Kuala Lumpur

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  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Mar. 22- Sat. (more for myself to keep track than anything else)
Travel day, nothing exciting. One hour to Denpensar, 3 hour wait, 2 hour flight to Singapore, 1 hour wait, 1 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur (or as the locals call it "KL". After a long day we really appreciated a concierge service that took our bags, put us on a high speed train the 75 km to the city centre accompanied by a porter (from Nepal) who turned us over to a waiting limo driver at the city main train station who drove us the 10 to 15 minutes to the north end of town. Sounds like a lot. Good value for 140 ringgit (about $40). Best Western Seri Pacific is a 5 star hotel next to the trade centre. In Toronto it would be like the Prince Hotel. Luxurious.


Easter Sunday we booked a sight seeing tour of the major sites. There were 7 of us in the mini van plus the driver; 2 Americans on leave from teaching English in China (near Shanghai), an American who's working in Singapore, and an Aussie couple. We saw the National mosque, the National Museum (very interesting history of Malaysia (independent from britain only in 1959), the War memorial, a huge aviary (covered with netting about 3 acres), the original town square where the British would play cricket whilst being served mint juleps, and leather, batik and chocolate factories for sampling (just the chocolate). Durang (sp?) chocolate tastes like heaven and smells like hell. We repaired back to the Best Western for a poolside drink while following the Malaysia Grand Prix on the telly. The race was right near the airport on the other side of town. After a scrumptious buffet dinner in the hotel we went into the Mall across the street. They make use of vertical space here. Eight stories high and about a block long. The upper, low rent, shops were pretty grungy. We bought a phone card from the 7-eleven and, after several attempts connected with Ottawa and Toronto to wish them a happy Easter. Crossing the strrt is interesting too. it's not just wait or walk. There's a animated man who starts walking and as the end of the crossing time counts down it shows him running. I tried to capture this on film but I was walking/ running too. We've been on the road for 8 weeks, still no fights.


Today (the 24th) we slept in then headed out on our own taking the Intra-city trains and monorails to do some shopping. I'm starting to fall out of my swim shorts but couldn't find any suitable. We did come across good buys from a vendor who is going out of business. Cheryl's shoes cost $7. Times Square Mall has 1000 stores on 10 floors and an indoor amusement park. I'm not sure how many stores the west Edmonton Mall has but this was big.


We took the monorail to go up the KL Tower. We were ok until we got off and asked a young boy which way to turn. Bad choice. After a 2 km (or so it seemed) we were directed back almost to where we started then climbed up 231 stairs (my count) in the humidity to the base of the Tower. Nice Views and commentaries,then took a free shuttle to the base of the hill. We selected a TGIF Restaurant just before the deluge. We've been lucky. God has been looking after us. The rains stopped as we finished dinner in time for us to walk to the monorail and train back to the hotel. Tonight we repack for our trip to Cambodia tomorrow.

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