Kickin' Back In KL

What an interesting (and long) day it's been today. I arrived this morning in Kuala Lumpur at 610am after very little sleep, extremely tired and to be honest, pretty reluctant to do anything. In fact, I was seriously tempted to check in to the transit hotel and spend the 8 or so hours I had in transit there instead. I think I would've quite enjoyed it - until I got the bill! Anyway, as I got off the plane I decided that, as nothing would be open in the city for a while (I knew the hop-on, hop-off bus I was intending to take didn't even start til 830am), I would have a coffee at Starbucks and just sort myself out for a bit. I was glad I did. Feeling much more refreshed after a coffee, I then made my way through the terminal (this year they are working on the train so you had to get a bus), through immigration and onto the KLIA Ekspres train. From there it was a 28 minute journey to KL Sentral. Surprisingly, there was free wifi on the train, so I did a bit of browsing to try and figure out where to get the tour bus from. That was when I happened to discover that upon my return to KL, I will be leaving from a different airport. This started to put paid to my plans to pick up a couple of Barbie Christmas presents for my neices on the way home. Hm. Will have to rethink that one. Anyway after a bit of wandering around the station I finally found the bus stop for the tour bus, and managed to be on it by around 845, which I thought was pretty good. The tour wasn't so cheap, it was 38ringgits, but hey, I had nothing to do - and trying to negotiate the randomness that is the KL public transport system would have resulted, no doubt, in tears - so I was happy enough to go with it. Especially when we pulled into the national museum and had to wait 10 minutes so the other bus could be 30 minutes behind us - and I discovered free wifi on the tour bus! It was fast wifi, too, and enabled me to keep posting Facebook updates throughout the day! Photos, too! I had thought just to stay on the bus until Petronas Towers, but Independence Square (Dataran Merdeka) looked really interesting, so that was my first "hop off". Just near there also is St Marys "Cathedral" which is the oldest church in KL - and just near that was a strange old man waving his dingaling around... hm. I didn't stay there too long! Hopped back on the next bus, which was at least 30 minutes wait - worked out pretty quickly that with the limited time I have it's not possible to hop off at every stop, given that the next bus is 30 minutes away - and given that the bloke reckons a full loop takes 3 hours. I didn't believe that until we hit terrible traffic in Chinatown - in fact the traffic, and the roads, in KL is just ridiculous. The roads remind me a lot of Singapore (the main ones in the more commercial area) as they are quite big and wide - but there's an awful lot of people on them, and their driving skill is not really all that - I doubt they'd get a license anywhere else but perhaps the Middle East, or Italy...! Then in the more dirty, squalid parts of town, the roads are exceptionally narrow - quite difficult in spots for our tour bus to negotiate - and that's more likely where you'll see the shanty towns I spotted (particularly round the back of China town). The Indian district was quite interesting also, very colorful - but I was in heaven when we arrived at Petronas - literally. Because although you couldn't go up to the sky deck (it's closed on a Monday - and they only give out a limited number of tickets each day anyway) - I discovered the most wonderful thing - Suria KLCC mall. Oh my goodness, I was in heaven - all the big names were there, Bally, Armani, Ralph Lauren - plus a few old favourites - Zara, Top Shop and Gap - and that's when I worked out the rest of my Christmas shopping. I'll need to buy a new bag though, and I'll also need to double check AirAsia's luggage policy - but I think I can do it. So I spent quite a time there doing "research" before making my way back to the tour bus. By this stage it was getting late and I was getting anxious to get back to the airport, especially as the traffic was picking up and our pace, most definitely wasn't. Fortunately all was good, I got back in time and had no hassles getting to the airport. Next stop Saigon...