First 3 Days in Kuala Lumpur

On Tuesday the 26th, instead of going to Bangkok as I had originally planned I decided to stay in Kuala Lumpur (KL) Malaysia due to flooding in Thailand.  The trip by train took 8 hours, I arrived in KL at 3 pm.  The train ride did allow me to see a little bit of the Malaysian country side.

Most of the country side seemed to be one giant palm tree plantation and it literally stretched all the way from border of Malaysia to Singapore to KL.  Using my superior googling abilities I found that Malaysia is the 2nd largest producer of palm oil which is harvested from the fruit's pulp.  Apparently they have cut down a lot of virgin rain forests and replaced it with palm tree plantations.  The little bit of the rain forest I did see was very dense, you could barely see 3 feet in front of you.

I think they cut down some native forests to plant more palm trees.

Here are the valuable trees.

After 8 hours KL comes into view with the iconic Petronas Towers.

After arriving in KL, the trip to my hotel was very easy and convenient since it was right near an LRT station which is their above ground inner city rail system.

I have been very tired for the last couple of days, I think I was dehydrated and jet lag finally caught up with me so I got a lot of rest and did really explore KL too much yet.  Today I did go out and see Merdeka Square where Malaysia's independence was declared. It was nothing really special.  Also did the China Town walk from Lonely Planet books but it was hard to complete it since lot of the streets don't have signs with their names on it like we do at every corner.  This makes it really frustrating to navigate the city.

My impression of KL so far is that it's a mix between ultra modern buildings with some old neighborhoods that seem a little run down.  The traffic is more congested and less orderly then Singapore and the general street cleanliness also not as good.  I still do like this city so far because it does have more character, when you go to Little India, it really does feel like your in India.

Merdeka Square, a former cricket pitch.

LRT tracks, there are only 4 underground stations in KL, most are above ground.

I know where I am having dinner.

Buildings with Islamic Architecture.

Temple in China Town.

Street shops in China Town.

I plan on visiting the Petronas Towers and Lake Gardens area in the next couple of days. I will update then.

It's hot and muggy

It's really hot (at least 80 F) and muggy with cloud overcast all day.  Since I did a lot of walking today I am really tired.

Day 2 of my trip started at 9 am with me going to a hawkers stalls for breakfast.  Hawkers stalls are basically a food court but they tend of have plastic furniture and look cheap.  But they serve really good food at a very reasonable price and this is where most of the locals eat.  For 3 to 5 dollars you get a lot of delicious food and they are very ubiquitous all over Singapore.  For those of you that know PHO 501 or Carl's Jerk in East Hartford, hawkers stalls are like that if you combined those two restaurants with 3 others and they had a common eating area.

I think what makes Hawkers stalls so good is that they reflect Singapore's ethnic diversity of Chines, Tamil Indians, and Malays.  So for example I had some Indian paratas with some chicken curry for breakfast,  for coffee I had to go the the next stall and in the same complex there were two other Chines stalls all for price of Singapore dollar 5.50.  Also since it's Singapore the food won't make you sick.

On the way to breakfast and on the way out I got solicited by prostitutes, I replied "not now maybe latter." I wonder what kind of a person wants gets with prostitutes at 9 in the morning? For heavens sake it's 9 am!  Don't they have a job, obviously they must otherwise they wouldn't be able to pay for prostitutes.... oh wait they could work the night shift so 9 am to us is like 9 pm to them...that works.

After breakfast I took a taxi to Singapore Railway Station, which is actually owned by Malaysia, to buy a ticket to Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia.  I have been worried about buying the train tickets to Bangkok since the website form where you can purchase it was down so I couldn't buy it while I was still in the US and I though the train might fill up.  So I bought a ticket for 8 am on Tuesday, the trip to Kuala Lumpur should take 7 hours and then I will have to buy tickets in Malaysia to Bangkok.  Total ride time for this trip is 2 days and 1200 miles.  I will have to purchase 2nd class sleeping carriages on the way there so I can sleep at night.

Interesting fact about this part of the world, some stalls don't have toilet paper they just have a water hose.  I think bulk of the bathrooms in Malaysia will be this way. For those of you curious about what to do search Youtube, I am sure someone has put together an instructional video.

For the next three hours I wondered around China Town, which is kind of funny name if you think about it since 80% of Singapore's population is Chinese.  Does Beijing have a China Town?  I had done the lonely planet walking tour when I was here in 2006 so this time around I just started walking arbitrarily.  Here are some pictures. I should have taken some pictures of the streets that are blocked off to traffic and just sell trinkets because there are a few streets like that and are filled with tourists.

Hindu temple in middle of  China Town.

Buddhist Temple.

Trendy part of China Town with pricey looking boutiques.

After this I caught a taxi to Asia Civilization Museum which was housed in an old colonial building that has been extensively renovated.  They had a lot of religious artifacts like few 12th century Buddhas, Hindu goddesses, Korans,  and much more.  All in all it was pretty interesting but short and I wished they had a bigger collection.  It was definitely nice to get away form the heat though.  My pictures of the artifacts aren't that great since I couldn't use the flash and frankly I don't know exactly the corrects settings to use to get good quality pictures.

After the museum I walked across the Singapore river and walked around the Central Business Districts (CBD), this place is one of the reasons Singapore became rich.  There are lot of sky scrapers, very expensive hotels, bars and restaurants with a British theme to them, and a lot of business people.  A lot of westerners live and work here.  By this time I was pretty hungry so I had some food here...big mistake...food was ordinary and really expensive.  I should have gone to a hawkers stalls, I paid 6 times what I would have...lesson learned.

 
On thing I wanted to point out was how green Singapore is, you can see it in their streets which have manicured medians with lots of tall trees.  All open spaces seem to be like botanical garden, you can always spot workers cutting grass, planting flower beds, or pruning trees. It really is a garden city.

Finally arrived in Singapore after a 20 hour flight time. It really was a very long flight but Emirates as a carrier was excellent. The  in flight individual entertainment station were awesome, they had a ton of movies and TV shows you could watch and it made the flight more bearable. The food was really good too.   I would definitely recommend traveling on Emirates.

After a 13.5 hour direct flight to Singapore from JFK we landed in Dubai.  The Dubai airport is massive, it literally goes on for miles and really modern. There are a ton of shops,restaurants, little gardens and even a PinkBerry.  It was pretty cool to see an A380, the double decker airplane.

  
I arrived at Singapore at 9:30 pm and got to the hotel at 10.45.  I booked a cheap hotel, more like a motel for two nights but it's in Singapore's red light district.  Interesting fact, prostitution is legal in Singapore.  You can rent the room by the hour but all in all it's not bad for the price.  A lot of young couples and old men with hookers frequent this place and apparently so do I.

I got some much needed sleep last night so today the first thing I have to do is book a train ticket to Bangkok and then I have some time to explore Singapore but first I need to get some breakfast.

Day -1

 Flight is tomorrow at 11 A.M. from JFK and its going to be a 24 hour flight to Singapore with a stop over in Dubai. Classiest/Cheapest Hotel I could find is the Fragrance Hotel in Singapore. Much to my surprise it is the scenic Red Light District. Trying to get VD.