KL with a bang!

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur (Peninsular Malaysia) with a close call/hiccup with my luggage. The bags weren’t coming out so I decided to use the bathroom while I waited – I wasn’t in there for long, but by the time I came out, everyone had gone and all the bags had gone as well…except one. But not mine. But it was the exact same bag that I have and had a Canadian flag on it as well! So I sat and waited and the air asia staff looked up the details and took off, then arrived minutes later with a couple of frantic looking Canadians. They were just about to put my bag through the security scan as they were going on a connecting flight when they realised the bag they had was FILTHY and a slightly different Canadian flag. So luckily that worked out, but I was sorted of looking forward to shopping if my bag wasn’t returned! Lol!

I arrived at Carrie and Katie’s place after the scariest cab ride of my life and after getting slightly lost! They are just outside of KL, in a place called Petaling Jaya or PJ. I arrived just in time for pedicures with the girls, which was seriously in need. Spent Saturday catching up and eating yummy Katie food (eggplant wrapped around ricotta, mm!)!

Sunday we went off to FRIM (Forest Research Institute Malaysia) for a little nature walk. It is a really pretty walk up to and from the canopy and back down. The canopy walk itself is about 200ft above ground and is 150m long. There are some great views from up there, and get a nice glimpse of the city from a distance. After the canopy walk we went to go find a banana leaf meal and in another terrifying taxi ride, we actually did get into a car accident! Our taxi driver rear ended another car which ended up hitting the car in front of it. No one was hurt thankfully, but the taxi itself was MESSED up. So the lesson of the trip: if you want a cheap taxi ride, an accident will do the trick (not too serious though!).

After eating, we were all ready to just sit and relax after the whole taxi incident, so we went back to their place and went for a swim and laid in the sun for a bit. Once the sun went into hiding, Carrie, Liv and I went off to the Central Market in KL for a bit of shopping and searching for hippie pants (North American pants, not UK pants). The market reminded me of the stalls in Camden Market in London – lots of crafts and fabrics and jewellery! After perusing as many shops as we could, we headed over to the old Chinatown, there they have a huge street market, with knock-off everything you could think of.

Katie, Carrie and Liv had to go to work Monday so I wandered around the city on my own, which consisted of getting lost with almost every turn I took. But I did manage to find everything I was searching for, just taking the longest route there probably is. Besides going back to the markets we went to the night before so I could buy the things I should’ve bought then, I went and saw Merdeka Square, which is their independence square, where on 31 Aug in 1957 (I think that is the year), the union jack was taken down and the Malaysian flag was raised for the first time. They have their independence day celebrations in the square every year. I also went into a beautiful hindu temple, the oldest in KL. I was speaking to a Hindu man who lives in KL before I went in, who asked me where I am from and when I said Canada, I was expecting him to say “oh Toronto” like everyone does, but he said “oh Edmonton!” hahaha. Random! Anyways, this temple was amazing, and what was really cool was that there was some sort of ceremony or service going on when I got there so it was full of people and wonderful sounds (drums and horns) and wonderful smells (incense, fires). The men were lined up wearing towels around their waists, some with white paint on their bodies, and taking some sort of plant up these stairs into a shrine (which looked like a steam room to me). But once they went up the stairs you couldn’t see them anymore. The temple had just been re-done (is redone every 12 years for a special occasion), so the colours were so vibrant in there.

After the temple, I went over to the Petronas towers – the tallest twin towers in the world. And true to my style, I spent the first 30 minutes there accidently taking pictures of the wrong buildings. Lol! When I got out of the train station, there were two large buildings next to each other, but I didn’t understand why they are called the twin towers if they didn’t look anything alike and they didn’t seem to connect the way I had been told they did. I wasn’t too impressed, but they were tall and so I figured that was it. Ended up being the KLCC (the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre), and was a shopping mall inside. One of the buildings I was looking at was one of the twin towers, but the other was hiding behind it. So after I walked all over the mall on all floors trying to find a way up to the view point, I gave up and was about to head back when I saw a bunch of people around the bend, so I followed the crowd and lo and behold some actual twin towers!! However, since it had taken me so long to get there, the viewing platform was closed so I didn’t get to go up and have a look over the city which was too bad. I decided that I would call it quits after that and headed back to Katie and Carries for dinner. We went out for Sushi then back at theirs I made them each one of the bracelets I learned to make in Sulawesi.

KL is an interesting place - totally different than any of the cities that I have been to in Indonesia or Malaysia so far. At times I forgot I was in KL, as it really reminded me a lot of Vancouver. I think mostly because there are people from all over living there besides just Malaysians, whereas in the other cities it has been mainly only Malaysians or Indonesians. It didn’t feel as foreign as somewhere with a 15hour time difference from Vancouver should feel. Also, you could easily and comfortably get by in the city without having to speak bahasa Malaysia because everyone speaks English (although I am sure you wouldn’t get messed around with as much if you could speak Malaysian).

It was a short but sweet trip. It was so nice to catch up with them again and see what their new life is like over in Malaysia! Now it is time to see what Rich's life has been like the last 9 months! Back to Indonesia...