Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We arrived in what looked like the scary part of KL at 5 a.m. Although, I think any part of town would look like the scary part of town at 5 in the morning. We had no idea where we were, where our hostel was, or even if we were in KL! We researched a hostel in each city in which we were to stay, so we knew the cheapest and centrally located places, before we got there. That was the best idea, because there’s not much you can do at 5 in the morning in a country used to ripping off tourists. We knew we picked a place close to the train and bus drop offs, so we didn’t want to pay extraordinary prices to take us a block. We found the general direction we needed to go and found the Backpackers Traveler’s Inn with no problem. The real problem started when we tried to check in. We woke up with guy at the desk to get a room. He told us to leave and come back at 9 when the guests would be awake. He didn’t want to check us in, as it would wake up his precious guests. So we left and sat down in front of another hotel. It took three trips up the steps, two hours and finally me using my PR skills to get us in at 7:30 a.m. As we walk into the room and the guy flips on the light we see two huge cockroaches that were so accustomed to their home, they didn’t even run at the turn of the light switch. You know you’ve gotten yourself into sad circumstances when the cockroaches who share the room with you don’t even care enough to run at human movement and light. This was too much for me, smug cockroaches?! I don’t think so. Kari killed one of them and I quickly got the guy to kill the other. After that, I had a new respect for Kari. Even with living in Disney World, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Taiwan, all hot, humid places, I’d only seen one or two cockroaches, and each time they reared their ugly head, our apartment complexes would spray again. I knew then that I was on my own devices and not on my company’s tab!

We crashed until 1 p.m. We found a water park on the roof of a mall on the net, so we wanted to go there first. What seemed like an easy and fun thing to do, turned out to ruin our entire Malaysia experience! It took us forever to get to the park. We took the LRT and then a taxi. It cost a fortune and as luck would have it, the park was closed for the school year. We were so ticked; we sat outside of the park for an hour taking pictures and videos of our hopelessness! We tried to call a taxi to come get us, yet the phones didn’t like us. We ended up going to the Petronas Towers and taking pictures of it at night. It was beautiful and amazing!

We stood in line for tickets to the Petronas Towers at 9 a.m. the next day. They only issue so many tickets for one day and since this was our last day in KL, we had to get tickets. We got tickets without a hitch, but others weren’t so lucky. We waited around until it was our turn (at 1:10 p.m.) to go up to the sky bridge. It was like out of a dream walking between the towers I had seen on Zoolander!

We went to the Batu Caves later on that day. The outside was cooler than the inside, but still cool to see. I would recommend seeing them if there is a festival going on. The cave is a limestone hill. There is a massive statue of Lord Murugan at the gate. To enter the cave, one has to scale the 272 steps, which are home to evil monkeys of doom. As Kari and I climbed up, we were scared of them, and ran every time they came close. Since they didn’t harm us, we had a different approach as we came down, much to my downfall. I really don’t like monkeys. They’re like cats, nasty and evil, yet I wanted a movie of them because they were there. So I went as close as I dared (which was still rather far away) to take a video of them, and one of them tried to eat me! Thankfully, a nice man shooed the demon away, so my stuff and I were saved. When we left, we looked and looked for the bus stop, only to have someone point out the faint bus stop written hastily in a small corner of a store’s façade! It was random, so for future Batu Caves travelers, the bus stop is real, just look for people congregated on the corner, and then look up at the small lettering on the building!

We left that night on the train for Penang, Malaysia. That train ride deserves its own post.