Report 2: Kuala Lumpur me another

This past weekend as few of the exchange students and I ambarked on or trip to KL entitles Kuala Lumpur me another due to the high cost of alcohol here in Singapore and Sascha's need to get a little tipsy. Although a cheap bar was not to be found in KL, we had a wonderful time.

It started very late Friday night as we took the 10pm bus to KL. We arrived at about 4am Saturday morning and after paying too much for a taxi found ourselves in a McDonald's to pass the rest of the morning and venture into Malaysia's largest city. That morning, we went to the famous Petronous Towers, I am not sure of the spelling. But they are the towers from the movie Entrapment. It has been a dream of Julio's to see these towers and he was very excited to get the chace not only to see them , but to go up into the sky bridge later in the day. After taking lots of pictures there, we went inside and go tour money changed to Ringets, the Malaysian currency.

By then we had killed enough time to check into our hostel. It was not the Ritz by any means, but for 9 ringets or roughly 2 american dollars, it did the job. Jeff and I stayed in the common room. Michele and Danielle were in the ladies only common room. Julio and Sascha had a private room with a fan, Jen, Rachel, and Alicia also had a private room. Finally having a place to crash, we all tried to take a little nap before going back to Petronous and than out. no one slept very well at all, but by 5 o'clock we were on our way to the towers. It was very nice to go up in them. We have lot of pictures. After that we went to a nice little bar, restuarant thing and had some burgers and fries. I just had soup. Then we walked back to the hostel with a littl shopping along the way. Back at the hostel, we went to the rooftop bar to meet some other backpackers. I met a guy from the Phill area. It was nice to talk about some stuff from home. He agreed and sad it was nice to talk to someone about sports like footaball and mean the eagles and steelers instead of Manchester United.

The next day we woke up early and were off to the Batu Caves. THey are natural caves with a a huge hindu statue erected in front of them. If was very cool and only coasted two ringet to get there. There were 272 steps to get to the top. All of us went up and the caves were beatuful. You enter into a huge cave and then walk back into a place where there is no rock above you. Like a natural courtyard or something. THere were temples and such in there and all kinds of different staues. In a few weeks the place will be packed due to a hindu celebration.

After that we went to find the Lake Gardens. WIth Julio still having a headache from the morning it was hard going for him. And after walking around for a long time, we finally found a nice little street side resturant to sit and relax at. I had three fried bannanas for one ringet, very well priced. They were delicous and I will get them again if given the chance. Then I decided to try a real Malaysian meal. So I went up to the waitor guy and asked him for his best dish. He recomended rice and a mixture or stuff that he refferd to as kinda like fish shells, (I assume fish eggs). Then plop on a fish and some sauce from the end of the table, and it would be good. I said ok. They eat with their hands a lot of the time so I asked him if that is what I should do and he said yes. It was good. However Michele did not appreciate the idea of having the entire fish on the plate, tail head and all. You eat the fish almost like how were would eat chicken, you pick the meat off the bones and put it with a finger scoop of rice and the sauce stuff and eat it up. It was very tastey, and just spicey enough to be very delightfull.

Then we stumbled upin a concert in the park. We seemed to be the stars of the show as the MC of the concert kept refering to us and everyone on stage kept welcoming us to Malaysia. We couldnt understand what they were saying most of the time, but every once in a while they would look at us and speak in english to explain things. I even got interviewed by a news channel that was covering the event. I guess they recoginized me. Anyway the concert was great with traditional dance that was beatiful including a spectacular version of the song "Malaysia Truely Asia" that stole our hearts.

With a few hours left we went to the market. They are very fun. You walk up to the shop and they ask you for prices and you negotiate untill you eventually pay too much for something or walk away. At this point I had ran out of money, so I simply walked around and negotiated prices untill they were very low and then walked away. At one shirt and sweatship shop, i negotiated two soccer warm up jackets pretty low. I talked to the dudes ther for about fve mintutes. The starting price for one jacket was about 100 ringet. At the end when I walked away they had the jackets in the bag and trying to chake my hand and give me 2 for 70 ringets. It was an ok deal, but it shows that even at that price they were too willing to sell to me and therefore would have made a killing off of that.

We found the bus home with no problem, got back to our dorms at about 5am. All in all the trip was great. We will start planning our next one soon. It only cost about 50 us dollars for me to do teh whole trip, and I bought a watch and paid way too much for the taxi in KL.