150402 Twin Towers

woke up to have our breakfast then checked out at 12pm. breakfast was so-so, but at least there was toast.

we got ready and walked over to Berjaya times square. so familiar with the routes now... it takes about 15mins to walk over. then from there we walked to Lot 1 and pavilion. the lowest exchange rate was at sungei wang, it was at a shop just near the entrance, at 1SGD to 2.685RM... damn, and we changed at the mrt station for 2.65. bleahs.

Pavilion is generally a shopping mall with lots of branded stuff, not really my kind of place. there was a looooooooooong bridge that led from the pavilion area all the way to klcc and the twin towers so we walked the whole stretch for another 15-20mins to reach the twin tower. before the tower there's a shopping mall with a nice fountain.

twin towers is just behind the mall.

 

there's an elevator which leads to the souvenir and ticketing booth of twin tower.

 

but gosh, I don't know what's inside the tower but I won't pay 80 RM to enter... even though it's like limited tickets per day. if you hold a Malaysia pass you actually can enter at less than half the price =_=

so we just hung around the gift shops and looked at the digital panels around.

there's also a mini model of the tower here

after we're done with the towers we went to eat at KFC as they have 5RM black pepper pasta and cheese mash potato, then drank crème brulee milkshake at Wendy's.

we then walked all the way back to Berjaya times square to get our tickets at about 830pm for king's man. since we have some time before that we walked around, drank the nice tw bubble tea again and I even went to have a try at archery~ can't remember the price but it was probably 16RM for 16 shots or something. too bad we couldn't split the arrows so I had to finish all of them.

 

hehe I look so pro right.

 

namchin also took a video of me shooting. lol. seems like this is not an easy sport, lots of arm strength needed!!



after our archery, we settled down for our popcorn and movie time. king's men is pretty awesomeeeeee omg. love the movie. 00 was watching it for the 2nd time. ou should absolutely catch it if you haven't. it's a little violent but the plot is great!



there wasn't a lot of shops opened after our movie ended so we just took a slow walk back to our hotel, hung around the lobby area and waited till our bus came at 11.59pm.

then it was another 5hrs back to SG.

unfortunately we experienced some problem at the custom because electronic cigarettes were apparently prohibited by the health and sciences authority, so the item got detained. after having lost his hp, this was another blow to 00 and I think it was probably the unluckiest and most expensive trip he's ever had... (so I say, why take the extra item around zzz, that thing did piss me off a little and I was a tiny little glad it's gone)

we reached lavender around 530am, but the trains weren't moving yet, so we walked to city hall and took the first train that departed around 6am. home sweet home~!

150401 Masjid Jamek

so after having learnt that i have absolutely no plans for the tour in KL - or rather, i had only planned for shopping at berjaya and shopping at chinatown - 00 did research last night till almost 3am and came up with our itinerary for today. that's what you get when you leave itinerary planning to me, with a note that says 'i don't care where we will visit and i won't remember anything anyway'. so here's a map of the area we're at. hotel transit is just opposite plaza rakyat. the current hotel is near pasar seni.

we had breakfast around 9am at the hotel. charcoal bread is refreshing but it would have been better if they had a toaster. the selection wasn't much though.

we then rested till 12 and moved to our new hotel at 5 elements, which is just a less than 10mins walk away, near chinatown. place is definitely not as nice or clean.

headed out and walked to masjid jamek, which is just 1 stop away. no trains this time, i just get lost easily even if it's mrt. =_= so we reached the place which is significant for malaysia's independence, but this clock tower is all there is to see there.

walked a little ahead and you can see the very pretty mosque (not allowed to enter unless you're covered head to toes.... for ladies)

and if you walk past the mosque you're headed for the city gallery + national library upon crossing the road.

to the left is the city gallery we were looking for

and we're here!

i think this place is an absolute must-visit for anyone going to KL. the entrance fee is RM5 but it is usable as cash voucher within the museum! so this is the structure we're at.

there's a mish-mash of artwork past this area.

guess who's on the artwork here too

the main point of the gallery here is actually the lighting display... whhhhoooo

it introduces the state of KL as it is now

and talks of the future plans in the next 5 years

and then lights up all the little buildings there. i believe the lights were all shone on from above and not within the structure itself.

and that's it~

we made our exit to the souvenier shops where there were people working live to build these things (photos not allowed btw but i took it too fast oops!)

and the coffee shops sells awesome kaya toast and eggs for RM10 (just exactly our entrance ticket price)

stopped at the library next for a quick look.not a lot of books there actually but there's a little area that tells of KL's history and there's A LOT of sofa for people to laze around and sleep.

opposite the library and across the roads lie a textile museum..

i think my dear spam all these photos for his own usage but i'll just post them anyway!

it's a pretty tiny area with souvenir shop, despite how big the building looks. so we finished it in less than 10mins, then went outside the museum and to its right (back to where we were before crossing the road over to city gallery).

back to the area with the clock tower is a relatively clean street that looks like chinatown (or a cleaner version of it, except it sells malay food and stuff),, called kasturi walk.

not much to do and we eventually ended up back at berjaya times square for dinner and movie.

btw there's a really fantastic tw bubble tea in this area and we drank it for 3 days in a row.

we tried their green tea which had white pearls at the top and milk pudding at the bottom. it was pure heaven. we tried their milk tea too.. yumm! the green tea is still the best!

had dinner at kenny rogers but realised that king's men wasn't showing that day. caught some wifi at starbucks with a bit of thieving skills to check for other slots but we weren't in luck. here's the code if you need it!

we walked around the streets we were at yesterday before leaving for the day.

150331 KL Hotel Transit

you know, this has got to be the worst day of the entire trip. it still pains me whenever i think of today.

the day started off badly enough, when we realised the agency didn't assign us a breakfast voucher. we got up at 8am and had to argue with the receptionist because breakfast was written in the itinerary sent to me, but not given when i received the room. the travel agency only opened at 9am and the staff here were all so inflexible and incompetent that nobody knows how to handle such things except wait and wait for the travel agency to clear.

we only got a final confirmation that our rooms didn't come with breakfast at 10+am (after i made several calls to demand them to be quicker in following up, since breakfast stops at 1030am). i had to speak with kkkl travel directly, and they explained that they forgot to notify that in exchange for the upgrade to the triple room, we had to forfeit our breakfast.

seriously, who asked for a triple room upgrade anyway?!?!?!?!

as an apology, the agency told us that we could get our own breakfast as long as we don't exceed sgd10 per person, which was a rather good way to end the whole episode. the buffet breakfast was almost cleared and not much food was left so we didn't pay the 28RM to go in in the end and ended up having KFC for breakfast. macdonald didn't accept credit card and i didn't want to make a loss with another currency exchange at genting, so we went with kfc. thankfully we could use credit card there, and we treated ourselves to almost 4 sets of breakfast (where the cashier seems to have miscounted all the food and we eventually paid less). the thing is, while i'm writing this, i realised i've lost my receipts and don't think i'll be able to claim for all these in the end. jeez. T_____T

that's not the end of our bad day. we were told to take the free shuttle bus to the bus depot where there's a straight bus to KL. however when we reached there the bus service is no longer available and we were told to take the cable cars to mushroom farm instead. desperate, i asked if the travel agencies could send us to KL and i guess i was lucky because there was a KKKL bus (the driver was the same guy who drove us here!) heading to KL at that time and he could drop us off at the KL mrt station at 10RM per person.

from there, we needed to take either the MRT or bus to our hotel at puduraya. tired, we wanted to ask if the taxis could take us there and they quoted 30RM (it's just 4 stations away, mind you). it was ridiculous and as i saw the bus coming, we hopped on the bus and paid just 2RM per person to get us to puduraya in the end. take that, you lousy cab!!!

even at puduraya i was a bit lost as we didn't have GPS to find our way to the hotel. ended up asking everyone including cab drivers, students, sales people on where we could find our hotel. luckily we managed to find it within 20mins of walking around. it was actually just 10mins away from pude sentral. phew!!

the next good thing that happened was the hotel. it was absolutely clean and they provided toothbrushes! i had dulcolax the day before and it was just nice i was able to use the toilet and flush out everything within me at the right time. yay!! but after that the toilet water was all the way yellowish even after multiple flushing. ewww.

the hotel at least got our bed requirements correct.

oh and water is provided too!! you know how important free water is. genting FWH provided no water. at least there was a pot for us to boil water but it was still a shitty place. it was around 143RM per night here or 65SGD, quite pricey but it was a good stay and breakfast was included.

so after we settled down, we got a map of the place and i chose to go over to KWC, since it looks like a big mall that i haven't been to. the thought of wholesale outlet equates to cheap clothings, so it's an attraction to me xD it's actually only 1 station away but we didn't want to walk 20mins over since it was really sunny out there. but hell, it's 1 station and i took the wrong direction and it ended up being 3 stations and a long roundabout walk for me =_= i even checked with the people around for the direction and they directed me wrongly. pfftttt.

when we got off, the alley that led to the mall was supposed to be a 5mins walk, but the streets looked so suspicious i thought we were heading the wrong way. there were cloth shops around and the streets looked abandoned and dirty. it looked like some sort of slums where you could be robbed or murdered easily without anyone noticing. at the end of the straight slummish road was the huge mall. ta-da! oh some people here don't even know there's such a mall behind their shops. or maybe they just didn't understand english.

so it's like a 16 floors worth of wholesale clothes and stuff, but the layout didn't look particularly appealing and the shops sort of repeat. we changed our $$ there at 2.67, yay! and we walked a few rounds but 00 got tired of the whole quiet and abandoned building (there was really almost no one around) as well as the suspicious streets that led up to here, so we took a taxi to berjaya times square instead. some taxi drivers quoted RM 10 to get there and refused to turn on their meter so i went with a cabbie who used the meter... but it ended up being RM13 instead due to the jam. jeez.

berjaya is a lot more interesting of course with the big shopping malls, more people and more variation in shops. we had aunt annie's pretzels and watched a funny live episode on these parents buying their lot of 4 children ice cream at baskin robbins (man, i would slap my kids if they cry for ice cream in public). then we went for a toilet break. and then things sort of took a downturn.

00 ended up losing his phone in the toilet, because some guys took it after he left it on the toilet cubicle ledge. it was too late to chase them back and i really didn't want to describe what happened afterwards. i don't know what went into him or me, but it blew up into a horrendous quarrel and night, which lasted past 10pm.

we eventually had dinner while walking along the night streets near berjaya at a french place. i'm surprised i was even selecting a place for dinner. hmph.