What an Awesome Day in KL!

Saturday April 2, 2011

What an Awesome Day in KL!

After hibernating in my room yesterday from 4pm onwards, I arose this morning at 7:30am to about 12 hours total of rest and sleep….it’s amazing what that positively does to the body. The A/C in the room is COOOOLDDDDD and luckily I asked for an extra blanket earlier in the day! I headed down to the first floor for free breakfast of toast and tea/coffee with the world news on show. Wow! Do we live in a crazy world right?! And when you are traveling, you often miss out on many of the world breaking news.

I left the hostel ready for my first trek on the public train transportation system. It was so simple, with a touch screen to purchase my ticket. I only had one stop to the main central station and then headed out of the station to walk to the National Museum. I was greeted to huge construction building sites and the need to cross a 5 lane highway but here in KL—no big deal!

The national museum had a free English tour at 10am so I jumped in on that. It honestly was the most educational 90 minutes of my life. I had a wonderful guide and learned so very much. The museum is set up in 4 galleries ranging from the very beginning of how the country was geographically formed and ending with the modern Malaysia. What an incredible country which I already acknowledged was so multi-culturally embraced. A true Malaysian can trace back 3 or 4 different nationalities in them and that’s seen in the lineage of past leaders of the country. Very cool indeed! Malaysia has been fought over by so many countries including the Dutch, Portuguese and British!

After the museum tour, I headed over the bridge to what I can imagine many KL folks do to escape the concrete jungle. A park with the national mosque and other attractions like the Planetarium and Butterfly Farm.

My dear friends picked me up from the museum and we headed out to PUDURAYA. A district outside of KL city central where the “white house” of Malaysia is, as well as the ministry of finance and another major mosque. My friends are both practicing Muslims and I had the opportunity to enter the mosque with them learning so much about the religion on a first hand friend basis. Truly a wonderful and enlightening experience.

After our time in Puduraya, I was dropped off at Batu Caves which is a temple inside caves just outside the city. Getting the local bus back into town, I stopped off for some dinner in Chinatown (of course!) . What an incredible day, which may not be over just yet since my friend asked if I wanted to go to the late night market (11pm-4am) where the locals go on a Saturday night for food and shopping. Sooooo cool!

P.S. I also found out about the VIP McDonald’s drive-thru sticker today---apparently its given and special discount benefits when you pull through the window…imagine if that was put into practice in the US or Oz lands??!!!