Kuala Lumpur – Old & Lost

30 March 2018 – Travel Day Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Singapore – Day 1

Published on March 30, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

It was yet another travel day for us. We’re excited about seeing Singapore.

For our two flights from KL, Malaysia to Singapore on Air Asia, with luggage paid, the cost was Cdn $144.79 Sounds okay to me. We already know not to expect great things from Air Asia, but they get the job done for us.

I am guessing that these washrooms were not for our use.

We departed at 12:30 from Kuala Lumpur and would arrive in Singapore around 1340 hrs. Nice quick, easy flight. However, we didn’t arrive in Singapore until 1400 hrs, but still a good flight as we did make it.

They have fancy taxis in Singapore.

It was a beautiful drive to the hotel. The foliage around here is out of this world. Just like many of the places we have been so far. We got all checked into our hotel. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express Singapore Clarke Quay, 2 Magazine Road, Clarke Quay. Singapore is NOT CHEAP!! Thankfully we booked a room which includes breakfast.

Paden loves hippos and I love Romero Britto’s work. Great combo of both, were in the lobby of our hotel. #HolidayInnExpressCQ

Turns out for us, we have a great location. Away from the busy center of things, but close enough to walk to many places. Also, the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) is only a couple blocks away. Seems like you can get just about anywhere on their MRT.

We needed to get money. Before we left home, we got approximately Cdn $100 of each currency that we would need. Figured this would get us at least to the hotels and then we could find a bank machine locally. The front desk told us there were bank machines at the Chinese Central Market that was only a few blocks away. Saw some amazing buildings on the way. This is apparently a hotel. The Royal Park Hotel. I am guessing out of our price range, but still gorgeous from the outside.

Once we found the mall, we still had to ask a couple of times where the bank machines were. Nothing is ever easy. I always get nervous when trying new bank machines in new countries. You never know if they will work and actually give you money. Had a big issue with this at times in Vietnam. Money in hand, we were happy again. The money in Singapore is nice and colorful, like Canadian money.

Saw this amazing bakery and couldn’t resist making a purchase. At least, we would have a great dessert, if nothing else. Doug had the Crispy Chocolate cake and I had the White Zebra. There were so MANY layers to that cake.

Eggs anyone? They don’t keep their eggs refrigerated over here. Seems to be a Western thing to refrigerator the eggs.

On way back to hotel we stopped at the 7 Eleven and picked up some water, Cheetos and Shiraz for Doug. It was almost next door to this cafe, Central Perk, which reminded me of the show Friends.

When we were in Los Angeles a few years back, well many years back, we actually visited the set from the show Friends. That was pretty cool. Here are a few of the 2009 photos from the actual set.

We headed back to the hotel, as we would eat at the little cafe, baker & cook, they had. Doug had a meat pie with pasta salad and I had quiche with pasta salad. It was delicious. Dessert later in our room. Those cakes were also delicious!

1700 hours and we were both ready to crash back in our room.

29 March 2018 – Kuala Lumpur – Day 5 – Batu Caves

Published on March 29, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

I was up early and out on our balcony, looking around. Thought I would take some pictures that shows what I saw, the not so nice/clean areas. Our hotel, the Ramada Suites by Wyndham, was amazing and two streets over was Changkat Butik Bintang, the street with all the bars, clubs and restaurants.

Garbage collection at it’s finest. Didn’t empty the green bin and left piles of garbage on the ground

Since our Hop On/Hop Off bus tickets were good for 24 hours we were able to utilize it again this morning to get to the KL Sentral Bus Terminal. Yes, we did get the Hop On/Hop Off bus from the stop that was much closer to our hotel. In fact, it was right by the McDonalds that we ate at last night. From the KL Sentral Bus terminal, they bussed us to Sentul to catch the KTM line which took us to the Batu Caves in the mountains. Took us a while to figure out how to get there and where to go. Have to say, that we kind of surprised ourselves that we made it, with no issues or without getting lost.

A very short walk from the station and we were there. Quite a spectacular sight to see, I might say, even with all the maintenance scaffolding around. The staircase up to the entrance of the largest cave, Cathedral Cave aka Temple Cave and a 140 foot tall gold painted statue of Lord Murugan.

At the bottom of the stairs, there is a sign asking visitors to help out by carrying a brick or pail of sand to the top. I don’t think they were talking about me. We were still trying to figure out whether or not we, or I, would even make it up the 272 steps to the Hindu Shrine inside the huge cave in the mountain. We had to do the stairs in segments and take a rest in between. I have no idea how some of these people managed to get up here.

There were so many monkeys, actually, they are macaques, but none of them entered any of the caves. It was surprising, so we wondered if they had some kind of electronic device set up to keep the monkeys out.

One of the monkey’s tried to grab our Gatorade out of Doug’s hand. But Doug held on tight and won. We had been warned about the monkeys from Paden. You had to keep everything put away or it was fair game to the monkeys.

Once inside the cave it was so cool…..but so HOT & HUMID. The sweat was just dripping off me.

But the scenery was great. Too bad there were so much refurbishment going on though. It was huge inside!

Never fear, there were more stairs!

Time to head back down now.

Dark Cave. Ah shucks! Advance booking required. We did NOT do this cave and tour. After reading the sign, there was NO WAY in hell I would do that tour!!!!. “The highlight of the trip will be our infamous Crawl Passage and viewing the trapdoor spider in their natural habitats. There will be elements of climbing, sliding and of course, the epic crawl! Expect to get wet and dirty.” DEFINITELY NO WAY!!!!

I did take a few pictures in the entrance way, as the rock colours were amazing.

It was apparently cruise ship day today and we saw lots of people from the cruise ships. Chatted with one guy as he was asking if we thought they had time to go to the top and back. They had something like 30 minutes there. Crazy short amount of time to see such an amazing place. Really happy we weren’t doing this on a cruise ship excursion.

We wanted to see the Ramayana Cave also, but had to wait a bit for the ticket sales office to open.

While we were waiting we got to watch this guy for a bit. He was pretty big!

Once inside the cave, it was so different from the Cathedral Cave. It was so vibrant and all but filled with fluorescent lighting, Almost freakish. But never fear, this cave also came with more steps inside. Yes, we did go up them. There weren’t too many people inside here. I guess they just didn’t want to pay to go in.

I feel like these are an optical illusion. Are they going up or are they going down? I know the answer!

Getting the subway back was easy peasy now. We were subway pros and managed to get back to The Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur.
We decided to eat at Quivo, a restaurant in the Pavilion Mall, that I had seen people eating scrumptious looking onion rings at. We ordered a couple pints of draft and onion rings, to be followed by fajitas, that we shared. Onions rings looked a lot better than they tasted, but were still good. Fajitas were average, but what did I really expect?

For dessert we headed to Cold Stone Creamery and Doug got ice cream. Yum Yum Yum For some odd reason I decided to get a pretzel and took no pictures of my pretzel.

We headed back to hotel to pack for our flights to Singapore tomorrow. But, for one last time we just had to pass through rat alley where there about 5 rats scurrying around. GOODBYE RATS!!!

P.S. Saw this guy on the way to the bus this morning!

28 March 2018 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Day 4 – Petronas Twin Towers & KL Bird Park

Published on March 28, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

Originally we had only booked for 3 nights here. Lucky for us, we hadn’t planned out or booked anything past these 3 days. Since there was so much to do here, and we hadn’t yet seen the Petronas Twin Towers, we booked another 2 nights stay. We still had to check out and then back in for the other 2 nights.

We walked to Petronas Twin Towers and purchased our tickets, one Senior Citizen and one Adult. Senior Citizen was almost half the price of an Adult ticket! Our tour time was 11:30 am and it was 10:45 am now. So, not a bad wait at all, but gave us some time to browse around the lobby area. As I mentioned the other day, these are the world’s tallest twin towers at 88 stories each, with 5 underground levels.

We use to collect these Press A Coins from every where we went. We have so many now, especially from the Disney Parks, but did not get these ones. Have to stop sometime.

The elevators were super fast and super smooth. Sure is a good thing, since I am not fond of small spaces or heights. The first stop was the Skybridge at level 41/42. Apparently the bridge is not fully attached to the towers, to allow for movement due to winds and other unpleasant weather.

I certainly wouldn’t want this guys job! Scary just watching him.

From the Skybridge level we caught another elevator up to the Observation Deck – LEVEL 86! Spent quite a while taking lots of pictures up here. Didn’t want to mess up, as I doubt we will ever be back here again. The views were spectacular and the skies were quite clear, which was great for viewing. Great birds eye view of the cemetery.

The above photo is where we took pictures the first day. You know, where I succumbed to the sales pitch of the iPhone lens guy. It was a great purchase though IMHO.

Thought it was really cool how they made amazing designs out of all the solar panels.

We came back later tonight to see the fountains all lit up.

It was now 12:30 and we caught the Hop on/Hop off city tour bus just outside the towers (Stop 23) as we were heading for the KL Bird Park (world’s largest free-flight walk-in Avery) at Stop 15. We knew this tour bus went there and we had no idea how else to get there. Of course, we never even looked into other ways. We did, however, see so much of the city. If we ever come back, we would need to do this Hop on/Hop off tour again, but actually get off at the different stops. But, today was all about getting to the KL Bird Park.
It was a double-decker bus with half of the top open air. We sat at the very front of the open-air section. Thought we would like to get a little sun. Boy were we fools! The sun was a killer!

It took us approximately 1 1/2 hours to get there. This park has so many natural surroundings for the birds and is just great. I don’t think I have ever seen such an amazing variety of birds. It was like paradise.

Guess we were there at feeding time, but then again, feeding time is probably all day with so many birds around.

Of course we had to have some birds who were strutting their stuff to show off.

Our favorites were all of these guys. We could have chatted with them and watched them for hours. So comical.

We had one last area in the bird park to see, the Waterfall Aviary. It was quite the hike though, as we were getting tired.

They don’t kid about smoking. Too bad they didn’t actually enforce it, as we did see a smoker not too far from this sign.

We had been touring the bird park for at least 2 1/2 hours, but could have easily spent longer there. However we were tired and knew it would take a while to get back. We must have waited a good 30 minutes before the Hop on/Hop off bus showed up. This one was completely enclosed up top. Again sat in the front seats and had the sun still glaring on us, but through the glass this time! Still HOT!

We again got a great tour of the city. This time, totally different areas than the route to the KL Bird Park. The architecture here is amazing, both old and new.

We disembarked at the Towers to walk back to our hotel. I have no idea why we didn’t just stay on the bus and get off at a stop closer to our hotel. Yes, there was one closer.
Since we had to go through the mall, we decided to get some Gatorade, as we really needed some electrolytes. It had been so hot today, especially up on those bus tops. Will we ever learn that it is hot over here, in the sun? It doesn’t seem like it. We headed back to hotel to change, and just as we reached hotel, the sky opened up to a big thunder and lightening rainstorm. We sure timed that right for once. We were really hoping that the rain would stop as I really, really wanted to go back to the towers to get some night photos. It was torrential downpours for an hour or so, but did finally clear up, so we were off again. Back to the Petronas Towers.

The KLCC Lake Gardens at night. They put on a beautiful light and fountain show.

The Golden Arches are everywhere. MacDonald’s for dinner tonight. 9.50 RM = Cdn $3.00 That is for the full meal

Ended our exhausting, amazing day with doing some hand laundry. There is always laundry to do!!!

Fitbit tally for the day; 20,353 steps, 15.37km and 30 floors. A new record in steps for me.

27 March 2018 – Kuala Lumpur – Day 3 – Central Market

Published on March 27, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

Kuala Lumpur has so many places to see. Where to start? We wanted to see the Central Market and I had a list of a few temples. We decided we would walk. Good old maps.me in use again. I swear that maps.me always takes us the longest and most touristy routes. Today’s route took us through Chinatown. We even saw a license plate with Canada on it. The red spikey fruit is rambutan. Very similar to a lychee nut once peeled. We had had them in Vietnam last year.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality wasn’t, we finally made it to the Central Market.

Saw some interesting things, but couldn’t buy anything as we only have our backpacks. No room for many souvenirs. Some items are expensive, but the hair and nail studio prices were cheap compared to Canadian prices. For a gel manicure it was RM 60.00 = Cdn $18.79 A cut/wash/iron, really iron? Hope they mean curling iron, was RM45.00 = Cdn $14.09

And then there are those stores where they really should hire someone to proofread their work. Picture is a little blurry but I had to include it. Guess I was laughing to much to keep the camera steady.

Doug decided to make lunch for us. LOL We did have lunch here, but again I have no pictures of it for some reason. It was a large food court with lots of ‘strange’ foods. Always hard for me to find food to eat, as I am such a picky eater.

You have to pay to use the washrooms, .50 RM = $ Cdn $0.16 Not much to us, but I guess it adds up for them.

Our bellies full, we headed out to find the temples. According to maps.me they shouldn’t be too far , but we all know how that goes at times. On our way we found this pedestrian shopping mall. There was a lot of stuff there! Apparently it is a great place to purchase knock off labeled merchandise. We’re not interested in that stuff.

We finally found one of the temples on my list. Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, which is the oldest Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur, dating back to 1873. However, this is a new structure that was build in 1968.

Just our luck. The temple was closed. Thank goodness it was 3:50 pm and we only had 10 minutes to wait. That is 10 minutes Malaysian time!

Once we were admitted, and I don’t mean to the loony bin, I have to say that this place was beautiful. I just love the colours of this temple. A lot of interesting information can be found on this temple. Too much to include in this blog.

The 5-tiered gopuram (tower) on the gates is the tallest structure in the temple and is a 75 feet high pyramid-shaped gate tower that is decorated with depictions of Hindu gods.

On to the next temple, which turned out to be just down the street.

It still amazes me as to how there are old temples surrounded by new architecture.

Walked a little ways, and came across Petaling Street, which we decided to go down and take a look.

We decided to walk back. What were we thinking? Not only hazardous, a lot of it was uphill. Even these small inclines seem mountainous at this point in the day.

After resting up for a while, we headed out again to find some dinner. We ended up back at the Pavilion Mall and this time discovered a huge food court on level l, which was actually down one level from the entrances to the mall. There were all my favorites; Cold Stone Creamery, Pizza Hut, Krispy Kream, to name a few and Asian food. We WILL be back! SPAM is everywhere! I think it must be as popular as Oreos are.

While out searching for dinner, we came upon this alley/street. Yesterday there had been 2 people painting it. It looks finished now. I have noticed there are a lot of items painted here. Lots of staircases and even escalators.

So we decided on chicken shawarma sandwiches again for dinner tonight. Told you all that I am not too adventurous in the food department. We did try a new place though. They were good, but still not as tasty as what I get back home. We took them back to our room again to eat and called it a night. We were exhausted. I had put 14,020 steps on my Fitbit today.

26 March 2018 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Day 2 – West Virginia Everywhere!

Published on March 26, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

We slept in this morning and took our time as we were tired from our day traveling yesterday. On my list of attractions to see while in Kuala Lumpur was the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest twin buildings in the world. It turns out our hotel is located within walking distance of the towers, so that was a bonus. We don’t have to worry about trying to figure out transportation to get there.

Love that once you get into the city center, all the buildings seem to be connected with bridges or covered walkways. You don’t have to go outside if the weather is crappy.

On our way to the Petronas Towers we found a Johnny Rockets in the mall, just like in America!

We didn’t spend any time looking at much as we wanted to get to the Petronas Towers. This was our first view of the towers. It is pretty spectacular. The weather today was great. Not a thousand degrees, yet!

Just our luck…closed on Mondays! And yes, you guessed right. Today is Monday! We really wanted to go up in them, as you can go up to the bridge and walk on it, so change of plans.

Like most tourist spots there are people trying to sell you everything, everywhere. However!!!! This time something really caught my ‘eye’. They were selling the fish’eye’ lens for the phones. Cool right? Yup, you guessed it. I bought one after the vendor took a few photos of us with it.

The fisheye lens distorts the picture a bit, but you get so much more in the frame. To bad it didn’t thin out the bottom portion of the photo instead of the opposite.

We wandered back around to the other side of the towers where there is TAMAN KLCC (KLCC PARK) and the beautiful Tasik Simfoni (Lake Symphony Fountain). Spent quite a bit of time taking photos. Who me take photos? Yup!

After this photo session, we headed into the Suria KLCC shopping mall. Apparently one of Malaysia’s premier upscale shopping malls due to its location. It was pretty spectacular.

We spied a Marks & Spencer store. Oh, how I loved that store’s food when we had them in Canada. Of course we had to go in and do some shopping. We bought a bunch of snacks and Doug got himself an expensive bottle of Shiraz. It was double to triple the prices back home. Alcohol is very expensive here, guessing maybe because it is a Muslim majority country.

Found some really nice jeans at a bargain price….NOT! 789 MYR RM (Malaysian Ringgit) = Cdn $248.61 That is right! For one pair of jeans

We decided to head back to hotel, but first we had to, yes, just had to stop for dessert and Ice Caps at Starbucks. Starbucks is everywhere! On our way through the mall to Starbucks I spied this sign. Guess what! SPAM is also everywhere, but not at Starbucks. Have to mention here that it seems like most of Kuala Lumpur are smokers. Tried to sit in the non-smoking section of Starbucks, but the smokers just take over the whole place. Lots of those Hookah, not hooker, places here also. Really have no idea about hookers, so could be lots of them also.

We decided to take a different street on the way back to the hotel. Completely different view on this street, which was only one street over. This person decided they weren’t going to park on the street, but right on the sidewalk. Good thing they stopped!

Back at the hotel we decided to check it out a little. There was a beautiful roof top pool AND LAUNDRY facilities. Always exciting when we find laundry facilities. Sure beats hand washing our clothing all the time.

Yesterday, while looking out our hotel room window I spotted a party street a block over, so tonight we went to check it out on our way back from picking up a couple of shawarmas for dinner. Up at the corner on one of the main streets, we saw an older homeless type guy sitting, strumming and singing “West Virginia Mountain Momma!” The John Denver, Take Me Home, Country Roads song. We couldn’t believe our ears and immediately thought of our cruise friends, Karen and Will who live in West Virginia. Guess I was in such shock that I forgot to take a picture of him.

We had to cut through an alley to get back to our hotel. At least that was the only way we could figure it out. OH GROSS!!! Rats in the alley scurrying everywhere. Oh course I was screaming and the construction guys were all laughing at me. These construction guys start early in the morning and work until late at night. Exhausting!
Back at hotel – ate shawarmas and Doug enjoyed a glass of wine.

25 March 2018 – Travel Day – Koh Rong Sanloem to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Day 1

Published on March 25, 2021 by Old&LostLeave a comment

When we bought our tickets to come over to Koh Rong Sanloem, we purchased return tickets. However, we later discovered that the ferry wasn’t all that reliable and could be late or even not show. Since we had a flight to catch, it was a little nerve wracking. Not far from our resort was another ferry and it had one scheduled that was a good hour earlier than what we had already booked with the other company. We decided to get a new ferry ticket. Not only was it earlier, it was a lot closer to our resort.

We got up and enjoyed our last breakfast at the Sara Resort and settled up our bill with the front desk. We had been given a credit of $80 due to the fact that our room had been advertised as having a refrigerator in it and it did not. We still owed a good chunk of change as the meals were not cheap here.

We grabbed our stuff and headed down to catch the ferry. This was a very frustrating experience, as the ferry was late showing up by almost an hour. We actually saw our original ferry booking arrive, and depart, before ours showed up.

Once everyone was loaded, the driver really booted it, but came to an abrupt stop. They pulled the engines up out of the water and checked them. I guess everything was okay as they lowered the engines back into the water and we were off full speed again. It was really hard to get any pictures as we were really going fast and it was bumpy and wavy. Banging across waves. No comfort on this ride. We didn’t end up docking at the port we were supposed to be at and where we had a taxi driver waiting, that the girl from the hotel had arranged for us. I felt really bad about this, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. Apparently, because the ferry had been so late there was no room for them to dock at the intended dock. We did get to see a couple of cruise ships in port as this is where they dock when stopping here in Sihanoukville, Cambodia.

Getting a ride to the airport wouldn’t be an issue as there were Tuk-Tuk drivers offering rides left, right and center. We asked one guy how much to the airport. He replied with $US50. I replied “no’. I offered $US20, which I already knew was the going rate. We had checked this out before we left our hotel in Sihanoukville. I always like to have an idea of what taxis should cost. The Tuk-Tuk driver agreed to the US$20 and we were on our way.

Had a short stop for gas on the way, but we still had plenty of time. Turned out this port was quite a bit closer to the airport than the original port was.

We had booked with Air Asia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It took a little time to get checked in, as there were people who had not prepaid for luggage, and were arguing with the agents that they wanted to carry their large & heavy backpacks onboard and not check them. It was so much cheaper to prepay for your luggage than it is to pay once you get to the airport. I don’t know what happened, as they were still there when we had finished checking in.

Flight was uneventful with the tiny seats. Guess you get what you pay for. Took us some time clearing customs, but had no issues. I always get nervous when having to go through customs. Not sure why.

We purchased a pre-paid taxi voucher as that seemed to be the best method of getting to our hotel. We had booked the Ramada for three nights. The first 2 drivers refused to take us and this was getting a little concerning. Turns out that our hotel was over an hour drive and I guess these taxi drivers wanted shorter distances for the same amount of money.

The drive was really quite pleasant and there were thousands of palm trees along the highways. Our driver was friendly, spoke passable English and we were able to carry on a conversation.

By the time we arrived at our hotel there was a heavy rain coming down. We checked in and went to our room. It was really quite nice with what turned out to be a view of the bar area street.

Once the rain let up, we headed out to look around and get something to eat. Found a large shopping mall that even had an indoor basketball court.

It had been a long day and we called it a night.