Nick’s world tour

sep 27 The journey to Kuala Lumpur is on a “first class massage coach”… This seemed to mean that the chairs had massagers fitted. Unfortunately this function was switched off for the entire journey. As was the music selection. Still the thought was there! 

Kuala Lumpur is a very modern city, with a just a few pockets of history. The accomodation in the city is not the best, but I get a decent enough place in Chinatown.

Merdeka Square is surrounded by old buildings, and it was the from the gentlemens club here that independence was announced 49 years ago.

There’s the National Museum overlooking the square which has the triple whammy that it’s interesting, free and air conditioned! Looking at the modern buildings above the square, Islamic symbols influence the architecture, including the ultra-modern Petronas Towers and the KL Tower (strangely reminiscent of St John’s flying saucer tower in Liverpool).

A short ride on the LRT train are the Petronas Towers in the commercial district of the Golden Triangle. Home to the national oil company, the view from the Skybridge 41 floors up is impressive, even considering you have to get up early to queue for the free tickets. I get up even earlier because my world time zone alarm clock decided to move time forward by a random 40minutes last night…

Apart from these, there’s little else to do apart from watch the world go buy from a street eatery in Chinatown.

As I’m going to Borneo tomorrow, I thought I should probably make some arrangements for the jungle and mountain I plan to climb; hell even just think what I’d like to do. Slightly thwarted by my lack of small change, it takes several small purchases from convenience stores, and a lot of phone calls from a noisy phone box on a street corner to book accomodation on the mountain and in the jungle camp I want to visit. I have to change my plan because, in the words of the woman at the poshly named Sutera Sanctuary Lodges (aka National Park Accomodation Office), “don’t you know there’s a mountain marathon on?” As I don’t fancy my chances at running up and down a 4000m lump of granite, luckily Air Asia let me change my return flight for only 70 Ringgit. There’s nothing like leaving things to the last minute is there?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 7:03 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.