You save fitty cent (lots of pics)

Rise and shine morning glory! After a first night out in KL, we got up bright in early with only minimal sleep. The mission should you choose to accept: to get 2 of the 1000 daily passes to the top of Petronas Towers. They start selling passes at 8:30 and can sometimes be sold out within the first hour. Of course those of you that know me, know that mornings aren’t exactly my strong suit. So realistically getting out of the hotel by 9 was a feat not short of a miracle. 

A 30-minute walk to the towers got us there around 9:30 and we lucked into a tour starting at 5 pm. You don’t need to ask directions to get to the towers in KL, simply just look up and ask yourself, am I getting closer. If your answer is no, I strongly encourage you to recalibrate. With tickets in hand we found ourselves some breakfast. I had an omelet and beans. My meal cost a total of 6 RM or 2 CAD not bad I must say.

Zora and I became total tourists taking pictures of the towers and surrounding park, some really cool shots I must add. The towers almost look like they are made of plastic or something. We then waited for Mike, Zora’s Malay friend, who would be a tour guide for the day. While waiting I indulged in a cold beverage. No, not beer this time, but an apple blended with ice and a bit of honey. Not bad!

Mike had this idea to check out some modern art museum thing. Sure why not, we eventually found the place, although it was less than stellar. BUT! There is always a but. On my way out from the 7-11 buying myself a redbull with was 1.80 RM (.60 CAD) we noticed a very interesting sign. 1 hour Balinese Full Body massage, 58 RM. So the three of us went in and all had a massage. I certainly fell asleep and was so relaxed from the experience.

Too funny

Back to the towers for some awesome shots. The sky bridge was spectacular, but it holds nothing on being 88 floors up. While I know this isn’t the tallest building in the world anymore, it is certainly the tallest building I have been in.

A quick run back to the apartment and then adventure to the Petaling Night Market. This is essentially the knock off market. Hundreds of shops with everything from Starbucks t-shirts, to Nike shoes (upside down checkmark), to LV bags, watches and cell phones. My first experience at one of these markets was quite interesting. Everyone tries to pull you in, they also ask ridiculous prices for knockoffs. But that alone is where the fun begins. You haggle. I haggled on a new watch for myself. I found one I liked and examined it. Terrible it has a plastic band and felt cheap. The man pulled out a better quality one, still felt cheap, alumni. I insisted that if I were going to spend money I want something that looks nice and will last. So the man digs into his cupboard and pulls out a solid steel briefcase. The starting price was 1100 RM. Stainless steel, quartz crystal (can’t scratch, I tried) and felt solid. Ridiculous you might say, well that is exactly what I said and he immediately returned asking for 550. Worth a try I guess, some fool would probably pay that. My first offer was 200, and his response was “too low, too cheap, no deal, how about 385?” He proceeded to take out a calculator and type those three numbers in. I laughed at the dramatic effect of it. I returned with 220, and him 350, 230, 325, 250, 300 no lower. Ya right, no lower I thought. 252? He laughed and was like you only go up by 2 dollars, that’s no help. So he was like 285, I can’t go lower my boss won’t be happy. Finally I cracked and said here is 275 or I walk. Could I have gotten a better deal? Possibly, but I was happy with this. All said I spent about 84 CAD on a very nice watch. Check it out. 

After the excitement of shopping for the watch, we met up with Mike again for some food then to head to a bar. Convenient that the bar we ended up going to was having model night. Free entrance, sure why not? Too good to be true however, for me at least. They are much more relaxed about cigarettes in KL and many people were smoking inside. I started to get a headache and was ready to leave within a half hour. An earlyish end to the night, and quickly coming departure.

They tell a tale of a beautiful bar in the sky

As I mentioned I would be out of town for a few days, well here I am, sitting waiting in the airport for an extra 2 hours because of a delayed flight. I thought I might fill you in on the past 2 days of adventure. I realize I haven’t written about Monday or Tuesday yet, but they weren’t incredibly busy. A new girl moved into the room new door from Australia. I think she has is quite homesick and as a result can be quite negative. My goal of course is to help her feel comfortable and enjoy the experience. Tuesday night, I went bowling with some friends I met on Internations.

Wednesday became the start of this adventure though.  In the morning I hit the gym, packed, and went to a hawker with Leah. It was nice and cheap and I had 2 vegetable servings, 1 meat and as usual lots of rice. 

Upon getting back to the apartment I grabbed my bags and hopped onto the train/bus heading to Zora’s. Barbara and google maps has been great for helping me find places, even down to telling me which how many stops are remaining. After meeting up getting all of our tickets printed off we took a cab to the airport. A good thing we did, as I would have gone to the wrong terminal. As we had bought heavily discounted tickets, we needed to go to the budget terminal. It was not nearly as nice as the other one, reminded me of the Winnipeg airport.

Tiger! They must love tigers here as not only is that the most popular beer, but it was the airline we flew to KL on. I was rather surprised the number of Canadians that don’t know where or of KL. Kuala Lumpur is the largest city in Malaysia. It’s also a bustling financial area and the home of Petronas Towers. Petronas towers you ask? Ever seen the movie Entrapment? They also carried the tallest building in the world record from 98-04. And are presently the world’s tallest twin towers.

Thanks to Agoda, we booked a 5 star hotel right in the middle of downtown. It was certainly a nice hotel, the lobby was incredible. But some things felt less than the ultimate in luxury, like the TV we had in our basement 10 years ago kind of thing. Either way, the room was nice. We arrived around 9 pm to the hotel after taking a bus, train and then cab. All said and done it was about 20 RM. That is the equivalent of just over 6 CAD.

Upon the advice of the beautiful Kat, a friend from university we headed to skybar. This is an incredible bar at the top of Trader’s Hotel looking directly at Petronas Towers. The view was breathtaking and the drinks were raved about. In my completely honest opinion the drinks were crap. Between the two of us we sampled 5 of their cocktails. Each and every one of them was too sweet. There was no balance to the cocktail. One the foam was the drink, and had a terrible mouth feel. The food was delicious however. We had garlicky meatballs, cold smoked salmon and tortillas with guacamole. The guacamole was interesting as it has a slight pickled flavour to it.

After all this we headed back to the hotel to call it a night.