Activity Summary
Monday 17th October - Day 46
Travel from Taman Negara (Kuala Tahan) to Kuala Lumpur
Lot 10 food court
Tuesday 18th October - Day 47
Chinatown / Petaling Street
Sri Maha Mariamman Temple
River of life walk
Sultan Abdul Samad building
Merdeka square
Perdana botanical gardens
National museum
Dinner with Nasa, Nadia & Faris
Wednesday 19th October - Day 48
Petronas towers
KLCC park
Batu caves
Thursday 20th October - Day 49
Luke trip to hospital and travel
Summary
KL has a crazy skyline with all the tall towers and skyscrapers that dwarf the city during the day and light up at night. They are all so concentrated but also makes everything in KL so easy to get to. Grab taxis are cheap and so is the metro. The city does not have the feeling of absolute chaos so it is very pleasant to walk around and explore.
Having the more spacious accommodation with gym and pool however really did help us relax here which was very much needed.
Accommodation
Grand service apartments - 3 nights - £17/n/p
There is an abundance of accommodation in KL and being one of the last big affordable cities for a while we decided we wanted a bit more luxury. This place seemed almost too good to be true, being a whole apartment with a living room and situated very centrally in Times Square.
The place was pretty run down and if we were paying more money for this place than we were we would have felt hard done by. Just wasn’t clean and needed a proper face lift; broken panels, bath, mould in the vents and bed linen needed replacing. Benefits however were great views, a pool (albeit cold), gym and space to actually relax.
Wouldn’t recommend going on holiday. If having just travelled in hostels/cheap hotels for 6 weeks? Seemed luxury.
Luke did get incredibly pissed off when they charged MYR30 more for tax that wasn’t on the booking.com details.
Travel
TO
Kuala Tahan hostel -> [walk] -> bus station -> [minivan] -> Jerantut (tour office) -> [minivan] -> Kuala Lumpur -> [grab] -> hotel
Diary
Having had a ropey experience with our trusted Taman Negara tour operator we had little faith she had sent us right when we had to catch a minivan to Kuala Lumpur (usually referred to as KL) so set off a bit early and took comfort in there being some other tourists already there. Nicola wasn’t feeling very well this morning as a migraine started to take hold so spent the morning trying to stave that off and walking around the car park. Two of the German girls from the tour the previous day were also travelling back to KL so our day was somewhat entwined with theirs.
Two minivans rocked up, one driving like a reckless maniac and the other not so much. Luke, tasked with trying to sort out where we were going, failed dramatically in his task and the ticket lady had to come looking for us. We set off far later than planned and a lot more crowded than expected as one of the other travel vans failed to make it. But not a problem, these vans just stuffed as many people in as possible and away we go.
Once at the exchange point in Jerantut we milled around a while waiting for two passengers to turn up. When they failed to do so our minivan went looking for them and it turned out to be our tour buddies. Once reunited we ploughed on down to KL.
Once off the minivan we secured a grab and began the complicated task of finding our apartment room. The apartment is located above the Times Square shopping mall, which has two towers dedicated to the Berjaya hotel so we were utterly perplexed when told to go there. The security guard told us to call the number and then were fetched by the guy who sadly took us back to the other end of the mall as we had the wrong tower.
We arrived at the room on the 34th floor, informed there was a pool and gym (win) and then a painful discussion over payment ensued. Booking.com theoretically lays out all the costs that we are supposed to make (we are wary of taxes and other charges that are added as an afterthought - makes the rooms a lot more expensive) but this guy was adding random figures on. The costs in the grand scheme of things are minimal so hungry and tired Luke gives up, pays and we trot downstairs for a quick and easy KFC. It was the worst KFC we have ever eaten. Replenished Luke challenges the lessors and works out that they charged MYR10 per night tax. Luke is happy to pay for things when it’s all upfront but he cannot stand hidden costs (America you will be a problem for him). Basically Malaysia has been a pain in the ass because each place implements its own weird and wonderful system for these ‘taxes’ and the lack of consistency is frikin irritating. Rant over.
Now fully settled in our spacious apartment (having a sofa was wonderful), Luke spent the afternoon in the gym and Nicola in the pool. First time for Luke in a very long time and his aim of getting his pre-career fitness levels back is still a big ol work in progress but he is trying hard.
Our evening consisted of drinking lemon tea (Happy Lemon - great shop), washing and visiting a food court called Lot 10. This food court is predominantly Chinese food (as with much of Malaysian cuisine it seems) and there were some ropey things on offer. Luke eagerly settled on a giant dumpling which was incredibly filling and also came with a general concern of what was actually in the thing. We both weren’t overly enthused and left feeling a little ropey.
Nicola is usually the first out of the two of us when we stay in less comfortable accommodation so when she got up at 10am it was a bit of a surprise and meant Luke could dawdle to his heart's content getting ready. Our plan was to simply walk around various parts of KL.
Our first stop was a shopping mall quite a way from our apartment but Nicola had been searching high and low for a water flosser and had managed to find one apparently in stock. Finally we were actually successful and the sheer anticipated pleasure of Nicola purging her tough to get teeth demons (these things are great by the way) put her in an ecstatic mood. Luke has never seen anyone get so happy about oral hygiene before.
After an initial woopsy in accidentally choosing a temple 50 minutes out of the city (fortunately Luke realised what had been done when the cost and time were oddly high) we had a general gander round Chinatown / Petaling Street, Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, River of life walk, Sultan Abdul Samad building and Merdeka square. We were going to go into the mosque but they don’t approve of Luke’s knees nor Nicola having skin.
We had a longer walk over to and around the Perdana botanical gardens which wasn’t anything particularly special but it was nice to just bumble around. Debated going into the bird park but decided it was a little too dear for us and settled on the much cheaper National museum which had an extensive timeline of the history of Malaysia and colonialist rule which was very interesting. We ended up getting the metro back as we couldn’t get a taxi (at rush hour traffic is basically at a standstill in KL) but it was easy enough and very cheap.
Our evening was spent with Nasa, Nadia & Faris, a local family that are friends of Nicola’s dad who very kindly took us out to the best dinner of our trip so far (and will take a lot to beat). It was a Chinese seafood restaurant that had a massive collection of live seafood in tanks at the back. We sat there demolishing incredible seafood that just kept appearing in front of us, although it was incredibly hard to get into various crabs and lobster being the novices we are. After a wonderful dinner we quickly visited their home and Nassar and Nadia were kind enough to give us a quick driving KL tour by night and drop us at our hotel. It was a lovely evening and many thanks to them for hosting us!
The first stop in our day was the Petronas Towers and sky bridge. Our tickets were for 10am and with all the attractions it seems, they are built on top of shopping malls so we wandered around there for some food first. The first stop on the tour is the sky bridge between the two towers so we had a wander around and took some photos before moving up to the 84th floor (370m high) to do much of the same. As far as tower viewpoints go, we much preferred the shard (in London), probably a little biassed, but it was enjoyable. Luke’s knees do get a bit wobbly looking over the edge of really tall drops.
The towers are situated next to the KLCC park so we had a quick wander around here before catching a grab to the Batu caves.
The caves have a fairly steep coloured step walkway up into a giant cavern with a couple of small temples inside. A monster flock of pigeons greeted us at the base of the steps so naturally Luke ran through them, and monkeys lined the handrails up the steps. They are vicious little critters and always looking for something to steal so we avoided and hid our sunglasses (Nasa had to barter with one previously - we didn’t have any chocolate to offer as a swap so went full prevention mode). The cave was pretty impressive but my lord did it smell like monkey piss and pigeon shit. Bearing this in mind we had a short walk through and around before bailing and heading back to our hotel in the early afternoon.
Making full use of our accommodation, we had a couples gym session (cute) and chill in the pool for the afternoon. Food wise we initially settled on Jln Alor, a street known for its food but the mass Chinese influenced food put us off to no end (we really aren’t a fan). Bailing on this we found a Japanese restaurant in the Pavillion shopping mall which turned out to be a mass of Japanese restaurants on the top floor of this mall. Absolutely banging.
Normally for our travel days we have been writing these as ‘first day’ of the next location. For KL however there was a bit of drama before we took off so I will write this from Luke’s opinion and also split the day.
A few days ago in Taman Negara I had a slight issue with my eye the day we went hiking in the jungle. Those who are glasses wearers will have sympathy with me that when exercising, sweating and it being incredibly hot and humid they are so annoying to wear, clean and regularly fog up when no longer moving. Contact lenses however are a perfect solution. My eye felt like it had something in it (which it didn’t) so I had to forgo my lenses that day. It cleared up after a day however and thought nothing of it.
The last two days I had however been wearing contact lenses and on the day we were leaving woke up at 2.30am with a more severe itching and inability to open my eye properly. Hoping it would go away by morning I managed to get back to sleep, but it sadly was still there in the morning. Frantic googling of ‘eye doctors’ ensued and fortunately found one that was a 15 minute walk away with a same day appointment (Tung Shin Hospital). Got to give credit to the hospital, it was well organised with a ticket system and only had to wait for an hour and a half (first come first served basis and there were many before me) before being seen by a stern doctor. Likely culprit was infected lenses from a whole manner of different possibilities so were prescribed drops and meds for an infection with the worry it would abscess out and my eye will fall out then sent on my merry way. Total cost, £30. Pretty good in my opinion.
I had managed to get back to the hotel just after 12pm which worked pretty well for our 1pm bus that we were consigned to missing if all went tits up. Only problem being that I had to wear sunglasses at all times due to light sensitivity and could barely see out of my left eye. So bareing the apparent hungover tourist being shapparoned by his other half; all was well. Nicola managed to find somewhere to get our online tickets printed [THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST IN ANY MALAYSIAN BUS STATION - we did see some people turned away from the gates as the bus arrived in Melaka which is both stupid and harsh] and board the coach to Melaka.
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