DAY 2
KUALA LUMPUR (Malaysia)
Thursday April 7th, 2011
TODAYS MILEAGE – 0 miles or 0 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 4762 miles or 7664 kilometres
Greeting and Salutations Culture Vultures,
As I'm staying with Philthy & Jodes, I'm instructed to to grab a pre–paid Airport Limo Taxi and head over to their place. I thought 74 Ringgit (the Malaysian currency) was reasonable for a cab ride, but then was surprised by what you got for $23.43 Australian. I pay around $20 to go from my place to the Townsville airport, for just a 5.7 kilometre (3.5 mile) journey. Whereas Phil and Jodi's place at the Heritage Residences is 53 kilometres (33 miles) from the airport.
Whilst leaving the airport, my driver had to stop another cab and ask for directions to where I was headed. Not a good start I'm thinking. As I had arrived on the weekend of the Maylasion Formula One Grand Prix, the locals seemed excited about this, including my driver, who I think was also practising for a positon on the starting grid. For the entire journey, he did not exceed his personal 110 kph (70 mph) speed limit, even though the posted limit varied from 50 to 80 kph (30 to 50 mph). No dramas, by 1AM I'm parked up and was so done with jet setting.
After a 4 hour kip, the hickory–dickory read 5AM and I was greeted by a sunrise from the 21st floor of the Heritage Residences. Looking out over the countryside from my vantage point, I noticed that traffic was bumper to bumper, on the 6 lane freeway, that runs past the front door of the accommodations and thought to myself "Damn, this town's busy!!!"
Apparently the locals are a little slow in getting up here in KL. We meandered over to The Mines Shopping Fair for a bit of breakfast. The shopping centre is billed as the only one in the world in which you can cruise into via boats, courtesy of the canal the runs through the re-habilitated former tin mine. As big and as impressive the scale of the place, you could have fired a cannon in the joint at 10AM and not hit a soul.
Now I'm always up for eating like the locals, but we couldn't find a place in the shopping centre that served a "traditional" Malay breakfast. We ended up settling on Délifrance, a French style cafe chain who managed to come up with their own putrid version of Dr Suess' Green Eggs & Ham. Talk about the worst scrambled eggs I've ever had the mispleasure of tasting. Two little bites of green eggs was enough.....Yuk!!!
We spent the next four hours wandering around looking for a new set of Teva's for myself, a travel purse for one of our travelling companions Wendy and a good rate for exchanging some cash for the Vietnam trip. This is when, for the first time in my life, I would become a millionaire. All it took was $45.81 AUD to get one million Vietnamese Dong in my hot little hand.
We parked up a bit for the afternoon and awaited Jodi's return from school, before heading out to dinner with her, Jodi's mum Sharon and Wendy. Dinner for the four of us at the Riverside Cafe which included steaks, salmon and chicken with a dozen or so adult beverages, put us 205.45 Ringgit out of pocket ($64.82 AUD), which I reckon was tremendous value for a good feed.
To top off a great evening, we ended the night by going for a wander around the night markets, that were conveniently located right next door.
Stay Happy 