Kuala Lumpar & Singapore

In the lobby of our sweet hotel

Our flight arrived in Malaysia around 11:40pm and caught the airport bus to KL Sentral station. For some reason we were surprised to find the subway closed since it was past 1:00am by that time, but we caught a taxi to the Grocer's Inn where we had made a reservation. We had read in our Lonley Planet that Malaysia has a bed bug problem, so luckily we were on our guard because a couple of minutes after we checked in, we noticed some bugs crawling on the wall. After a quick google search, we identified them as bed bugs and immediately checked out. This made us pretty nervous to go into any of the sketchier hotels, so we checked in for the night at one of the fanciest hotels on the street called the 5 Elements. Our room rate at Grocer's was about $15 and 5 Elements was $60 so it was a large upgrade. We didn't want to take any chances as we've come this far without any bed bugs! :)

The room was beautiful, ac, flat screen tv, wifi, super comfy bed, bay window and hot shower and included a breakfast buffet.:) Unfortunately, it was almost 3:00am by that time, so we caught a couple of hours sleep, had breakfast and then decided to try to shop around for a cheaper hotel. We opted for a mid-range hotel at about $30 but when we moved our things to the room, right away I saw a few bugs (of a different variety) but googled those and found out they were a different species of bed bug! The book was right! So we checked out immediately again and re-checked into our nice hotel. It's our last chance to have our own room before we're back to the dorms, so it was nice to live it up for a few nights anyways! :) During all this, there was a crazy monsoon like rainfall, I can't remember the last time I was that soaked from head to toe! :) The streets were flooded!



Petaling Street - covered market area

So after drying off and waiting out the rain, we decided to check out Chinatown, which is where our hotel was located. Petaling Street was one street over and is the main commercial area. It's covered (because of all the rainfall they get) and stocked full of stalls selling clothes, souveniers and food. We wandered around and then I dragged Dev around on a little walking tour of some of the main sights in the area. The city is largely inhabited by Chinese and Indian people and was colonized by the British and the population is largely Muslim, so there is a really interesting mix of Chinese and Indian shops, Islamic as well as colonial style buildings, as well as a bunch of skyscrapers. For lunch, we found this great area that looks like a food court but had loads of food stalls with cheap Indian, Chinese and Thai food. Yummy! We were pretty tired from our long night, so headed back to the room to wait out the rain that was starting again.

Indian Temple near chinatown

Later that night, we checked out a local restaurant across the street from our hotel. The food was delicious but Dev informed me halfway through the meal that he had seen a bunch of rats running across the back of the restaurant. I know they're probably everywhere where we eat here, but I still don't want to think about it while I'm eating! :) As a side note, the people here are really friendly and speak the best English that we've encountered in Asia so far! It was raining when we went to dinner and an older man asked us if we wanted to share his umbrella to cross the street! :)

The next morning, we snoozed the alarm a couple of times (the bed was soooo comfortable!) but took the light rail transit to KLCC or the Petronas Twin Towers and were there by around 9:30am. We had hoped to make it up to the Skybridge (where the final action scene of Entrapment took place :)) but it was closed for maintenance so instead browsed the super fancy shopping mall. We don't really understand who is buying all this designer fashion from these malls, but everywhere in Australia and Asia, the malls are filled with Gucci, Cartier, Tod's, Jimmy Choo, Armani, etc. stores. Window shopping only! :)

Meg standing in front of a place

We then bought a ticket on the Hop-on Hop-off tour bus around the city. It was great because it was air-conditioned which was a great relief after walking around the city, visited all the major sites and had commentary running about each attraction. We stopped to take pictures of the KL Tower (kind of looks like the CN Tower), the National Palace, Merdeka Square, Little India and the Lake Gardens. By around 4:00pm we had seen everything and were pretty exhausted but wanted to wait and see the Petronas tower all lit up at night so we went back to KLCC to check the movie times. :) Movies are about $4 here and cost the same as the smoothie I bought at Boost Juice before the movie! :) There was nothing great playing so we rock paper scissored and Dev picked Summer of the Witch with Nicolas Cage. He'll play in anything. :) The best part of the movie in my opinion was that it was only one and a half hours :) and was perfect timing to come out after and check out the building which looked really cool, almost sci-fi! :)

Standing infront of the Petronas Towers at night

We tried out the clay pot chicken at a streetstall for dinner near our hotel, had a beer, shopped a little in the markets and then headed back to the hotel for an early morning bus to Singapore! :)

Tickets on the ordinary buses to Singapore were sold out so we bought a ticket on the Executive Coach which was still only about $30 for the seven hour trip! It was a super fancy bus with huge reclining seats with footrests, individual televisions sets and food during the trip. I wish the Greyhound was anything like this! :) The trip flew by and we arrived in the Little India of Singapore. We wasted a bunch of time in the sweltering heat trying to find an ATM that would accept our cards so we finally made it to our hostel at around 5:00pm. We took a quick rest and then headed out to wander around the Chinatown near our place and grab some beers and dinner. We had heard that Singapore is known as being really strict and is known as a "fine" city, because it's really nice but also because you can get fined for almost anything including not flushing the toilet in a public washroom! :) Chewing gum is banned as well and beer and alcohol is really expensive because of their "sin" taxes. Probably because of all this, the city was super clean, even Chinatown! :)



Taking in the Singapore's waterfront



Clarke Quay bar district near our hostel

The next morning we went out to the river to check out the Singapore Flyer (huge ferris wheel like the London Eye), the new casino, the Esplanade theatre and the Civic District (the city's colonial core) with loads of old colonial buildings that look brand new, statues and museums. There is also a shopping mall on almost every corner. We also saw the first Raffles hotel and ate lunch at one of the cool food courts, then we headed to Orchard Road, the main shopping district. We wandered around window shopping and then took the long way back to our hostel through the financial core and saw lots of cute little side streets. After dinner, we checked out Clarke Quay which is an awesome bar district along the river. It looks like a cross between the village at Blue Mountain and the Distillery district, with covered pedestrian streets and cute little bars, including a fancy Burger King bar called Whopper Bar. I bought an ice cream sandwhich there that actaully came with a piece of bread! but sugary bread? :)

Meg eating her mint chocolate chip on a piece of bread

By around 8:00pm we had to go get our bags to head to the airport for our red-eye flight to Tokyo. You can take the subway all the way to the airport for about $2. For a city/country of just over 5 million people they have the most amazing subway system with like ten different lines and it's really cheap! We were really impressed until we got to Tokyo and saw their metro system!