The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Malaysia

After about a week in Chiang Mia we once again boarded a plane to Kuala Lumpur. Our Air Asia flight was about $100 each, booked pretty last minute, so was a pretty good price for a 2 hour and 45 min flight.

We arrived about 7:30pm and caught a taxi into the city which is a 1 hour drive (even at the 140km a hour the taxi driver was doing on the freeway). The taxi far to anywhere in KL from the airport is a standard 75 Ringot ($25), but we found that taxi rides in the opposite direction were anywhere from 100 to 140 Ringot.

We booked hotel called the V'la Garden Guesthouse via Agoda for 2 night ($30 a night) which was quite expensive compared to what we had been paying, but as we only intended to spend two nights in KL before flying to Borneo we decided to pay the bit extra and stay right in the middle of the Bukit Bintang district, which is where all the shops and sights are, as well as a short walk to Chinatown and the Petronas Twin Towers. The hotel had tiny rooms and we unluckily ended up with a room at the end of one of the corridors, which means close to the street. Despite this the staff at the hotel were some of the nicest we had encountered and we son discovered it was run by Muslim staff and in fact we appeared to be the only non-Muslim customers!

On our first day in KL we walked via what I would call a 'skywalk' to several shopping centres and the Petronas Twin Towers (ie; a raised walkway that ran between building and over streets through the main part of the city... was enclosed and air conditioned and you could use it to walk between hotels, shopping centres, convention centre and many sights... we were lucky we found it as it made walking around the city easy and quick). We were hoping to be able to go to the viewing platform on that day, but unfortunately they only let 1000 people up per day, so we ended up booking tickets for the following day.

That night we headed into Chinatown for dinner which consisted of excellent chicken satay sticks, lemon chicken and a local beer called Skol. All in all it was fairly close to a Tiger beer. Chinatown in KL is basically one street packed with markets and food stalls. It is definitely not as good as the one in Sydney, but the prices were quite cheap in a city which seemed quite expensive!

Day two, we packed up our bags and left them with the hotel staff and once again walked the few kilometres to the Petronas Towers. We had 11am tickets which gave us an hour at the Skybridge and the newer viewing platform. From what I discovered, the towers were not intended to be a tourist attraction, and hence no viewing platform was built. For the past 10 years they have been using the skybridge on the 41st floor for tourists, but in 2011 they converted the 86th floor to a tourist viewing platform. This is twice the height of the skybridge and gave an amazing view of the City.

After half the day around the city we headed back, collected our bags, and headed to KL Sentral where we were going to catch a bus to the Airport as it was only going to be 10 Ringot rather than about 120 via a taxi. The aim was to find the Air Shuttle ticket stand which is run by Air Asia, but unfortunately the directions from their website led us to nothing, and we ended up buying a 12 ringot ticket through Sky Shuttle. The difference was that this bus picks up not at Sentral, but up the street a few hundred metres. We were advised that the staff would be there in front of the Mydin building and just to wait with them.... Easier said than done... No staff were apparent even after we found the Mydin building... which you cannot even see from Sentral. Luckinly about 5 minutes before the bus we found a staff member and waited with him.. but it seemed even he did not know what was going on as the bus arrived on the opposite side of the busy 6 lane road, and we had to make a bit of a dash to meet it. Luckily for us he basically stepped out into the traffic and forced it to stop!

Once on the bus the trip was fine expect for the incompetent bus driver who was on and off the accelerator an brakes making a very jerky trip... it seemed he was incapable of maintaining a speed even on a massive freeway!

The flight to Kuching, Borneo, was once again uneventful and we arrived late evening after a one hour flight delay and checked into our hotel the Grand Supreme which we booked via Agoda.