My bus ride from Tanah Rata to Kuala Lumpur was faster than I thought, only taking about 4 hours. My hostel was within walking distance, but it was a solid walk (although not as gruelling as the one in Panang). The hostel I'm staying in was picked for its proximity to KL Central Station, which wasn't a factor coming in, but will be a factor when I leave since my flight to Indonesia is very early and the only night buses to the airport are from KL Central (see, I actually plan some of these things out, sometimes!) In addition to a good location for me, the hostel is also very cool. It's run by a group of young people who are all into the arts in some manner, and into the youth culture and activism. All the walls and floors have murals or other artwork on them, and they use the common space to put on different art/music/dance/theater shows. After getting to the hostel and checking in I basically just retraced my steps back to where I got off the bus, checking out all of the interesting things I'd seen on my walk down that I wasn't able to stop and explore because of all my bags.
The first of these stops was at a canal / reservoir I had to cross. Both sides of the canal were covered with lovely street art murals, and I've since learned that it is really the focal point of street art in the city. I walked the length of the painted sections of the canal admiring the art before climbing back to stree level and continuing on.
I also visited the Central Market, which is a building full of shops focused on Malaysian art and culture. A few parts were neat, but I found a lot of it to be just more gift shop like places selling the same cheap stuff you find everywhere else, only more concentrated. I also visited the nearby Petaling Street, which is the central hub of KL Chinatown. It's a long pedestrian market street similar in feel to the markets in Hong Kong and Taipei.
After a good sleep today was my day to really explore Kuala Lumpur. I wasn't sure how much Christmas would alter the. The signs of it were certainly present, but not like you'd fine in North America (for one thing, everything was open). The big shopping malls all had Christmas displays out, and I came across a group singing carols in one mall, but the malls didn't seem unusually crowded. The people working at food stalls and in convience stores all wished me a merry Christmas, but that could just because I'm western.
I found a very cool shopping mall called parkamaya that had a definite Japanese flavour to it (it's the one with the purple trees above). It had cosplaying mall girls handing out flyers and all the walls were posted with anime/manga figures. One of the shops had legitimate anime for sale at ridiculously low prices that I just couldn't pass up. In the end I spend about $35 CDN for what would have cost me over $400 to buy at home. It's going to be a bit of a pain to carry it around for the next 4 months, especially since I can't watch any of it on my tablet, but I didn't go as crazy as I could have, so I'm sure I'll manage. After that I swung by the famous Petronas Towers. After visiting most of the famous cities of the world a few more towers aren't all that impressive, but there was a park nearby that was a nice place to take a rest and enjoy the day. I suspect the weather at home doesn't allow for quite the same sort of outdoor recreation.
The collection of unique towers in Kuala Lumpur makes it pretty easy to keep track of where you are when travelling on foot, although the roads tend to wind and cross over each other a lot. On my way back towards the hostel area I angled by the even taller KL Tower.
Back at the hostel I was treated with some of the other guests to a Christmas dinner prepared by one of the hostel co-owners and her girlfriend. We had spaghetti, chicken, potatoes, salad and corn, along with a mix of desserts. Not quite the traditional Christmas dinners of Canada, but the food was good and the gesture very much appreciated!
2 comments:
The street art is amazing! Glad you bought yourself something, you can always ship it home. Sounds like you've accumulated more than the backpack and messenger bag you started with! I assume you've still got the old backpack plus the new one?
I got rid of the original backpack when I was in Nepal. The old one was 36L and the new one is 50L (at least it's supposed to be, it doesn't seem that much more, and it is terribly counterfeit, so who knows). I'm carrying around a few overflow things in a little cloth tote I got in Japan that I can clip onto one of my other bags. The stuff I bought yesterday is really the first non-clothing items I've bought that take up any room, so things haven't expanded too much.
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