Arriving in Kuala Lumpur 28/10/06

When we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, we made our way through customs and found our tour operator very quickly. It is amazing how quickly all the taxi drivers zeroed in on us to try and get us to take their particular taxi into the city.

We waited around for the rest of our party but ended up in a taxi all alone as the other guys had too much luggage so there wasn’t enough space for us.

Our taxi driver spoke very good English which was a refreshing change from the ones in Phuket. We got chatting (as is our custom) and found out the prices of everything from burgers to taxi fare. It took about an hour to get into the city to our hotel, the Royale Bintang.

We arrived at about 2pm, checked in and found that they’d upgraded us to some deluxe room. At this point it was raining and Dion got right to it – taking pictures from the room’s window.

I unpacked quickly and then was dying for a cup of tea so got going with that and then carried on reading my book (The Broker – John Grisham, if you’re interested).

Meanwhile ... Dion’s still snapping away.

After Dion unpacked, we went exploring. The weather was amazing – very, very hot and then sudden rain. It then stops just as suddenly. Weird.

We drew some money and then went to get some food. The food courts in all the plazas (shopping centres) are laid out in exactly the same way. You enter on the ground floor and go down one floor and the entire bottom is food. Of course Dion and I do our usual thing which is to look at each and every place before deciding where to eat. We decided on a hot pot meal.

Now that I’m thinking about it, it sounds quite disgusting but when in Rome… and remember, we were starving. The last time we ate was on our 10:30 flight and it’s about 5 – 6pm.

They do a stirfry-type thing with beef/ chicken, mixed veg, noodles, and then they add two soup ladles full of a soya sauce-type liquid and cook it all up. And then get this – they fry an egg on top of the sauce.

Anyway, after watching all of this, I could only eat about half of it. Dion ate his and mine. We had the most delicious pastries for dessert, all 1 ringgit each (R2,20).

Then we went walking through a plaza or two until we happened on a stunning bookshop, called MPH (Malaysia Publishing House). We happily spent an hour or so just in this one place as well as about 47 ringgit.

On our way back to the hotel, we got some ice-cream cones (delicious) and of course, water, at the 7-11 a few shops away from our hotel.

That’s it for day 1.

Something we noticed in the plazas…there are so many job vacancies in all the shop windows. Coming from South Africa where unemployment is rife, we were absolutely amazed. I don’t think there’s any reason you need to be unemployed in Malaysia!