come here. Actually for the cool weather, it is spring break here so families are all in the highlands to escape the heat of Kuala Lumpur. I can see it as it is pleasant to have a break from the heat.

We also discovered the Asian Las Vegas here. We knew going in that there was an amusement park here and a casino, but we had no idea of its size. We decided to explore on our 1st full day here. The only way to reach this is by taking a 3.4 km ride up the mountain on a sky cable car. Again, as you all know I am afraid of heights. This thing went straight up over the towering jungle. I hid my face in Ron’s shoulder most of the way but the trip was worth it. It is called Genting Highlands City of Amusement. I am not sure how many hotels are here but they are all connected by walkways and malls. The amusement park is outside and inside and makes West Edmonton Mall and Mall of America look small in comparison. The casino is Asia’s largest.

The only problem is the casino has a dress code. Yvonne and I were fine. Jim and Ron not so much. No sandals, no shorts. So guess what, we tried every entrance and were denied access. Then we decided to go buy them clothes, apparently there was a sale on in the convention centre 80% off. After searching for 1 hour we finally located it. Ron bought pants; Jim, shoes, pants and socks. Ron put socks on to hide the fact he was still wearing socks then we went back to security. Denied again. This time Ron’s backpack was and issue and the camera. They escorted us out of casino again to an area where you had to get a locker; we stored all of our stuff there and finally got into the casino. We had left the resort at 3 with a pickup at 9 from the cable car. Once we finished with the clearances we only had an hour left to be in the casino. The casino was just like any other a few moments of wondering how to get our $$$ out of a machine but that solved slots were the same as ours.

The next day we spent planning our way out of here. We had a lot of groceries and liquor left (1 weeks worth to be exact). So we had a lot of drinking and eating to do. All the liquor was consumed and about 25% of the food. Today we are planning on going back up the mountain this evening, packing for our journey back to Thailand. This time we have a hut with our name on it at Railay beach. 5 glorious days in the sun. Then back to Bangkok for our final shop and home.

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