| Asia and Kuala Lumpur |
| Saturday, 25 November 2006 | |
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Asia and Kuala Lumpur Finally we're starting the adventure we'd been talking about for a long time. ASIA.... I've never been there but heard a lot of nice things about it. I'm curious if I'll like it. After a pleasant flight from Amsterdam via Singapore we arrrive in Kuala Lumpur (KL) and find our hotel The Heritage Station Hotel in the old main train station building. We're here for one month and the room is cheap for long stay, it is a nice and ok cleaned room. Now the adventure can start. KL is of course a big city but it has some interesting places to see, like the national Mosque and a lot of temples , both indian and chinese. We got ourselves a monthly metroticket. Convinient when sightseeing and shopping Be aware that KL has three different metrosystems so the ticket for LRT is not valid for the KMT komuter or the Monorail. But on the other hand one can combine the ticket for LRT and the Rapid buses in one monthly ticket for a slightly higher price,(90RM/125RM) We opted for the cheaper one since we consider the metro easier when finding out which to take where so we did'nt take any buses except for the no.11 bus (from Metro company) to Batu Caves. KL have some really nice shoppingmalls like Suria in the Petronas Towers. It goes over 4 floors with a medical center at the fourth floor. Hennie needed to go there for treatment for his back and we took the escalator up... well I am afraid for hights.. didn't realisied quite how much before I came to the second floor .Started to panic and after finally arriving at the fourth floor I was in full panic ,could hardly walk at all wondering about how to be able to go down those escalators???! I knew there was one lift there but that was an outside lift with nice widows ..great for outlooks but not for hightfrights. A guard asked Hennie what was wrong with me since I surely looked crazy doing some sort of balancingact :-) Well reached the medical center and yes there is an inside lift here... I am saved!!!!. The escalators run sort of in open air, not connected to any walls which I think is the reason I reacted so hard. But can't let a escaltor beat me so I worked on it and was pretty soon able to use them without a second thought.Victory!!!! I must admit that I have some problems with eating at some of the places (hawkerstalls) that Hennie like to eat at, but there are asian foodcourts at more or less all shoppingmalls and there one can get nice asian food and sometimes different western cheap. I prefer the places where one can say ; I want that, that, and that and oh yes a little of that because it is difficult to see what a set is from picture purely. I also loved eating in Petaling Street, the chines market street. It is a nice place, but with a little to eager salesmen maybe for all of those cheap counterfit watches and dvd's that are for sale.The food is delicious though, especially the Satay. mmmmmmm. Indian food is also great here...the naan bred with garlic is oh so good. There is a very nice supermarket in Suria; Cold Storage, which sells all you'll need from all kinds of food and drinks incl. alcoholic beverages. There also is a Carrefour at the Midvalley Hypermall.,Southeastasia largest mall. It has it all! Suria has both a Hagen-Daaz icecream parlor and one that sell lowfat italian icecream. Pricewize the latter is way cheaper and I must say the icecream is very good.And of course no guilty feeling for eating it. Perfect I loved the atmosphere in the city, it is so relaxing, and I could litterally feel the stress leaving me, and my muscles relaxing. The chinese and Indian temples have some great figures and a nice atmosspere. Internetting we did at KLCC foodcourt there where they had a wireless hotspot from TMNet. Not too easy to get it up and started though. The online purchase of the abo don't work!!!! We went to 7-11 and got a card, which turned out to be a reload card so we had to get a startup card!! So instead of one months abo we ended up with two months abo.And also it has a lot of downperiods and the cost of calling the helpdesk is pretty steep and frankly it is worthless since they doesnt give any help at all, better to try again a litter later but it is convinient to have a wireless abo if you have a laptop. We took as I mentioned earlier a trip to Batu Caves,an Indian temple 286 steps up to it so a good advice is to go there in a little more chilly time of day There is a big statue of Lord muruga in "gold" outside. A lot of monkeys accompanied us up the stairs with even more of them inside. Inside the caves there are different alters for different gods. The Thaipusam festival take place here once a year.a festival consistent of offering and some pretty excrusiating piercings....... It was very an interesting place to visit absolutely recommedable. We are going on from here to Penang and I am curious of how it will be in Asia outside a bigcity. Iam ready so bring it on.!! I can't wait!! |
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