Muddy Estuary

Muddy Estuary? Confused? Muddy Estuary means Kuala Lumpur in Malay, a city that grew from a tin mining village into the metropolis it is today. It now has a population of 6.5 million and is an astonishing city where every corner brings a new surprise. Before all that though I must finish the entry that has now been broken up into 3 separate parts:

Kota Kinabalu - Holiday in Borneo Pt. 3

So the final part of this entry concludes the visit of my parents and my time in Borneo. The entire week was so very different to what I have experienced in my travels in the last 15 months and I have drawn up a few conclusions on this. Firstly though, our last day together in Borneo was an excellently chilled out affair which included a nice stroll around the city. We stopped for lunch at the seafront for Thai food, which was easily as good as the food in Thailand. It rained heavily for quite a while but when it ended we had time to walk around a bit and make sure dad had plenty of pictures to go back home with. Mum and dad packed everything in the evening and had to get up at 4am the following morning to catch their flight home. It was a hurried goodbye to ensure they didn't miss the flight and it felt almost like I was saying goodbye to guests visiting my home.

During the day me and Briony watched a film and finished off the Pimms by the side of the pool before catching a taxi to the airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur. We arrived at about half 11 and had no idea where we were staying. We made our way to the Chinatown area and bumped into, none other than, Andy! He had booked us in for a night in a hostel and even though it was very late none of us were tired so we stopped for a drink until 2.30am when the bar shut.

- End of Kota Kinabalu - Holiday in Borneo -

Okay so I mentioned a few conclusions I had drawn in relation to travelling and holiday-ing and the differences between the two. So the first is the very obvious comfort vs. cost. Your on holiday, why sacrifice comfort for just a few extra ringgits? (Malaysian currency) It all makes sense but it did take me a few days of adjusting to not break down everything we did in costs and compare it to other experiences. Travelling is a different experience altogether here. If you want to be away for a long time you have to stretch every rupiah, ringgit, dollar, baht, etc, etc. This is most often achieved by hunting for the cheapest places to stay, which often leads to staying in some awful, awful places. The other way is to eat where the locals eat; the food is good and you wont get sick - normally. However you can get bored of this. Noodles and rice as a staple can get a bit bland so trying different food stalls or restaurants mixes things up a bit. Another stark difference is sweat and cleanliness. I very much enjoyed being able to wear jeans inside restaurants and being able to take a hot shower whenever I wanted. That was the well to tell the backpackers from those on holiday - make-up and smell.

Another obvious difference was to be able to get around easier and stress free. Organising trips away from the hotel meant pick-ups, drop-offs and English speaking guides all along the way. Along with this comes a greater sense of safety and security compared to taking local transport. I have just read a responsibletravel.com magazine in which one article advises travellers to reduce their carbon footprint by travelling overland and not by plane. When holidaying in lands afar this is obviously impossible but do I travel overland to reduce my carbon footprint or is it to save money? I would be lying if I said the former.

A few more differences in favour of holidays:

> Better service
> Better Western food
> Cool down in a swimming pool
> Faster and better transport
> Stay right on a beach (or other place of interest)
> Free toiletries
> Nice room with TV, etc

And some in favour of travelling:

> Greater sense of experiencing culture
> Stay right in the middle of town
> Getting lost and discover more in exploration
> Meet more locals and travellers
> Your money goes to help local communities and businesses
> Easy to change plans

On top of all this I have found it very interesting to watch someone who has never been to the far east seeing it for the first time. When you have spent so long travelling it is easy to see past what newcomers see on first arrival. While this can be advantageous (such as how dirty some places can be) it also means you forget how people might see the locals and what their day to day lives consist of. Transferring back to travelling from this holiday has encouraged me to want to speak to other people more and to realise that each place is so completely different to the last. Plus we stole all the toiletries!

Back to Kuala Lumpur

The area of Kuala Lumpur we stayed in was just south of the Chinatown block. Chinatown was mostly filled with markets very similar to those in Bangkok's Khao San road. On our first day we explored the city by walking to the famous KL TV Tower. The TV Tower stood tall in the center of the city and was lit up at night so it can be seen by those at ground level (and probably those at plane level). The tower is nested in a forest sanctuary at the heart of the city. In this "forest" it is quite easy to forget you are in a huge city. We didn't go up to the top of the tower as the weather wasn't great and we knew we could go up the even more famous Petronas Twin Towers for free instead. So we walked off to find a bookstore to discover what else is recommended to do in KL. The bookstore was situated on one of KL's many massive shopping centers and we found out there was another shopping center which sounded worth seeing. Why? Because it had a theme park. Yes, a theme park inside a shopping center!

The theme park was ridiculous. I did not expect it to be so big, but it was decked out with a massive roller coaster and several other thrill rides dotted around it including one similar to Ranger on Brighton Pier and one much like Rameses Revenge. It was a very funny few hours and we did not expect it at all. We strolled back in another direction as it got dark and saw the TV Tower lit up like a beacon.

On the Saturday we walked to the Merdeka Square. Merdeka means Independence and the square has a massive flagpole to commemorate Malaysia's independence from Britain in 1957. We were very intrigued on arriving at Merdeka Square as some sound testing was going on and a huge stage had been erected in front of the flagpole. We spoke to an old Indian man who told us to come back in the evening as there was going to be a festival of some sort. We then carried on our walk to the National Mosque - a very new building which we weren't allowed inside of - and to the Kuala Lumpur National Museum. The museum was really good and gave a good (if slightly biased) account of Islam history in SE Asia and in particular Malaysia. After visiting the museum we walked over to the Twin Towers to get a look of it. On the way we accidently found the Little India Saturday Market. A bustling and colourful market which sold a variety of foods and clothing. We came back here for dinner and tried all sorts of things including a sort of egg wrapped samosa and sweet spring rolls. We hooked back round to the Merdeka Square to watch some of the concert. It was packed out and looked really stunning.

The following morning we got up really early so we could queue for tickets to go up the Twin Towers. We took the train there and got to the building at about 8am only to find that we were about 1100th in the queue. We were quite lucky actually as an hour and a half later we finally got our tickets to go up later in the afternoon with very few tickets left. We took the train back to the area we stayed in for breakfast and took our time trying to plan where we wanted to go next. In the afternoon we went back over to the Twin Towers where we watched a short film about the building and architecture of the buildings before taking the super fast lift to floor 41 where we walked along the sky bridge that links the two buildings together. The views weren't all that incredible as the city is always shrouded in cloud at that time of day but it was brilliant to look down from the height.

We stayed around the towers as it got dark so we could see it lit up at night. When we had taken our fill of photographs we caught the train back and watched some football before heading to bed. The following morning we checked out and jumped on the bus to the Cameron Highlands. We are now in the Tanah Rata town and are having a great time. I will tell you all about it soon!