Living it up in Genting and KL

Having reached the airport very early in the morning, I had a lot of time to kill until the rest of the group came in.  The Malaysia airport is just outstanding. Claimed to be one of the best airports in the world, it's easy to see why.  Spent the whole morning exploring the many levels of the airport and having coffee at this café and breakfast at that..

An evening in Kuala Lumpur

Once everyone lands, we head out to Genting Islands, which was to be our base for the next couple of days. The drive to Genting Islands takes about 3 hours, the last stretch is done through a cable car which takes right you up to the highlands. Quite the pretty ride it was.

One of the Twins

Genting Islands, per se, is a block of high-rise buildings nestled up in the hills and is extremely self-contained with numerous hotels, cafés, theme parks and a humongous casino.

Needless to say very little work got done, all through the stay, but then again the main agenda was to unwind. We spent most of our time trying out different cuisines and sitting around at all the various outdoor cafés and of course sampling the night life in the evenings.

Two days went by very swiftly - it's a really fun place to hang out. Personally not my idea of a Travel destination - too urbane and civilized for me - but hey..someone else was paying for this, so make the most of it I did ;-)

Riding into the Sunset

The theme park was great fun - we jumped onto every ride possible and had a blast in general.  It was real amusing to see all the serious office types behaving like a bunch of  5 year olds (including me of course!)

We head into KL on the third day. Here, we got a little bit of work done during the day and set out for shopping with great excitement in the evening. Chinatown - here we come.

All the people I had spoken to for tips on shopping had raved about this place and I must say I was completely disappointed. Most of the stuff is tacky as hell and like all flea market varieties; I guess one needs to really dig hard to find good stuff. I neither have the patience of a true blue shopper nor the inclination to dig hard.

Sunset over the Genting Highlands

So I walked around a little bit, bought a couple of random souvenirs and headed back to the designated waiting point for the group. Then began the God Almighty wait.  

Although we were only 12 of us, getting everyone together to stay in one place for more than 5 minutes was Mission Bloody Impossible. Inevitably, someone would be missing, a search party would go out for that and 10 minutes later a search party for the search party would be sent out and so on and so forth. Sheesh!!

Finally after waiting around for what seemed like an eternity, all 12 of us are sharing the same ground space and we set out to the most 'hip' nightspot in town "Zoop" (or so we were told). Once there, everyone got straight down to the business of making complete fools of themselves.

The Cliche shot

After a few drinks, a couple of us decided to get some dinner and we were pointed in the direction of Jalan Alur. This is THE Street for local food. The smells of various animals being cooked on outdoor barbeques was overwhelming - and my heart really goes out to vegetarians here! Whatever do they do?? The activity on the street was electrifying to say the least and this was at 3.30 am in the morning!! Awesome atmosphere.

We picked a nice place and had one of the best meals I have had in Malaysia so far. Unfortunately have forgotten the name of the place but judging by the smells any place here is good for the local flavors.

Next day dawned predictably late for everyone and there was a fair amount of panic amongst the troops once they realized the Twin towers had not been visited! So a taxi is summoned for and everyone makes a mad dash to check out the Twin towers before their respective flights out.

Once we got there, I walked around a little bit and decided I'd rather check out the rest of KL than waste time here. I mean it's nice and an architectural marvel and all that jazz but what is there to do other than developing a serious strain in your neck gaping up at it??

So some shopping - window and otherwise - Lunch and then off to the airport for the flight back home.

My verdict :

Genting resorts, Genting Highlands. Nice enough place, the room service/housekeeping was a disaster though.

Pearl International- Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur - fairly centrally located and decent - though you definitely won't be in the lap of luxury.

Jalan Alur: THE place to go to for local flavors