Tuesday, October 19, 2010

9/24 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia


We arrived in Malaysia at 4am with about 4 hours of sleep combined,
took a bus to the city, taxi to our hotel to drop our bags.
One way Air Asia can stay so cheap is that they usually fly into a cities 2nd airport requiring transport into the city


There was an awesome 24h Indian restaurant down the street at which we began our vacation-long trend of eating way too much every meal.
MMM Naan!
We then took a skytrain 2 stations...
All skytrains are covered in advertisements. Also, this is the inside of the city tour bus.

 to check out the Petronas Twin Towers, which were built by Malaysia's state-owned oil company, Petronas.
These may be recognizable if you've seen Rush Hour 3 or Entrapment

We had to wait in line for an hour but it was definitely worth it for the view.
Can you find me?
You can't go to the top, these views are from the sky bridge.


We walked around that big park for a bit and then found a stop for the hop-on hop-off city tour bus. The plan was to visit a few of the sites on the way back to our hotel, but we were both exhausted, fell asleep on the bus and didn’t get out anywhere until a stop near our hotel. We found some lunch around 12:30 and I heard the call to prayer for the Friday afternoon service. Malaysia has a large percentage of Muslims with many women wearing a hijab and some in the full burqa. It is a little strang seeing a couple walking down the street dressed so differently: male in jeans and a polo with female in all black.

We were back at our hotel by 1:30, but they have a very strict check-in time of 2:00 so we had to sit around in the lobby. I can’t complain much, this hotel is connected with the discount airline we used for most of the flights, Air Asia, and is very cheap, but is still clean and has a high-quality shower and bed, which is all I ask for in a hotel.
After our nap, we tried to walk over to Chinatown and found some more great Indian food along the way. We realized it was a little far and took a taxi the rest of the way. Chinatown was just like a crappy night market in Taiwan with below average food.

 We were unimpressed and didn't stay there too long. Across the street is Central Market, but we got there when it was closing, which I wasn't too upset about since it appeared to be a tourist trap with expensive and unauthentic souvenirs.
We walked around a bit looking for a taxi back to the hotel and found a bus stop. A bus was approaching and I was trying to figure out where it was going when a nice Indian gentleman asked where we were trying to go and informed us that this bus had a stop close to our hotel. A majority of the population of Malaysia speaks fluent English. As a former English colony that gained independence in 1957, they are quite the melting pot with 50% being ative Malays, 20% Chinese, and 10% Indian. I remember one trip on the skytrain with 8 people sitting next to each other with skin color ranging from white (me) to dark brown and everything inbetween.
We walked around our hotel area for a bit and got another little snack, chicken satay.
Satay is barbecued meat on a stick with spicy seasonings

 Day 1 complete

1 comment:

  1. Isn't it wonderful that you can find good, caring people anywhere you go in the world!! What a great first day - as we all know the best way to a person's heart is through their stomach. Eating your way through Asia is a great way to learn about the countries.

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