My travels, pictures and stories: Kuala Lumpur

I woke up at 04.30 in the morning to take a taxi to Bangkok Airport, about 200km from Pak Nam Pran. I had chosen this early hour to have some buffer for the taxi guy to be late, sleep in, not showing up, getting lost or whatever. Surprisingly, the guy turned up 10 minutes early, and minutes later we took off in 130km/h in his Toyota, destination Bangkok.
He didn’t say a lot, I must admit that the conversation was a bit halting. I asked “do you ofthen take people to the airport?”, “3 hours” he replied. I asked again with other words, but got the same response. Ok, ok, I was kind of fine to cut the small talk and try to sleep instead. The karaoke the night before had left its marks on me.

After leaving my gigantic bag with kite gear at the airport, and a bit bumpy flight later, I landed in Kuala Lumpur. I quickly called Monica to tell her I’d wait for her at Starbucks. And I waited. After quite some time she called me back to say “there’s no starbucks here!!”. Apparently KL has two terminals, and when I looked closer, all the flights at the terminal was Air Asia.
In the end, we met up at the international terminal and took the train in to town, and checked in at the Reggae Mansion. A really nice hostel, probably the nicest one I have stayed so far. Thanks for finding that one Monica! :-)

We didn’t do much the first night as we arrived quite late and we both got up before sunrise, so we started relatively early the next day with some sight seeing and took a stroll past the hotel I stayed at 6 years ago, when visiting the Sony Ericsson factory. After a quick fruit shake, we continued on to petrona towers. Also they had changed since then.

The petrona towers. A must-see in KL.

We also visited the KL Tower. This is the view from the top. You can see the petrona towers shooting up in the sky behind the other sky scrapers.

They had some really potent binoculars as well. Here’s a construction site.

We then walked around in little India a bit and had a bite at a food court. I payed 7, and Monica 3 RM (1,50 & 0,7 €) for our food, which was excellent. Incredible that it can be so cheap in such a big city! As a comparison, an imported choclate bar (Mars) in the 7-eleven cost you 3.20 RM.

Here’s the food court. Classical asian style, get what you want, where you want, and let the people at the food stall worry about what you owe them. Works amazingly good.

Just in case you’d wake up a sunday morning and wonder when it will be released - yes, I can confirm that “The Villans” will soon release their new music video “respecto to fans”.

We took the opportunity to visit a mosque. Here’s Monica, dressed decently.

I think this picture shows a quite ordinary street in Kuala Lumpur. Some ill maintained colonial buildings mixed with newer, and a lot of cars.

This is Merdeka square. The people in the background recorded some scene for an indian music video.

There was a traditional wedding shoot going on as well

We went on to chow kit, the former, and present red-light district to have a look. To the right we have the stairwells to a shady karaoke bar we visited, which apparently could offer more than just singing ladies.

There was a chinese restaurant nearby, we tried it out. The menu wasn’t available in written form, but no worries, we had some quite good fried noodles. Mine with chicken and Monicas with prawns. Not as cheap as the food court, but almost.

On the way back we passed one of the local markets, and this durian stall. The fruit that stinks incredibly and is forbidden in some places due to its smell.

If you ever felt like stepping on facebook or any other bigger site, here’s your chance. Flip flops at an affordable price!

Well back at the hotel, one of my strongest memories was to be able to have a decent shower in hot water! That felt like ages ago.

The night was spent on the roof terrace of the hostel. My gin tonic cost less than the tiger beer Monica had for 10 RM. Really nice music and great ambience with all the tall buildings around.

We started the morning after with a power breakfast of coffee and toast and begun the walk to the bird park in the pressing damp heat.

On the way we passed this bus outside the railway station. Kuala Lumpur – Mecca. In bus! Are you kidding? I will not complain about the 20 min bus ride to work ever again!

About an hour later we arrived to see some truly fantastic birds from all over Malaysia.

Back from the bird park, we ate lunch at the No 1 beef ball restaurant in the city. Established in 1954, they have delivered countless beef balls to fill empty stomaches. Not bad at all. Do I need to mention that prices were affordable too?