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Published: January 11th 2012
Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur (part 2) – A very random week involving my own little white Christmas and drift car madness.
Following on from Brunei and the Outer Peninsular of Malaysia it was time to head back to Kuala Lumpur for six days before my flight back to Bangkok where I will be spending Christmas and New Year.
I didn’t really have a great deal planned for KL as I had been here a few weeks back and apart from trying to go up the Petronas Towers and going to the Batu Caves I was wandering how I would pass the six days. Well this soon became pretty easy after instantly meeting to really nice guys called Tim and Stephen. They were pretty much in the same boat as me with none of us knowing what to do for the next few days so I had two new mates to chill out with and come up with some ideas. Again like me they pretty much came up with nothing but it was good fun just hanging out in one of the coolest hostels I’ve stayed in, for any of you going to KL stay at a place called “Back
Home” you will not be disappointed I assure you.
On my first day here I went to the Petronas Towers and walked across the sky bridge as well as visiting the observation deck, the towers are incredible and the level of detail around the whole building is breath taking. The views from the top are pretty special too. I’m a bit sad and love tall buildings and strange structures so I realise this will not be for everyone but well worth a visit all the same.
Whilst visiting the towers I stumbled across the Malaysia Drift 2011 finals, this is basically were highly skilled driver’s power slide cars around a course and if the car is not sideways at all times you are disqualified. I had nothing better to do so I bought a ticket and joined the crowds, it was a two day event situated within a couple of minutes of my hostel on independence square, it was such a great setting, it was like something out of a computer game. I didn’t watch it all but it was great to keep popping back and watching different races, these drivers have such skill I have never seen
anything like it. A great little find and a cool way to spend some of my time in KL.
As the days passed and the three of us made the most of the hostels free tea and coffee we came up with a couple of things to do, it’s quite surprising that it took two days for three people to come up with two things to do. One of them was hardly rocket science either, this was Stephen’s contribution, let’s go out and get smashed tonight (typical Oz) so we had a plan, tonight we would be drinking. It got messy pretty quickly and every club we went into had nothing but prostitutes in it which surprised me a lot considering it’s a Muslim country. The night was very funny and a great laugh, Tim got himself some nice nail clippers and by the morning we all got a complimentary hangover for our efforts the previous nights, result!
The following day I went off on my own to a place called the Batu Caves, yet another temple, as you can tell I’m a bit bored of temples by now and they have to be something a bit special
for me to be excited about them. Don’t get me wrong there was the wrolds tallest Hindu Deity at the entrance and the temples were set inside a cave but it was a dump inside and to top it off the bloody monkeys stole my water, the little shits! Apart from Angkor Wat I think this could be my last temple visit, I’m officially templed out.
During the day Tim and Stephen had been hard at it and had created a Twitter door, the hostel dorm doors are like blackboards and you are meant to write your name on them so your room mates know who you are. Well the boys had decided to change it to a “Twitter door” basically leave an update about yourself, as you can imagine I was so happy to know that Tim was having a sh*t or Stephen was going for a McDonalds, but it did prove to be quite funny!
After Stephen’s well executed night out and Tim’s Twitter door it was time for my idea, the plan was to visit an area about 35km outside of KL called I-City or digital city as some call it. They have a large
park themed around LED’s and because it was so close to Christmas it would have a Christmas feel to it, plus there was a snow park there so it would be cool (no pun intended) to have a white Christmas. After getting the train and taxi combination to the park it all seemed very nice and vibrant, although the grounds where this was all set were very rough around the edges the lights help distract the eyes from focusing on it too much. The lights on the trees and the various animal shaped illuminated objects all made for a great experience which seemed to be very much for the locals and was not really on the tourist radar which was nice.
They also had a snow park there so we all un-leashed the fake student ID cards and gained entry at a reduced rate, once inside it was bloody freezing and reminded me instantly of home. I only had shorts on and an awful jacket that wouldn’t do up and after about 5 minutes I was ready to get out. It was very funny to watch Stephens’s reaction because he has never seen snow before and I think he
KL - Tim with his latest bargain
LV nail clipper set, qualityyyyyyis more than happy to never see it again. Inside the snow park they had a sledge track and tubing ride, it was all done to quiet a low standard but at the same time it was something totally different and clearly designed for the locals to experience a winter setting. After about 15 minutes we all decided it was time to get back to the extreme heat and defrost. The fun didn’t stop there because we had to try and get back to the train station before it shut, sadly no taxi’s wanted to take the three random white guys in a town full of locals we must have tried 50 taxi’s but none would stop for us, we started to walk but there was no way we would make it in time, we even began to run but gave up on that idea. Eventually we found 6 or 7 taxi drivers having dinner in a restaurant and pretty much begged one of them to take us to the station at an over inflated rate of course. He finally agreed and once on the way we negotiated that he would bypass the station and take us back to KL.
A word of warming for anyone going to I-City, getting there is easy because there are plenty of taxi’s at the station getting back was a nightmare, I have no advice on ways round this but good luck.
That was pretty much my last day in KL, it turned out to be a great six days with plenty going on. All that was left now was to complete the journey back to the airport where I would be going to Bangkok to spend Christmas with Maam and shortly after Christmas my Wingman Gav-lar would be arriving to see what Bangkok has to offer. I feel I have a crazy couple of weeks ahead of me…..
PS – As you can tell the blogs have fallen a bit behind, but it gives you all the chance to relive Christmas and the New Year again!
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