My one full day in K-L and there was disappointment to start with – the Petronas Towers are closed to prospective bridge-walkers on a Monday. Grargh. Never mind, there are plenty of other things to do in K-L so I put on my walking shoes (well, my only shoes) and ventured out into the moderately dry outdoors.
My first stop was an errand – I needed to pick up my flight ticket for the next day from the Air India office. I’d located this the night before and walked back round again. After a wait of around 20 minutes (in a nice air-conditioned lobby with comfy seats where I read some of my book) I was told the ticket was already at the airport and I was to collect it from there before my flight in the morning. No problem. I’d just like to say that Air India have been superb so far. They’ve rung the UK to let me (or my parents at least) know where my tickets are. They’ve emailed me a gazillion times (personal emails – not auto things) with updates. Their staff have been polite and helpful – great stuff.
Down the road from their office is the KL Tower (or Menara Kuala Lumpur as it’s also known), the fourth highest radio mast structure thing in the world at 421m. It’s only 20MYR to go up (there’s just short of 7 Ringgits to the pound at the moment, so that’s around £3) so, up I did go to add another “tallest” building to my growing list. The view wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, due to the weather but it’s still an impressive structure. The base of the tower is sat in a protected nature reserve and several free tours a day are offered around here. Unfortunately, as it was about to start chucking it down, I went walking towards a mall instead as I had some mailing to do.
If there’s one thing I learned about Malaysian life today, it’s that a lot of it is spent in queues. I arrived at the post office and took a number from the printer. I was number 3037. They were currently serving 2753. I kid you not. If you ever need to post something in Kuala Lumpur, don’t go to the post office just before lunch unless you’ve packed a picnic. During my wait, I discovered that they don’t sell packaging or envelopes. Thank you to the lady from Wales I was sat next to for that. She kindly directed me to a stationery store on the ground floor and off I walked, knowing that as I was away, my turn would be creeping ever closer.
Half an hour later, I returned to a PO. They were in the low 2900’s. I used some of the time to address my envelope and write out the postcards I’d bought up the tower. Then if dug out my book and read about 40 pages before my number came up.
Then I found out I didn’t have enough cash on me and, like PO’s in the UK, they didn’t take Visa.
Back to the Lower Ground floor and an ATM. With a 20+ person queue at it. And back upstairs. Where I got to queue jump, so that wasn’t too bad.
The rain had really started making an effort now, so I dashed into another mall and located a cinema. This is the second mall I’ve ever heard off with a theme park and roller coaster inside. The other is in Gateshead, back home!
I queued – surprise – and asked for a ticket to Deja Vu… only to find that the last one had gone about three seconds earlier. Argh. So I went to see what else was on, and then queued again to buy a later ticket for the same film.
Overall cost of ticket, 6 chicken nuggets, a large popcorn, large orange juice and packet of M&M’s… £2.40. Whoop! And it was a good film.
Then afterwards, back to the hostel. Thankfully not in pouring rain. Daniel was all over me again (“You can’t go tomorrow! It’ll be boring!”) and we had fun as the electricity kept going out in a spectacular fashion every time the staff tried to plug their new printer in.
And then I did this lot. I should have kept up over the last week. This was far too much work!
There could be a delay until the next post as I’m flying to Delhi tomorrow and don’t know what access will be like. I guess I’ll know soon enough!
Note that as of today, I’m fully up to date on FotoPic as well, so go have a browse.Â