KL

I left Bangkok on Saturday and flew into Kuala Lumpur. The flight was really nice again, served a full meal and had access to television and movies. There is a express train that runs from the airport into KL Sentral, which is like the main station downtown. It's about half the price of taking a cab so i went that way. It takes 28 minutes and it goes by really fast and the train is very nice. When I landed it was raining REALLY hard... I could actually see the rain as we were on approach. I was hoping we weren't going to skid off the runway like the airline in jamaica... luckily we didn't.

I stayed at the Citrus Hotel which is in a good location in between an MRT station and an LRT station (light rail). it's a boutique hotel which is a cute way of saying small rooms hahah but it had everything i needed and it was a perfect place for the trip. i talked to my brother for a little while on skype and then headed out to the triangle for some dinner/drinks... its saturday night!

well yes, its saturday night, but the city was kind of dead. i don't know, maybe i was in the wrong spot. the travel books said that's the place to go. well i got some dinner and had a drink but i was home by midnight. kind of a bummer. i got up early and headed down to the petronas towers. they give away about 800 tickets per day to go up to the sky bridge. i got there at 9AM, they open at 830AM, and by the time i got there all the tickets for the day were gone! i was REALLY bummed... but i guess the early bird gets the worm and i should have gotten there earlier. i have no one to blame but myself. the weather is very hot today, but clear and sunny. i hung out around the towers, took some photos, and chilled in the little garden/water area at the base of the towers. so far KL is reminding me a lot of singapore.

i went and had a late breakfast/early lunch... brunch i suppose... over at the malay food area of the city...again it was really dead. maybe this weekend a lot of people are out of town? or maybe by comparison to bangkok it's dead? i'm not sure. i had some really good rice with little potatoes and some spicy cucumber/onion dish. there were a lot of emaciated stray cats roaming around the open-air restaurant and one rubbed up against my leg underneath the table and i freaked out for a moment. some others i noticed were feeding the cats, which is probably why they keep roaming around. don't feed the cats!

i went to the malaysian tourist center to figure out what to do next. they were having a little weekend fair right next to the tourist center so i strolled through there. they were having kids karaoke contest. this little girl was singing 'my heart will go on' from titanic and she was KILLING it... not in a good sense but in a bad sense. she was a horrible singer but she was belting it out like she was celine herselft. gotta respect that. also at the fair i found a pair of really cool shoes i fell in love with. they were grecian-style sandles with little snaps all up the leg. and for the first time in my life, the bands were too small for my calves! they were nowhere near being able to snap shut, a good inch apart. i have really skinny legs and usually i have the opposite problem with boots... they are way too big on my legs and they look saggy. i don't know how a human could have possibly worn those shoes unless it was a child or maybe nicole richie.

so although it wasn't in the guidebook (surprisingly), i could see the KL tower from pretty much anywhere in the city, so i decided to check that out. it's built on a top of pineapple hill right next to a nature reserve area. i went up to the observation area and you can see all of KL... i think it turned out to be much better views than the petronas towers anyways so it all worked out!!

next to the towers i went to the KLCC area and poked around. i bought i cute casual dress that will be really versatile and the material is wrinkle resistant so good for packing. i think it was a good find. lots of good after-christmas sales going on. i got some dinner at a food area near my hotel on the way back. it's sunday night so now it's REALLY quiet. KL seems like a really liveable city, very similar to singapore in my opinion, very multicultural. the cab drivers LOVE to talk. talk talk talk for the whole ride about anything and everything. good public transport.. bangkok had good public transport but it didn't reach the downtown area of the city. perhaps they are trying to change that i'm not sure.

at the end of my trip, i was really glad to get back to singapore. the flight from KL to singapore is just less than an hour. i like travelling but i also need a home base. since i have a work permit ID i was able to use the 'singapore passport' line which was NO wait! my passport is filling up... little by little.

i think if i had to do it again i would have spent more time planning my trip, and i also would have just focused on one city and maybe incorporated a nature trip/homestay for a few days outside of the madness. if i end up staying longer in singapore i'm going ot try to do a homestay in malaysia for a few days. go hiking and just get lost in the jungle.