Kuala Lumpur

I arrived to Kuala Lumpur by bus from Singapore. The bus cost S$20 and was the nicest bus I’ve ever been on; clean, air conditioned with large cushiony seats.





Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention that they drive on the “wrong” side of the road in both Singapore and Malaysia. Breaking out of the habit of looking left before crossing the road is more difficult than I imagined and every time I had to cross the street, I’d feel a teeny amount of stress. Along with driving on the other side come several differences in vehicles. The obvious is the driver sitting on the right side, which also kept confusing me when taking the taxis because I’d walk over to the wrong side and the taxi driver would exclaim with a grin “what, you want to drive?” The oddest thing that comes to mind about the vehicle designed for the other side of the road is the windshield wipers moving in the opposite direction that we’re used to. I’m not sure why, but it really bugged me.

Ok, back to Kuala Lumpur. The bus from Singapore arrived at 4am, much earlier than I calculated. I somehow managed to confuse myself and come to a conclusion that the bus will arrive at 5:30 and Martin, a really nice Czech guy from Edinburgh whom I met on travbuddies.com, was supposed to pick me. I hung around the lobby of a fancy hotel that I found down street until Martin found me.

The Equator hostel at Times Square, Kuala Lumpur that Martin found was a nice little place. It was located just behind the large fancy hotel, was several stories high and had about 50 pairs of shoes outside. Being in a Muslim country, the hostel had its rules clearly posted.



The rooms were nice with shared asian bathrooms, meaning shower and toilet are all in one room, often with the shower almost directly above the toilet.





The living room was comfy with a TV and dvds of all the new movies that just came out in theaters in the US. The kitchen was well equipped as well, with tea, hot chocolate and coffee free all day. I was most intrigued by the green faucet in the kitchen. Up until now, I’ve never seen faucets made out of plastic.






While Martin was sleeping, I decided to go to the Petronas Twin Towers in the center of the city. According to the map, it’d be only two stops on the airtrain, which reminded me of Disneyland.



I walked to the train stop ands to my surprise, the train arrived completely full; rush hour. People began pushing to get in once the doors open. I gave it a try as well, but there is no way in hell I was getting in there with my backpack. The doors closed and the train left. I looked around with disappointment and a guy who didn’t get into another door walked over to help. It turns out that the trick is to go 2 stops backwards and get on when it’s partially empty. Good to know!

Petronas towers were exactly what I expected. Beautiful Islam influenced modern buildings stretching up toward the clouds. All sorts of tourists were scattered throughout the park underneath the towers: large groups of Japanese, Chinese and Korean tourists as well as quite a few Saudi couples with women wearing full black burkhas. Brought back memories of traveling in Egypt with Masha and Kia.

After traveling in Egypt, I can’t say I was looking forward to staying in another Muslim country. My biggest concern was traveling alone as a woman and how it would be perceived by the locals. Malaysia is nothing like Egypt. The only thing that the two have in common is the religion. People in Kuala Lumpur were very nice and helpful. (Despite good maps, I still managed to get lost tons and asked for help and directions. ) The country has a mix of cultures, Malay, Indian and Chinese. The most common language is of course Malay, but all the signs are in English with smaller Chinese characters below. All 3 cultures speak their own languages and English when communicating to each other. All of the commercials and billboards are also in English.

By a popular request, I will now include pictures of the food. Yes dad, I’m taking photos of my food, just like you do back home ☺
I grabbed some early lunch with Martin at an Indian restaurant two steps away from our hostel. He recommended Roti Chanai, a pancake crepe type pastry often filled with something. Mine had eggs and onion.



In the evening, the owner of the hostel took a group of people for a traditional meal outside of the touristy zone. It was a buffet full of unfamiliar scary things all served on top of a blue purplish coconut rice with all sorts of spices. To my surprise, it tasted amazing… I actually liked the spices! ( I generally don’t like spices, even black pepper, right Vanya?)



After dinner, a few of us went for a walk to the Petronas towers because I wanted to get a night shot of them. We figured it couldn’t be that hard since they can be seen from everywhere. The difficulty as it turned out was to get across a highway that ran through the city. We walked through several sketchy neighborhoods with the locals gladly greeting us with “Halo” as we passed. After several miles of walking, we finally asked for directions and found a way to the other side. It was a very nice experience, just walking around and seeing what life is like.

At 9:55, we arrived to the towers and just as I set up a tripod to include the waterfalls in the foreground of my shot, the clock hit 10 and the waterfalls shut down. Damn!



This is Jula, a German girl who I met at the hostel with whom I later traveled for 2 weeks. This was the end of her 7 month journey around the world.

From Kuala Lumpur, I went up north to Cameron Highlands with Jula and Martin where my tooth started hurting quite bad, possibly due to changing air pressure after the rain storm. I figured continuing with such a strong tooth pain is a bad idea and that I better go back to KL and see a dentist. But how in the world would I figure out which dentist to go to? On travbuddies, Faisal wrote to me a while back offering help with anything I might need while traveling in KL, so I emailed asking him if he has a good dentist. When I returned from Cameron Highlands, he picked Jula and me up from the bus station, took me to a dentist who fixed my tooth in a jiffy, saying that the reason why it’s been hurting is due to an air pocket between my tooth and the filling. Afterwards, Faisal had to go to work, so he just dropped me off at his apartment to relax and instructed me to turn on channel 103 at 8:40pm. Turns out he does sports news for TV3 in Kuala Lumpur.



He was nice enough to host me for a few days until I went to Tioman as well as my short returns between my other destinations in Malaysia.

Completely off topic… I spotted this sign from a rooftop restaurant where I was hoping to get some pictures of the twin towers. No twin towers, but Mom and Dad, I thought you’d appreciate this.