Kuala Lumpur

One thing we forgot on the wrap-up: Maroon 5 are still pretty big here. "She will be loved" is being played all over Indonesia!

We flew to Kuala Lumpur on the 20th, so already a couple of days ago but we were quite busy. Just imagine this announcement on the plane in a cheerful voice. "Be aware that the possession or smuggling of drugs is punishable by law and carries the maximum sentence: Death! Thank you."

Arriving here after indonesia is quite the cultural shock. There are sidewalks (!), an excellent public transport system and this is a very modern, western city with the behavior coming with it. The second thing you notice is that the americanization is in full effect. There is a ton of shopping malls. Once you get out of a tram or monorail stop you often get ushered into a mall. Once we seeked shelter from the rain in an underground parking and were suddenly standing in an underground mall. In another one there is an amusement park with a rollercoaster!

After arriving we went to check out the petronas towers, the park next to it and the malls and shopping streets in the areas called KLCC and Bukit Bintang. And god, is the beer expensive here. 2 euros for a small bottle in a shop, 12 euros for a pitcher in a bar.

The next day we saw Lake gardens, the Merdaka (independence) square and China town. We also tried traditional malayan cuisine which is pretty close to Indonesian. But there are other parts of the national cuisine with stronger Chinese influence. We'll get to try this later.

Today we went into Little India because it is Deepawali, basically the Hindu new year. Lot's of women in Saris and men with marks on their forehead. After that we went to the Batu Caves, a cave system which is a giant Hindu temple.

Considering the price for beer and restaurants, public transport is really cheap. To get to these caves (30 minutes away from the city) and back we paid 2 euros. In trains there are also coaches reserved for women only. Not a bad idea.

The afternoons and evenings we have mostly spent indoors cause of the severe rainfalls hitting the city every day (and all the malls suddenly do make a lot of sense when you have to wait for 2 hours that the crazy rain stops).

Today we tasted some fruits including dragon fruit (this one was strangely red instead of the expected white), yellow mango (yep, there was 4 different sorts of mango to choose from at this market). We also had a glimpse of durian taste ("stinky fruit" when literally translated from German), we bought an ice cream with durian taste and... we found out that it taste as bad as it smells ;)

Also remarkable is the difference between rush hour and rest of the day. While cars don't move and it is hard to get into a monorail car, the rest of the day is easy ridin'.

Tomorrow we are heading towards the Cameron Highlands. Turned out to be harder than we thought to find accommodation there because today is a public holiday and a lot of people took the rest of the week off.Read more