A dull five hour ride on an even more drab bus landed us in the city centre. For the mass amount of vehicles on the road and hives of people here everything looks pristine and under complete sensible control. There's traffic lights and road signs tat traffic actually obeys and it doesn't small like a dead carcass either unlike most capitals we have encountered so far!
We checked into a very homely guesthouse although it seems like pics have more than doubled in the last few years compared to what we had read and expected. We went for a cheap bite to ea, eventually settling on a place after walking around for a good half hour and realising there is no where cheap to eat; we would just have to splash out in this city. I had promised Jane to take Laura for a romantic meal so hopefully this would fit the bill! Our meal ended up costing more than our room but it has to be said it was blooming tasty and I had my best carbonara yet (I've been trying one in each country to see if they can beat my Mum's homemade wonder, it was a better challenge than eating McDonald's in every one like a good friend suggested!)
We then moved down to Low Yat Plaza as we had read it was a great place for electronic goods. Our camera, which we had just got repaired before coming out, was playing up badly, and with such amazing shots anticipated everyday for the next 8 months we are not going to put up with it doing circus tricks! We hit the huge shopping complex and first shop in there were cameras and gadgets everywhere at reasonable prices, but not quite as cheap as we had hoped for. Second shop in, all our digital needs, third shop, ohh the same, in fact, this entire plaza is dedicated to selling exactly the same stuff. How on earth does each retailer survive?! Prices were all over the show and whatever the amount labelled on the camera said would always be instantly reduced by the sales assistant upon asking. With almost every shop selling the same product and changing the deal for us it lead to a lengthy visit into each and every one, and it wasn't just this massive plaza, no, the plaza next door had a whole floor dedicated to electronics too!! You can imagine the state of our brains by the end of the 20th shop asking for the 20th time the same question over and over again so we left for bed and an email back home for advice from the king of photographic knowledge, Mr Phil Whiting!
The next morning we ate a scrum my and totally free breakfast given to us by the guesthouse, most rare in what we are used to on our budget! After a bit of a slow start as Laura was still feeling a little rough with stars in front of her eyes we went to Menara Kuala Lumpur which is the fourth highest telecommunications tower in the world. Around 56 seconds in a speedy lift got us as high as we could go and to an impressive panoramic view of the city full of cutting edge sky scrapers reflecting on to one another. However, there was one other place from which to see the city in a truly breath taking manner, and that was to jump from the highest point of the tower! This wasn't an option open to the general public thankfully (as I might have been tempted) but we would watch on as one by one people were hurtling past the towers over packed traffic and urban chaos below to land in a marked (and rather small) grassy spot below (hopefully!).
Next up we walked to the Petronas Towers which until 2004 were the world's tallest sky scrapers, but as the view wasn't meant to be as good as from Menara we left it at ground level and instead entered the absolutely ginormous Suria KLCC Shopping Complex which puts everything else to shame, including what I've seen in London! Kuala Lumpur is seriously on it and seems to be the place for the fashion world of South East Asia, and with us in our hobo travelling clothes we certainly felt out of place and in need of a good make over.
It took us hours to walk around the different floors and to decide where to eat out of the stacks available, though after finally reaching a decision what did we choose... McDonald's for me and a Subway for Laura! Why oh why we don't know but we were so hungry and it felt so close to home...comfort maybe? Is that good enough?!
After buying absolutely nothing apart from food (well done us!) we went to find the Komplex Budaya Kraf which was a mall full of handicrafts. I was looking to add to my mask collection which has so far receive ed an addition from each country we have visited. We stepped outside and it was absolutely heaving down, and our five minute walk turned out to be twenty, resulting in us been completely drowned looking rats. It was quite hilarious really, especially when we squelched our way through the expensive antique shops. It was all over priced and out of our range so we left, in a taxi this time to avoid drowning, and headed back to the Plaza to buy a lush new camera. We got the best deal in town (we should know, we really did check!) and left hap[py bunnies eager to shoot some pics. This has been one capital we'd love to stay in longer and explore but tomorrow we have to be up at 3am for our taxi to the airport where we're getting a flight to Indonesia's Jogjakarta!
2 comments:
Something in the air...?
And did I suggest McDonalds? That's what I did on my first deployment- not such a great plan though. You're missing England! How amusing. I miss fresh pasteurised milk I have to say...
Milk is absolutely what I miss! I keep buying cartoons but it's all UHT and too creamy. You didn't suggest McDonalds, it was Blake's friends Caroline and Steve, but pretty interesting that it is a more wide spread idea than I realised. I have been eating Greek Salad in almost every country- it's always great to get olives in!
Post a Comment