Category — KL

We originally planned to catch the train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, however as expected with school holidays, the trains were all booked weeks in advance so we had to go to plan B – the long distance bus.  I admit I was a little bit worried about the standards of the bus we might end up on – but we were there on time to board this beautifully appointed coach, complete with footrests and massagers built into the seat back!  Great this wasn’t at all what we expected!  That was until a lady came up to us and said could she check our tickets as she believed we were sitting in her seats.  We showed ours; she showed hers – funny they were both identical!  Welcome to Asia!  She went back to the ticket office and complained loudly in Chinese until the ticket operator came on board – checked ours, checked hers, walked up and down – lots of heated Chinese and so it went on.  Eventually, he came back on board and said to us that we had been put on the wrong bus and we should get off immediately, walk further up the road and board another coach.  Luckily the new coach was just as good and after we had calmed our nerves after being kicked off our bus – we waited for departure. 

We have quickly learned that buses never leave on time.  So we left Singapore an hour late.

It’s amazing to drive from Singapore where it’s beautiful and green and very clean – go over the bridge into Malaysia and suddenly it’s very obvious that you’re in a different country.  The first thing I noticed were the huge palm plantations – I had read in Lonely Planet that the Government had encouraged vast amounts of clearing of the natural rain forests in favour of planting palms for palm oil.  There are certainly a lot of them and they go on for miles.

KL was a real eye opener for the kids.  Lots of people on bikes, traffic jams and rubbish on the streets.  Unlike Singapore where we were forced into 2 taxis, the drivers here had no problem at all putting us all in a little 4 cylinder Proton.  The taxis all seem to be converted to LPG so have a big gas cylinder in the boot which doesn’t leave a lot of room for luggage.  Needless to say, we drove through peak hour with 5 of us in the back seat complete with all the kids backpacks.  Squashed was an understatement!

Lonely Planet has a lot to say about taxi drivers in KL – that is that they will continuously try to rip you off and you must negotiate your fare before getting in.  We found they were incredibly helpful (and chatty!) – we never had a problem with fares and they always quoted the same fare consistently.

We had hoped to go up the Petronas Towers to the Skybridge but you have to queue well before 7am to try to get the free tickets before they run out and we weren’t up for the early start so stood outside and looked up.

We managed the subway in KL as it’s very cheap (together with the better exchange rate) compared to Singapore.  An interesting thing abt the MRT in both Singapore & KL is that the platforms are enclosed ie they have sliding doors that open in line with the sliding doors on the train, so there is no way to access the tracks.

The train pulled in and it was absolutely choccas.   We grabbed the kids and pushed on (we had read about another family who had a plan for if they got separated on a train when the doors closed on them – half in half out!) so now I get on first and Paul gets on last with the kids in the middle.  We were all packed in – one bonus for us – we were taller than the locals so we weren’t the ones jammed in someone else’s armpit like you are in London!

The kids took it all in good spirits and actually really enjoyed it.

After a day and a half in KL we were all well and truly culture shocked and city fatigued.  Honestly, we were all wondering what on earth we had gotten ourselves into and there were a couple of comments like – “Couldn’t we just skip the rest of Asia and go straight to Europe?”.  So to calm our nerves, we indulged -as we discovered McDonald’s delivers in Asia!  Woo hoo!  Big Macs all round and you may not like their cheese but they taste like home!  Yum..