Sydney's recent heat wave seemed to be acting as a reminder that I am yet to write my promised post about my time in South East Asia. Time to rectify that problem me thinks....
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| Mall Theme Park |
So when I left you, I had just made a madcap night time dash from Paris to London in order to get an early morning plane from Stansted. Not being a morning person, having to drag myself out of bed at 4.30am and crawl from central London to Stansted having to take one tube and one actual train to get to my 8am plane was less than my idea of fun. People may wonder why I was catching flights so early in the morning and why I was flying from London to KL instead of straight to Sydney. The reason for this lunacy is Air Asia. Air Asia is a budget airline based in Malaysia which was offering A$420 flights from London to KL (it had been offering A$480 flight from London to Melbourne but I missed out on those), and so it turned out that I could fly with China Airlines to London then on the way home fly Air Asia to KL and send some time in KL and then fly Jetstar home, and even with having to pay extra for food on both Air Asia and Jetstar, it would work out much cheaper than buying a return ticket. It is good advice for budget travellers who don't mind spending a few days in a random city- buying flights for individual legs can work out much cheaper. I was expecting Air Asia (which with being so cheap) to not be a very good airline so though I had paid for food, I decided not to pay for entertainment and just to sleep/read for the 12 hour flight. It turns out Air Asia is actually quite a good airline. There was more leg room (slightly) than there was on Jetstar and the food was not just edible but also not bad (quite the step up from China Airline who couldn't deliver edible let alone good).
I tried to prep for the shock to the system to I knew Malaysian humidity would be after European snow but nothing can really prepare you for the combo of jet lag and the change from below 5 degrees 8am dry winter in London to 25 degree 100% (or close to) humidity 5am summer in KL. Malaysian summer feels like walking/living in a sauna and to the unprepared body it hits you like a falling grand piano. I felt like I could barely stand and then discovering that KL is actually 80km from its airport and I would have to take hour and a half bus ride and then two train lines before the four block walk to my hotel was quite the depressing idea. I was barely with it enough to notice the great change in my surroundings and was just lucky that the hotel let me check in several hours before the permitted check in time so I could crash into my bed at 10am and sleep for the next 8 and a half hours. That night I got just enough energy up to explore the hotel. I was staying at Citris Hotel which is 3 and a half star hotel in budget hotel part of KL, and booking it through Wotif netted me not just a decent room but also a special deal with access to the hotel's privileged guests floors. The privileged guests got fruit on day of arrival (was expecting tropical fruit but was still happy with the two apples and an orange that arrived- decent fruit was a thing I had greatly missed in Europe), access to the special privileged guest room where there was free food and drink and computers for internet access all day (as well as a great view of the Petronas Twin Towers), and cheap laundry/ironing services (I didn't use either but it was there if I had decided I needed it). The hotel, though cheap, was quite good and its restaurant, though not as cheap as others in the area, served very good food at cheap prices (I ate there every night and the cost of a large meal with a drink and on a few occasions a dessert was between 7 and 12 Australian dollars).
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| Petronas Towers |
First actual morning in Malaysia and I was faced with the excitement of Asian breakfast. People had warned me that what with never having been to Asia before I might to shocked when greeted with dishes I would consider lunch or dinner dishes at breakfast time- people in Asia don't really eat cereal they told me. Instead of this freaking me out, I thought it was awesome. I love Asian food (the complexity and freshness of Asian spices was something I had greatly missed in Europe) and am not the biggest fan of cereal. So when I arrived to be faced with a breakfast of dahl, fried rice, noodles, chicken curry, porridge with savory sides, dim sums and freshly cooked Asian style omelettes, I was psyched. I will say my hotel did have cereal, croissants, pancakes, French toast, fresh fruit and regular bread/toast- some of which I ate though not the cereal or regular toast- so you could have had a typical Western breakfast if you wanted (I never did and instead embraced the combo). This first morning I also got to take in the differences in my surroundings to the European winter I had left only a little over a day early. I got see the tropical vegetation and hear the flies and watch
After all this I made the cliched decision and decided to do what Westerns do in South East Asia...SHOP. Shopping in KL takes two forms- street shopping and mall shopping. I have haggling-a-phobia and so I was not up for the street shopping but supposedly there are awesome deals to be had especially in the China town district of KL. Mall shopping in KL is still cheaper than buying the same goods in Australia but be warned if you are averse to haggling or super pushy sales people, steer clear of the open areas in malls as there are often stalls of the same kind as street stalls in these areas in malls and if you step too close, the vendors will forcible try and drag you in to their stall- I'm not kidding, one woman grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a cosmetics stall to look at fake eyelashes, fortunately I was stronger than she was so was able to pull free of her hand but not without light scratches from her talon like fake nails. By the end of my time in KL, I had spent several days in various malls which was mainly due to the fact I was too tired to do anything else. I've seen all kinds of malls from the high end, designer mall next to the Petronas Twin Towers (Towers themselves sadly closed for maintenance for exactly the week I was in KL) to the mid range malls near the classier hotels to the low rent malls near my hotel. I discovered two awesome things- firstly the coffee shop chain, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, which is found in Malaysia and Singapore and serves the best chain store coffee EVER (so much better than the swill served at Gloria Jeans or Starbucks and cheaper than both, but that said it is more expensive than a lot of other drink options in KL), and secondly theme parks in malls!! I actually only found one of the latter but for A$11 I could ride a roller coaster in a shopping mall and if you offer me a roller coaster I'm there. I also discovered that malls aren't a good view of Malaysian culture as they are too full of Western and that dodgy shops on main streets have more interesting stuff for cheaper.
On my second day in KL, I found the KL Butterfly and Bird Parks. Getting to both of these, which are in the quite beautiful gardens on the outskirts of the city, is a bit difficult at first glance as none of the city's train or monorail lines go that close to them. However I discovered the benefits of the KL Hop On Hop Off Tourist Bus- usually I hate Hop On Hop Off buses, but the one in KL is about 30MR (A$10) for a 24 hour ticket and does the loop of all of the tourist sites many of which aren't that close to buses, trains or monorails- I used it to get to the Butterfly and Bird Parks and back one day, and to the Craft Complex the next (the latter isn't that exciting so skip it if you aren't up for a lot of shopping)- I'd say it is definitely a must for those travelling with kids and wanting to see these and other sights particularly the KL Museum and the National Mosque. The Butterfly Park was very pretty, even if you are not an insect lover like me, and the Bird Park (the World's Largest Outdoor Aviary- it is topped with a net) is a lot of fun though the peacocks are posers and try and get into all your photos. On the walk between the two, I angered a mother monkey by accidentally scaring her baby so keep an eye out for monkey rage!
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| Butterfly on hand |
I didn't get to the National Mosque or the Islamic Craft and Textile Centre which are quite close to the Bird and Butterfly Parks as I felt I wasn't dressed appropriately for either when I was out near them (in my singlet and shorts) - I was astounded at how few Westerners realised that their summer dress style was not culturally appropriate for a Mosque as I watched a family pile off the bus with the women in short dresses and/or shorts and singlets, and everyone wearing sandals and thongs (though this was nothing on the cultural inappropriateness I saw a few days later of a woman in a short see through dress- she wasn't visiting a Mosque but still not the best clothing choice in a Muslim country)- I shocks me that people can't put two and two together when visiting a Mosque. Note to everyone out there, if you are visiting a Mosque- covered shoes (regardless of gender) and, for women, long sleeves, long pants and covered head...How hard is that to figure out?!?
My biggest disappointment in Malaysia came a few days later. Sucked in by the lure of getting to ride an elephant, I signed up for a tour out to the country which was supposed to include visiting an elephant conservation park and Batu Caves. It cost 240MR (A$80)- which was a rip off to beginning with- but that wasn't the worst of it. It was Hindu New Year that weekend so Batu Caves was packed out and the tour guide said that we would skip it in the morning because of the crowds and get back to see it in afternoon- ultimately it was late when we got back and so we stopped for 20 minutes and didn't even have time to climb into the caves- by the afternoon I was feeling so ripped off that, had I not been brain numbingly tired, I would have screamed at all involved. Having skipped Batu Caves, we went to the next two stops a pewter factory and a Bitak factory- I was thinking we'd get to see a demonstration of both but no it was all sales pitch. After that it was an over an hour awkward car trip of silence (I slept though most of this as brain was telling me it was 2am back in London) to a Deer Park (not to be confused with the free range deer park near the Bird and Butterfly Parks in KL). Now I have mixed feelings about animal parks and zoo at the best of time and I think that they can be done profoundly badly, this was possibly the worst one I've ever seen. It was 10MR (A$3.33) on top of the original cost of the trip to go in- rip off again. When the tour guide said you could hand feed a sun bear at this park I was like "But Sun Bears can be quite vicious that doesn't seem right", the sun bears in question had had all the bite willed out of them by being stuck into cages that were barely big enough for them for most of the day. The other animals (aside from deer which ran wild) were mainly domestic animals and all in tiny cages. It was hideous and I just wanted to run around and free them all. After this we stopped for lunch- the one thing that seemed to be included in the cost of the tour (aside from petrol and tolls) but as it was only 3RM (A$1) a plate, I'd like to know where most of my 240RM went! The elephant conservation centre was worth a visit (though not the cost of my tour) and ride an elephant I did, but I had not been forewarned that I would be charged another 10RM to get in there- the tour guide said he would cover the cost as I had no cash by this stage and hadn't been forewarned but then subsequently demanded the money back when we returned to the hotel. I didn't complain to the complain to the people selling the tours but one of the hotel staff asked me about and when I told me about the joke that the tour was, the look on his face said that others had been sucked into this trap before. If stay at Citrus Hotel, steer well clearly of the tour people in the foyer!
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| Elephant Time |
Most of the rest of the time in Malaysia was spent in malls and lazying in the hotel as my body refused to get on Malaysian time. The free pay TV in my hotel turned out to be mainly in Chinese or copious amounts of reality TV repeated on a seemingly endless loop and nothing makes jetlag worse than having only the same episode of the Bachelorette to watch night after night at 4am when you can't sleep and aren't awake enough to read. The good thing though was even with jetlag I could enjoy the awesome Malaysian food and laugh the waiters warned me that food listed in the menu as spicy was well spicy...clearly they hadn't met a Woodley before and didn't realise that some Westerners do like to try the spiciest dish on the menu.
I feel that I've pretty much experienced most of what there is to see in KL- including the jungle in the airport- but people tell me that further afield Malaysia has tonnes more to offer.
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