Kuala Lampur, Malaysia

A bunch of system design eng students from NTU and I left for a 4 day weekend trip to Malaysia last Thursday and just got back Monday morning. It was my first trip in Asia, and it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun meaning that I got to see a lot of places, and try a lot of yummy food. I think that food is one of the defining parts of a culture, and a good trip just isn’t the same without it. But then, I just like food.

Thursday 19 Jan 2007:

Me and the NTU gang meet at Woodlands MRT station to take the local bus to get into Malaysia. I think a lot of people must live in Malaysia and just cross the border every morning to go to work. We take the bus (rt 950) to Juror Bahru, and then find another bus which will take us to Lakan bus terminal, which has a bus to take us into the city of Malacca.

Turns out we could’ve taken the 170 bus, which would’ve taken us directly into the Lakan bus terminal. The bus ride into Malacca was about 3 – 4 hours (I forget) and the bus was pretty comfy, although a bit cold!

When we get into Malaysia, we must have “tourist” tattooed to our foreheads, cause everywhere you turn, there is someone offering to take you in a taxi somewhere.

We had some trouble finding a place to stay, be eventually found one, the Gold Leaf Hotel. The ride there was a bit sketchy at one point, the cab driver took this side road, which just looked like a deserted alleyway at 11:30PM, and our first thought was, “Oh, great, he’s meeting up with some people and going to rob us.” I was really scared! In the morning when we walked by it, it just turned out to be a construction site.

We paid RM20 per person, for 2 rooms, which worked out to be about $6 per person CND. ($1 sing = RM 2.26, and $1cnd = $1.3 sing).

Friday 20 Jan 2007:

After an unrestful night of sleep, we’re up and embarking on our Malaysian journey at about 9 30AM.

We head for coffee at the Discovery Cafe, which didn’t have too much to see / experience, but coffee is always good. The Discovery Café was mentioned in the our guidebooks, so I think that’s where some of its tourism comes in.

The server was quite intrigued when we said we were from Canada. He even brought over a guide book, pointed out some pictures of the Toronto skyline, and asked if this was where we were from. It almost seemed like a story book to me. I mean, Toronto looked really nice J, perhaps that is how the outside world views us.

We head to Chinatown, and settle for some dim sum. These dim sum dishes were much smaller than what I was used to in Canada, but the food was great. My mandarin was also useful in this situation as well.

We took a walk around china town, there were many old temples there. Almost all the stores we passed by had people burning the gold and silver paper, or hell’s money for their ancestors. The temples were quite busy, and the smell of incenses was everywhere. There were even some incenses that were taller than me! They sure let out a lot of heat!

We got a little tired of Malacca, a lot of things were not open until later in the afternoon due to a Muslim religious event. We also wanted some beach experience, and it was a perfect day for the beach.

Asking around, we get directions and suggestions to head to Tan Juan Kling, which wasn’t in any of our guidebooks. Taking a cab there, we check into the “motel.” A double bunk bed room, for the five of us. Poor Steve sacrificed and took the floor.

We drop off our stuff, change into swimsuits, and head out to the beach. The water was perfect, and the sand was hot. There were a lot of people fishing around the area. We later find out, from walking along the road that fishing is a way of life for a lot of the people in this village.

This is a picture of Drew and some of the local kids. They had a jolly good time playing with a piece of plastic while Bernice and I were in the internet cafe their parent's owned sorting out some stuff.
We didn’t really have any meals during the day, just a series of snacks along the way. Committing to a meal would have meant missing out on all the other good food. People were just selling things along the street, such as fried bananas and various other little bites. We stayed on the beach and watched the sunset and it was beautiful. A perfect ending to a perfect day on the beach.

Saturday 21 Jan 2007:

Another night of bad sleep, but we were up to hear the roosters crowing, and it was a beautiful morning at the beach. After a breakfast of roti, we head to Kuala Lampur.

This is a picture of me and a local mosque.

KL was quite the experience. First stop was Chinatown for our hostel. LOL… its funny how Americans seem to have a bad reputation there, well at least for the people whom we bumped into, anyway. When people asked where we were from, and we replied Canada, they seemed pretty happy, and welcoming.

This is a shot of the marketplace in Chinatown. Crazy, I tell you. But I loved it.

Chinatown was pretty crazy and crowded. It was pouring really hard, but I guess they are used to it, since there is a big huge overhead cover. Got some pretty good bargains, but I think that may be one of the last times I shop there. The quality isn’t too good. I would be referring to my pair of shoes. It was cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for.

I did score a pretty good deal on a purse with Bernice :). Spent pretty much the entire day there, and it didn’t really stop raining.

Sunday 22 Jan 2007:

Petronas Tower!!! Yea, all day. Well, not really all day. We took a tonne of pics, we couldn’t get up to the skywalk, tickets sold out. So we just walked around the bottom and took a million pictures.

There was a mall KLCC right next to it, and it was so ritzy. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between that and the Eaton Centre really. Or any other Canadian or American mall for that matter.

We also went to the KL aquarium, which was pretty neat. Nothing amazing, but it was nice. We decided to stay later, and have a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, you know, without people screaming at you for what to order and stuff.

We had really good service at this place called the Royal China Restaurant or something like that. And then we went to see the Petronas Towers at night. It was so pretty.

We leave on the last bus, a sketchy, but cheap, to get to Singapore at 11PM. It was alright, until we get to the first part of the border crossing at 4:30AM on Monday morning. We had to go through customs, and the driver said it was alright to leave our stuff and just take our passports.

Lucky for us we took everything! Cuz when we got out of customs the other side, the bus was gone! There was about 20 other buses waiting, but none of them was ours…

So we hitch a ride off another bus passing by so we can get to the other side of customs, and then we wait for about an hour for the transit buses to start running, and then take that home. HOME, finally. And I was able to shower, and make it for my 9AM class.

So this concludes my little adventure!