Kuala Lumpur - 21st-23rd March

 

Early morning of the 21st we arrived in the central station in KL. Both pretty tired so appreciative of the simple and time-saving transport on offer to get us to our hotel. We took the monorail which is also a great way to see the city as you move through it.

Well, they are in a little police booth at the station, I guess…	Waiting for the monorail train
Arrival of the monorail train	Happy to be on the monorail train

I could live in KL I wouldn’t be upset if I got sent there on contract. Its a majestic city with high-rise buildings, good transport infrastructure, great shopping and cheap accommodation. Its where we stayed in our best hotel of the trip, for R300 pppn.

Very posh hotel with small but well-furnished room	Dressing area – with an ironing board for Cath! (she was so excited)
The view from our window of the KL tower in the distance	Neighbouring building with helipad on the roof. Plenty of them around the city
This looks a lot like an old prison to the side of the hotel	The hotel’s pool from our window
Petronas Towers	Complimentary newspaper each morning (ok, I was a bit overexcited about the hotel!)

Obviously not too much in the way of beach activities, but we’d had our fair share and KL was our planned shopping destination . Lots of construction all around the city centre suggested a decent economy and even the taxis didn’t seem as expensive as in Bangkok. First order of business was shopping! This time it was my kind of shopping. And I knew that I had Cathy’s choice of shopping coming up the following day so I was going to take full advantage of this! We went to Low Yat Mall which is THE place to be for electronics. There are 5 floors selling every kind of electronic device you care to imagine.

5 floors of shopping heaven!	Look at all the lights!!

I won’t bore you with the details, but after 4 hours of wandering around each floor, Cath had bought a new iPhone with 3 different covers and I had a new laptop. I showed tremendous restraint by not playing with it for the remainder of the trip. The following day was Cath’s shopping day (well, for an equal number of hours as I had in Low Yat – I’m not stupid!) and I got frog marched from handbag store to handbag store. Not quite the right shade of brown… off to the next one. This was all done in Petaling Street, which is the place to be for clothes, fake everything from watches to DVDs, to branded t-shirts. And bloody handbags. In the wrong shade of brown. Four excruciating hours later we were done and I perked up substantially as we popped back to the hotel to drop the shopping off before getting back onto the train headed to Batu Caves.

Petaling Street. Ugh…	The scene of the crime – 2mins before the arrival of the first train

And this is where Cath’s classic holiday brain fart occurred. We made it onto the platform with 5mins to spare, but ended up near the top end of a long platform. Waiting for the train we ambled around when suddenly I saw the train to Batu Caves moving slowly past us, picking up speed. “Oh no”, says Cath, “I saw it further down the platform with ‘Batu Caves’ on the front, but it was two minutes before the expected arrival time, so I ignored it to wait for the next one.”

They were supposed to run every 30mins, but the next two were cancelled for some reason, so we stood for over an hour waiting for the next train. When we finally got on it it only went half the way there and we had to get off and wait a further 30mins for another train to get us all the way there. Cath refused to go to the dog box as instructed, citing in her defence a tiny oversight on my part on Phi Phi whereby I misread the departure time of our ferry. Hardly comparable.

Giant green statue which looks very Dr. Seuss-like	Massive gold statue next to the steps – around 300 *phew!*
More Hindu figurines and gods	Built into the side of the mountain and into the large limestone caves at the top

The Batu Caves are a set of caves adorned with Hindu religious artefacts and gods. It naturally has great spiritual and religious meaning to Hindus but is a large tourist attraction. Inside the cave in corners and along the walls are small statues, murals and mini temples. Towards the back of the caves is a deeper section which one has to pay for a tour to see which is where millions of bats live as well as different plants and other animals which are protected and looked after by an organisation that runs the tours.

Entrance to the large cave	One of many statues within the cave
Vis are a stalactite	Much better to walk down the stairs than up. Needed three breathers on the way up!

To be honest our feet were starting to ache after all the walking/shopping we had done over the past few days so we were over the cave fairly quickly and after about an hour or so walking around we headed back into town.

Our final trip in KL was to the KL Tower. We considered the Petronas Towers but apparently its very popular, you have to be there early to get a ticket, and the KL tower, while a shorter tower than Petronas, is on a hill so actually stands much higher. A guided audio tour points out various buildings and structures of interest.

Large flag pole and cricket pitch where the UK used to run the city	Shines a bright orange at night
Just caught the start of dusk, but too tired to hang around to wait for the darkness	Poor little pony standing around all day waiting to take tourists for a ride. We didn’t.

Our final night in Asia, eating Malaysian food was spent at an authentic restaurant down the road from our hotel. Then an early night for our flight to Dubai the next morning.

Don’t get much more authentic than this	Savouring our fine dining with a Tiger – in coffee mugs
The night market setting up for the evening	More roadside restaurants in a city with a busy nightlife
Across the street from our hotel is a shopping centre with amusement park rides near the top	One last look at the KL tower