What a jump forward a 5 hour eastbound flight had made, after the leaving the very new< but sparse Cochin International airport on chritsmas day we arrived at the low cost terminal in KL courtesy of Air Asia early on boxing day. The culture shock is large after months of haggling and fending off people left right and centre (mainly just people wanting to
help, but draining all the same) it was weird to go back to metered taxis and printed prices. And the roads…the supersonic speed that the taxi got us the 50 km from the airport to the hotel couldn’t even be dreamed of in India with the state of the roads there (barring a couple of highways around Pondicherry.)
The next step forward was the hotel itself, gone are the days of spartan and functional boxes with the start of our new accomodation era in the Royal Club rooms at the The Royal Chulan Hotel.Thanks to our late arrival time our room category was sold out so up the pecking order we went for 3 nights.
After gorging ourselves on the million option buffet breakfast in the following morning we headed out on the monorail to pick up our train tickets for the 28th to Singapore. I needed some new glasses so we went to Sungei Wang Mall to arrange that, Andrea not to be outdone decided to get some new sunglasses also, luckily they have large year end sales here so everything was knocked down by 50%. This set a president for the rest of our time in KL, as we ended up going from mega mall to mega mall ending up with a whole new wardrobe (well backpack) of stuff to replace what now is either stretched, stained or a bit smelly after 3 months. The afternoons were then spent around the cool waters of the hotel pool.
The evening were filled again with a little bit of shopping (and coiffure one night) and the other local favourite thing to do in KL, eating! This city would be very hard to beat with its obsession for eating out, something we whole hearty joined in on, during the days the massive food courts in the the malls with their multi Asian themed stalls seem to be king. But in the evening it all moves outside especially for the Chinese community and my favourite food street possibly anywhere, Jalan Alor. Which by day has a few Chinese restaurants with small seating areas but by night there are ten’s of them that move out on to the pavement and the street, lining both sides of the road, filled with 1000’s of diners and a bustling open air atmosphere. A cold beer combined with delicious fresh Chinese food it is very hard to beat.
After spending more in 3 days than what we would have spent in 3 weeks in India, it was sadly all over as we had to say goodbye to the delights of KL and move on to Bintan Island in Indonesia via a quick cross town trip in Singapore. We arrived at KL Sentral station at 9pm on the 28th to get our overnight train to Singapore.