March 2, 2008

Well, after the fiasco with the bedsheets last night and a visit from concierge, we got up bright
and early this morning- I mean early, between the 20 hours travel time, arriving at 8 am, realizing that we entirely missed Friday because we're traveling into the future, purchasing cell phones,and getting caught in the daily afternoon downpour, we should have slept for 2 days, but no we we're up before breakfast was being served in the dining room. I made myself a cup of instant Nescafe ( which isn't bad) using an electric tea kettle thingy. You fill it with water, plug it in and in a few minutes you have hot water. The hotel sent us a welcome basket filled with "goodies" such as Coke, Coke Light, water, coffee, coffee mate, crackers, ramen noodles (my favorite), and tons of sugar ( I had to send Jim downstairs to steal every pack of Equal off the tables). One thing that I've noticed here is to ask for something "sugar-free" is unheard of, Coke Light is about the only thing diet that you'll find, that's right Coke, not Pepsi. There is no such thing as skim or 2% milk. So we made our way downstairs to the breakfast buffet and it wasn't bad although I can tell you from our last visit to now, no one knows how to scramble a proper egg, it's either too watery or it's undercooked, the only way to eat it is to pile it up on toast otherwise it will fall right through your fork!

We decided to play our adventure card and ride the subway. Jim has never been on a subway train let alone use public transportation so already I'm thinking today is going to be interesting. We had already located the train station from our walk to find cell phones yesterday so we started there and in true "dumb tourist" fashion tried to figure out where we were going and how to get there. I highly recommend that if you visit Kuala Lumpur and want to try this, there are a lot of websites that offer direction in using public transportation unfortunately we did not think of this before we left. We remembered that we liked the area of Bangsar and luckily one of the stops on the transit line was Bangsar so that's where we started. Most of the subway stations are very clean, they have strict rules: NO: smoking, drinking, eating, chewing gum, littering, or profanity or else it's a 500RG fine. Jim was impressed that it only cost us 2RG each to get to Bangsar considering a cab would have been at least 50RG and it didn't take long to get there. There is a mix of people here, mostly Malays, Chinese, Indian, and a sprinkle of other nationalities and everyone seems nice to one another so we didn't feel like we stuck out like a sore thumb. After our train ride, we purchased a map and decided to take a city bus to Bangsar Village, here is where the modern, not so hard to figure out public transportation ended. There is nothing to tell you what buses take you where and where to catch them at or even the price. We stood at a bus stop and tried to read signs that were posted and if not for the map that we bought I think we would still be standing there with "duh" written all over our faces. We finally got on a bus and it was 2RG each and surprisingly the driver makes change. We made it to Bangsar Village and we walked around and realized that this was the neighborhood that we had dinner in back in October and were able to find the restaurants and bars that we went to. The Village is very popular with expats, foreign visitors, and wealthier natives, there are restaurants, bars, every kind of store imaginable, doctors, clinics, hair salons-everything you can imagine all within a 10 block radius. This is the area that we are interested in finding our permanent home and going there today reaffirmed that idea. We had lunch at an italian restaurant and walked around the neighborhood looking at different properties and then decided to try and figure out how to get back to the train station. We couldn't figure out how to get the same bus that brought us to the Village back to the station to save our lives, again thankfully we purchased a map and we ended up walking back to catch the train. Whenever we decide to return home we are going to be in good shape.

By the time we got back to our hotel we were so hot and sticky that all we wanted were showers...that is until we discovered that there was no hot water in our room. So I call concierge-again-and report this and they say that a repair guy will be up. Jim took a quick, cold shower and I decided to wait. About an hour later, I'm still waiting so I have Jim call concierge and that's when they inform us that there is a switch, it looks just like a light switch, on the wall outside the bathroom that needs to be turned on in order to get hot water, just another one of those things that you would never think "This switch looks important, maybe I'll leave it on" so problem solved. Hopefully concierge will remember me for my charming personality and not the number of times I called because that's not what I'm used to.

Tomorrow is Jim's first day of work and today's exercise has exhausted us so stay tuned, it's only going to get more interesting knowing us.