Wednesday - It begins in KL

Wednesday – It begins

So our adventure began the way all good adventures begin – with trouble.  We arrived in KL at 3am exhausted and desperate to crawl our way into bed at the transit hotel (where we had been allotted two lots of six hours, one in the morning and one in the evening).  While I paid attention to the airhostess’s instructions on how to navigate our way through the airport renovations I failed to look at the instructions on our hotel reservation confirmation page.

Only after clearing immigration, baggage claim and customs did we realise that the transit hotel was INSIDE the terminal and to get there we would need to check in again and go back through immigration again to get to the hotel.  In the exhaustion, with everything being shut and with conflicting information this took us a while to work out it was 6:30am before we were able to check into another hotel and 7am when we got into bed.

I think we only slept for a couple of hours and woke up feeling pretty disgusting, but adventurous.  Our hotel was lumped in the middle of no where and stuck out like a sore thumb in a small settlement about 45 minutes from KL, but we had a view onto an oval where the kids were playing soccer and someone was letting off early Chinese New Year fire crackers (which, with the news about Cairo on BBC all morning definitely made us jump).

View from the hotel

 

We headed out to find some breakfast and bumped into an English couple on the internet in the lobby.  They wanted to do some of the same things we wanted to  do in KL so we arranged to meet them in half an hour and share a taxi to the city.

Breakfast turned out to be crackers and vegemite, courtesy of Francesca.  This has remained a staple snack all the way along the Shosholoza Meyl route and we’re putting an alert out that more vegemite will be required shortly.

In the taxi we learnt that our fellow travellers were named Ken and Susan, an older than middle aged English couple that had decided to travel instead of have kids.  They’d been everywhere man, and KL was a stop on their way home from three months in Australia.  


We went with them to see the bird park in the Lake Gardens, which was exotic and upsetting all at the same time.  All those birds of prey locked up and bored.  Not even the cassowaries cared!  We sat through a disastrous bird show and then decided the place wasn’t for us.  Jumped in a taxi with a really lovely driver and headed directly for the China Town markets and then when we got there wondered why we hadn’t gone there earlier.  

A more serene bird than the one we saw at Taronga Zoo

Outside the bird show

The towers in the background

Albino crow

One for Amy

It was an intersection of food and genuine fake stores, but it was loads of fun and I think that Chinese New Year had put a shine on things.  We stumbled into this great ‘food court’ brimming with people and smells.   There was a BBQ going, duck and pork hanging in windows, a juice bar and noodles everywhere.  We settled on two plates of noodles and a lychee juice and it was both delicious and cheap but didn't settle our need for a last chance yum cha.


Afterwards I bought an $8 pair of Ray Bans and a $4 Casio and we jumped in a taxi back to the hotel.  Getting out of our car all our yum cha dreams came true when just across the road we found a store selling freshly made steamed buns.  Being an Islamic area they were a bit light on the pork ones, but the chicken curry and the red bean buns were an accepted compromise. 


Back at the hotel and keen for a nap we set our alarms for two hours later and settled in, only to wake five hours later and only an hour before check in time...