Moving South to KL

Travel day today. Not a long one by our standards, but a travel day nonetheless.

After a middling to mediocre breakfast at the hotel, we jumped into a cab at 9:00am before the school holiday traffic choked the road down to Tanah Rata, and the local bus station.

Given that our bus has at 11:00, we were pretty early, but given the awful traffic that we had seen, the last thing we wanted was to get caught in it, and miss our bus.

We wasted away the time at the local starbucks, the only place in town with wifi available to the public. This was principally spent researching the latest developments in Brexit, and NZ politics., as well as the odd things about KL, especially how to get to the hotel.

The bus ride itself was fairly uneventful. The initial section was pretty rough, as we descended the Cameroon Highlands, back onto the western coastal plain fo the Malay peninsula. As much as the number of people living and visiting the Cameron Highlands has increased substantially since the road was built many decades ago, there was been no further development of the road itself, and it is not wide enough for a bus. This made life interesting when another bus, or truck was met coming the other way on blind corners. More than once the driver slammed on the brakes and we came to an abrupt stop.

Back on the plain though, we were on a motorway and the remainder of the trip was silky smooth, all the way into KL Sentral, the central travel hub. From there we transferred to the monorail to get to our hotel. This took a bit longer than expected, owing to a lack of signage, which meant we went the long way round. Actually it was the loooong way round.

Arriving at the hotel, a bit hot and bothered after our trek through KL, laden with bags, we discovered that the hotel had managed to lose our booking. This wouldn't have been that much of an issue if it didn't take the reception 25 minutes to workout what had happened and give us a room. In the interim, we were just stuck in the lobby, waiting for the hotel to get themselves sorted. This was a rather large black mark against the service of the hotel, and we still don't know what happened.

After checking into our room, it was time to go for a wander. We set out for one of the local malls to see about getting my phone fixed. Having dropped it many months ago in China, the wifi and bluetooth hasn't functioned, and I hoped that KL's premier technology mall would be able to fix it.

As it turns out no, they can't. Because my was bought in the UK, it has to be fixed with UK parts which are slightly different from Malaysian parts, and can't be sold to Malaysian operaters so they can fix my phone. Market segmentation at its best, and to my cost sadly.

We then found ourselves in another mall - KL is a city of malls. This one was identical to any other mall you have seen, with the same stores, and the same food court, so don't feel like you missed out. However, we did spot a cinema, and had a look to see what a movie might cost. At its cheapest, the answer is 12MYR - peanuts.

Growing tired of the mall within 20 mins, but still enjoying the coolness of the AC, we decided to risk the heat, and head back towards the hotel to find some dinner. On the way we passed a street food street, mainly populated by Chinese and Thai restaurant, specialising in seafood. This wasn't going to work for Courtney so we kept looking, and eventually arrived at a street full of westernised bars, clubs and restauarants. Being hungry at this point we settled on a restaurant that did Indian, Mexican and Western food. We had the Indian, along with a few cocktails, and it was all pretty damn good.

On the way back, we passed even more restaurants, many of which were Arabic. As it happens our hotel is next to Arab Town - the slightly less catchy, and ethnically different version of Chinatown. This means that there are a lot of restaurants to go to, with food that looks authentic, and staff that look like they have actually lived in the Middle East at some point in their lives. If we can try one, I will be mightily happy.

Arriving back at the hotel, a bit drunk from the cocktails, and a bit sweaty from the heat, it was time for a quick shower, and a good night's sleep.Read more