TRANSIT IN KUALA LUMPUR

This is a greatly long overdue writing about my 14 days trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, with a transit in Kuala Lumpur with my gal pals Mumun and Renny. One thing and another, I finally have time to write about it!

It was a marvelous trip. I loved every second of it. We got surprises here and there, bad and good ones. We didn’t plan everything to the little bits, so we were ready for anything that might happen. Deep down, I was a little bit ready for a possibility that Halong Bay trip might get cancelled because of the chance of storm and typhoon, but I guess I wasn’t really ready until the storm really really happened and our Halong Bay trip DID get cancelled. But all in all, I wouldn’t trade anything for the whole trip we traveled. It opened my eyes for a lot more than just the things I saw. It made me get to know my friends and myself better. And so here’s the details.

DAY #1 – The surprise starts here

Oct 11, 2009

We’ve flown with AirAsia before, but somehow none of us three remembered their rule of checking in. The flight was scheduled to depart at 6.30 AM, and we got to the check-in desk at 6.05. Great. We forgot that checking-in is closed 45 minutes before departure time. So there went our flight to the gutter…

But there’s no way we’d cancel our long planned trip only because of that, so we hit the ATM and bought tickets for the next flight to Kuala Lumpur (KL), costing us IDR 864,000 / pax. Ouch, it hurt. It hurt our savings.

Rearranging our stuff before checking baggage

KL, the capital city of Malaysia, wasn’t our main destination in this trip. But there was no direct flight from Jakarta to Hanoi (nor Ho Chi Minh City at that time), and we found Jakarta-KL flight was on promo price at the AirAsia website. So we figured, we’d just buy the cheap tickets Jkt – KL to cheapen the whole fare to get to Vietnam, cos then we’d only have to pay full for the KL-Hanoi flight. And it turned out.. blaahhh…

KUALA LUMPUR

Ringgit, Malaysian money

Alrighty, I was glad that the money-sucking incident didn’t get the best of us. We still had lotsa fun and enjoyed the trip. After checking in at Tune Hotel, which we had booked a couple months in prior, we took Skybus from LCCT to KL Sentral, already included in our flight ticket price (it’s sold independently for RM 9 / pax). Tune Hotel is only 10 minutes walking from the LCCT.

The room is very small,
so the huge mirror on the wall helps to make it seem wider

KL Sentral is this central of everything.. lines of trains, subways, monorails, and coaches, they are all centralized here. It’s a one big terminal with shops and restaurants in it. We hopped on the monorail line called Putra LRT (I think) to get to the Petronas twin towers at KLCC.

These towers are like the must-visit for tourists. Renny and I have been there before, but this is Mumun’s first time in KL, so we all go there and as usual, take photos with the towers as background. Trying to look couture.. and failed miserably..hahaha.

While killing time at the mall, we passed by Harrods, and Renny made us go in and have early dinner there. Wow, they have all the good stuff, in terms of tin boxes of tea, coffee, and many else. Good stuff, but not good price for our budget. The waiters didn’t seem very welcome, probably judging us by our not so high fashion looks. Hahaha. But we didn’t give a sh*t.

I have to admit that they have the best sandwich, at least from all sandwiches that I’ve had in my life. Even the bread itself tastes good, a bit more than slightly sweet. I ordered the Green Garden Salad for it was the one with lowest price..teehee.. The display said it was RM 7, but in total with tax n’ all it became RM 30!! Oh but it was worth every Ringgit I paid for :)

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We strolled around KL and hopped on and off of the monorail until about 8 PM, mostly in the Bukit Bintang area, where the most shops are. But we didn’t buy anything except snacks and bottled drinks.

Turns out, it was Deepavali celebration for the Hindis.
Hindi is among the most residents in Malaysia, after the Malays and Chinese.

Then it was time to go back to our hotel, we got on the RM 8 fare bus from KL Sentral to LCCT, slept our way through the one hour ride… zzz.

Okay.. wait for my next post about our main destination: Vietnam!