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Published: September 11th 2011
Rise and shine - 5am and our early flight to Kuala Lumpur beckons. Dad took me the scenic route through Kangaroo Ground and Wattle Park to ensure that it was ingrained in me how very pretty Australia is. "Look daughter!" said father, "See the glorious landscape our beautiful Melbourne has. Will thoust not return speedily to thy Papah?".”Yah Papah," I duly responded "this landscape is just as glorious as thou mentioned earlier".
Short interjection for a great backstory: I had been freaking out about the flight because I felt like I was getting sick with an ear infection. Turned out it was a pimple. In my ear. Which I popped. Result: Both gross, yet awesome.
The happy couple arrived in Malaysia after an 8 hour flight. Upon arrival we encountered above average humidity and a smoggy skyline. The trip to our hotel in Bukit Bintang was quite an adventure. From the airport, we took a SkyTransfer bus which was to take us to our hotel. Unfortunately, this bus stopped for every man, dog and cow... we were in transit for over two hours. A fellow passenger was fortunately with us for the entire journey. She was in possession of
one of those fandangled "mobile phones" all the kids are going crazy for. On this phone she had a "ringtone" which made the sound of smashing glass (like that yellow toy Janne and Rodney have at home). This hip youngster certainly was popular and had many many friends constantly "messaging" her. To be alerted to this fact her "mobile phone" would consistently set off aforementioned "ringtone".
Eventually we arrived at our hotel and the silence, and room, was lovely.
We have taken on Debs advice and in each place we visit we will try the local cuisine, have a local drink and pick a soundtrack. So, once we were showered we hit the streets of Bukit Bintang to find some food. We were extremely hungry and unfortunately the poor vegetarian was not spoilt for choice. We ended up paying a fortune for food just outside the hotel which was Italian (note: Italian food is not the national cuisine of Malaysia). Despite the food being exceptional, I felt that I had already let the team down seeing as we are only here for 36 hours. However, this eatery did provide us with the soundtrack we needed for our stay
in KL. Unfortunately for us, it was Justin Biebers critically acclaimed song "Baby". There are not enough words to describe how often we heard this song in KL and how much more we despise it as a result.
The next day we decided to adorn our walking shoes and took Barclay (oh yeah.. Brad, I named your camera. Thanks again for loaning it to us!) to go sightseeing. The plan was to traverse to the City Centre, and then to KL Sentral Station to figure out a better way of getting back to the airport the next day for our flight to London. Due to us only having a map courtesy of the friendly folk at Google Maps, we walked in the sort of, hopefully, potentially general direction. On the way we stopped at a local market which was quite small, but definitely the local culture we were looking for. After a quick browse through the market stalls, we continued on our adventure. Upon our travels we then found the National Museum (strangely located on a highway - upon which we had suddenly found ourselves walking...) and spent a few hours there learning about Malaysian history and culture spanning
several eras. The museum was split into four rooms, with each room dictating a different era using both text and artefacts up to 10,000 years old. The outside of the building was spectacular.
After that we made our way towards the City Centre and wandered through China Town. It was exciting to look at, but not for too long - we found the stall keepers to be quite aggressive in their approach. Neither of us had expected it, however understand now that their approach is the norm. For our next visit in December we have resolved to harden up. Once we got to the end of China Town we realised that every single stall was pretty much exactly the same, so perhaps we didn't miss too much. Besides, it wouldn't be a great idea to fill our backpacks up too much so early. After that we walked the streets behind China Town - the local media tells me that these streets are quite a historic part of KL as all the buildings are still in their original condition. Apparently tourists don’t pay too much attention to it. Score!
We then made our way to KL Sentral station, figured
out our plan for the next day and made our way back to the hotel on the Monorail. Thankfully through the medium of pop culture (read: Simpsons) we were quite familiar with these 'monorail' contraptions and entered the vessel with full understanding of the system upon which we were riding upon. You see, Mono means one and Rail means rail.
Whilst travelling on the one rail, we encountered two great things.
1. The benefits of vitamins: most notably the essence of chicken
2. The availability of "Power root" drink. Well, we thought that was just funny.
When we arrived back at the hotel, we were upset to find that we had left our travelling companion Toitle behind, but he had been nicely taken care of by the hotel staff. To make it up to him, we gave him a quick drink of Power Root, although I don’t think he got it.
Our next mission was to find us some local food for lunch and went to a food court near our hotel. Vegetarians must really struggle in Malaysia to get something which is not generic (i.e. rice and corn). I ended up eating rice and
egg with two bits of sweet corn (I hate sweet corn :/). Again, it wasn’t Malaysian food. It was Thai. Food fail #2.
Our next adventure took us to a large shopping centre. Not entirely sure what it’s called, but it had 6 levels of shopping and it was a maze to get around to all the shops. Impossible to find the same place again! Pretty neat though. I bought an awesome new watch for 239MYR ($AUD76).
We then went for a quick stroll around the main precinct and stumbled across a guy who adopts cats and had a pet monkey. Now seriously, what would YOU do? Well, we all know what I would do.
Unfortunately, the monkey got upset with me. So.. that was a sad ending to my first ever monkey adventure. Not sure how clean that monkey was anyway. So after a scorching hot shower (where I washed my hair twice) we ventured out yet again to do this Malaysia town right. We discovered a night food market right near us and went out for local cuisine and drink and chose the busiest place filled with locals. Despite my food still being generic (mixed
vegetables and bean curd) it was still pretty nice and all three of us partook in a Tiger beer. We then retired to bed and got our gangsta on by watching 8 Mile.
The following morning we got up early and caught the one rail back to KL Sentral station and got the bus to the airport. Although, we didn’t look at WHICH airport we were supposed to go to. Thankfully they were both in the same direction and we got a transfer. We have learnt a valuable lesson today. We made it to the airport really early and had a last minute mini-adventure to find me some food (they don’t feed you much on Air Asia).
LONDON The journey to our hotel in London was just as much of an adventure as it was to get to the hotel in KL. We arrived into Stansted airport at 10pm, caught a bus to Victoria station and then walked to our "EasyHotel" in Pimlico. Suffice to say it was a long day, so our initial reaction to seeing a room such as this was not what it normally would be. When we finally crawled into our miniature bed
in our miniature room after using the bathroom in the cupboard, we slept in Ol' London Town.
The morning after, we de jet-lagged and walked around the streets aimlessly. We walked around Victoria Station, bought tickets see Billy Elliot (stage show, not the guy), walked around (during Mass) Westminster cathedral and sat in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Toitle said he saw the Queen looking out the window at us, but I think he is lying. We went to the movies to chillax but it cost us a fortune.... seems we are going to have to figure out how to do this London caper a little more cost effectively.
Peace out
NJ&NJ
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Papah
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Papah also said: Be wary of monkey\'s sitting on shoulder as they will endow you with gifts from the bowel of enlightenment\". Just read tweets from Queeny; \' send forth and deploy my men who wear funny hats and apprehend those two yong hooligans who are drinking Fosters and eating FishnChips with Mushy Peas. Incarcerate them in the Tower and put the Ninja Toitle in in the caged Tank.