Day 1 in KL

Rooms were quite nice (similar to the Bangkok rooms). We took a short nap and showered and I went and booked a city tour taxi at 2 pm. This was a mini van, and it was supposed to take us to Batu Caves, then a batik factory, a pewter factory and a place where you can get cheap duty free watches.

Batu caves is about 40 km outside KL and is a Murugan temple inside a large set of limestone caves. There are 272 steps up to the main cave, and we climbed those painfully. After almost 2 hours in that cave (consisting of a combination of sight seeing and attending some rituals and abhishegams), we returned down to the car. The driver had informed us in advance that we had a max of 45 mins the cave. Given that we took over twice that amount, we had to cancel everything else in the itinerary that day as the driver needed to return to the hotel for his next round at 6. So we walked over to a nearby vege restaurant and ate dosais and coconut milk. Returned to the hotel by 6 pm.

After a short rest again, we walked over to the Petronas towers (the erstwhile tallest buildings in the world), did some sight seeing there, and then walked over to the KL Menara tower. This is a telecom tower about 270 meters high, and has a viewing deck and restaurant at the top. After a long long walk (underestimated by me) in the humid KL evening, we dragged our sweaty bodies to the base of the tower and awaited the lift that would take us up for the view. And what a view! That and the very informative (and free) audio commentary were well worth the price of admission and the effort. Came back down at closing time (10 pm) and took 2 cabs over to Chinatown (Petaling Street) aka piracy central.

Petaling Street in KL's Chinatown is a huge mass of Gucci and Louis Vuitton handbags, Rolex watches, the latest DVDs, tacky souvenirs and all kinds of fruits and nuts. All fake (except the fruits and nuts). And therefore, all cheap. The street is about 200m long, and 10m wide, and has 2 'aisles' for people to walk down, with stalls on either side. Bargaining is a must, though if you bargain and leave without buying, you risk being heaped with abuses about your ancestry, your country, religion, race, colour, hairstyle… all par for the game.

Naturally we couldn't resist. Though getting there at 10.30 pm left us with barely an hour to do anything useful. Still in that time, we snagged the following:

1. I had been lusting after a Louis Vuitton watch (which I had seen in the local LV showroom) for the longest time. Naturally at $10,000+ I couldn't afford it, and even if I could, wouldn't have paid that much for a watch. So when I saw the same (well almost the same) watch for RM 10 (RM = Malaysian Ringgit), or about US$ 2.50, I snapped it up.
   
2. Vi picked up a 'North Face' backpack for his laptop for RM 50.
   
3. Sa picked up a Gucci bag for RM 40.

Amazing thing is, all of them look absolutely real. Well almost all of them - when I got back home, I realised that my LV watch was basically a large bit of molded metal with an ordinary clockwork stuck in it. There were 2 buttons along the side that didn't do anything useful - in fact, they were part of the metal body and you couldn't even press them! Well, can't expect much for that price!

The shops closed by 11 to 11.30, and we had just gotten into the swing of things and had barely covered 10% of the market. So we resolved to come back the next day. Took a cab back (one cab) to the hotel, paying the cabbie RM 15 (normal RM 10 + RM 5 for accommodating 5 of us).

Dinner was simple - pulikachal with rice, rasam (yes we brought it along in a bottle!) and chips. Didn't take a flight, so there were no curds :)