First of all, no I do not know what Vesak Day is all about. I should look it up and I will. But if you really want to know, there is always wikipedia!
Conrad, Rudy and I left Singapore Wednesday night, May 30th on the night bus destined for Kuala Lumpur. I must note that this was no ordinary bus, but a luxury coach. This is like traveling in business class on any major airline. Well minus the food. We only got a bottle of water. Needless to say, it was the best an overnight bus could be. Even though I didn't sleep because the oncoming traffic kept shining their demonic headlights into my eyes. We arrived into KL around 5a.m., phoned up the hostel we wanted, jumped in a taxi and slept for a few hours.
The next few days we putzed around KL trying to see as much as we could. We managed to visit the 'Petronas Twin Towers' on more than one occassion because it's just that magnifiscent, and because you can see the damn thing from everywhere in the city. During the day it's spectacular, but at night it is magnificent. Some of the brightest lights I've ever seen.
Another impressive building is the KL Menara Tower, which is the communications tower finished in 1996. Both the Petronas Towers and the KL tower are part of Malaysia's master plan for complete development by 2020. I'm not sure if they'll reach that goal, but Malaysia isn't the third world country I was expecting. The highways rival ours in terms of quality and the number of petrol stations throughout. 'Petronas' is their national oil and gas company, by the way. The cities, on the other hand, could use a few more sanitation workers (a.k.a. garbage men). There are piles of rubbish on the streets, but any seasoned traveler looks past that toward the good things the city offers. Take France for example. Nobody cares that there is dog poop in front of the Chanel store because, well, there is a Chanel store!
Aside from these two 'major' attractions, we visited a the KL Butterfly Park, the National Mosque, Main Train Station, and the Central Market. Also smoked some shisha and ate some excellent Egyptian food near our hostel. We enjoyed it so much the owner gave us a 10MR discount. Usually you give them EXTRA money when you like something, but he was so happy we were happy, so he gave us a discount. The three of us as like kings for the equivalent of C$6.00 each.
Coming home was an adventure and a half. A word of advice: Don't listen to people when they tell you booking buses in Malaysia is no problem on long weekends. It absolutely IS a problem. It took us 11 hours to get home, when it should have taken about 5; we had to take 3 separate buses AND cut out Malacca (a colonial city) on our way home. The funny part was it only cost us about C$10 for the entire return journey. How they make money like this I don't know...
Until next time!
Monday, June 11, 2007
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