Monday, March 15, 2010

Don't let the bed bugs bite!

After our brief rendez-vous in the Perhentian Islands it was time to hit the big city of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur (KL for short). We had heard it was quite a boring city with not much to do. This was definitely the case but Joey and I made the best of it by making an effort to see this sites the city does have.

We arrived by night bus (surprise surprise) quite early in the morning and started to walk over to the monorail through a somewhat sketchy part of town. It was 6 in the morning and not many people were out, which made it even more scary. We made it to the monorail safely and were on our way to the Golden Triangle which is a section of town where all the nightlife and shopping is. It's also apparently where the guesthouses don't have bedbugs, unlike the Chinatown neighbour!

Our guesthouse was on top of what seemed to be an abandoned restaurant. We were greeted by the guesthouse owner who was very nice and helpful. Joey and I still had plenty of time to sleep so we could be refreshed and awake for our day of sightseeing. When we got into our room we inspected for bedbugs because thats what Lonely Planet said to do. It looked like the bed was clear from bugs so we slept soundly!

After our 4 hour nap to make up for the bad sleep on the bus the night before we headed for Chinatown and Little India. Both of which were quite disappointing. It's not like in Canada where there is traditional Chinese architecture and paintings. It's pretty much a modern part of town with a market running through it, not too mention full of other tourists! After that we headed to Little India, which was a little bit more authentic without all the dirt! The smell of curry and incense was delectable.

We decided to make the most of our day and head over to the National Mosque. For those of you who don't know, Islam is Malaysia's official religion and a vast majority of Malays are muslim. The mosque wasn't exactly what Joey was expecting but I thought the architecture was quite modern and pleasing to the eye. Joey was expecting a more traditional looking mosque. Both of us had to wear ugly purple robes. Joey had to cover his tattoos and I had to cover everything but my face. I'm glad the robe was my favourite colour because I may have otherwise been not too pleased. We got a nice tour from a volunteer lady who gave us some insight to the meaning of the architecture in the building. She also showed us some pamphlets on Islam. I am quite curious about this religion for many reasons. This brochures were very informative about why they dress the way the do, what jihad is, what is Ramadan, and why they don't eat pork. It was actually quite interesting.\

That night we woke up to a bedbug feast. Would have been ok if I hadn't been what they were feasting on! We found about 20 bedbugs in the bed. Many of which were full of my blood when we killed them. They weren't attracted to Joey at all, but loved me. After a killing spree we felt ok to go to sleep again. 2 hours later I woke up and turned on the light to see more of the pests in the bed. After another raid, I had a hard time falling back asleep. Despite paying $20 a night for a room, we were still having to deal with bedbugs. It is definitely an apparent problem that guesthouses in KL have to deal with on a daily and weekly basis. We know the place we were staying in was clean and it wasn't because of them (it's more likely other travelers who transfer the bugs) so we decided to stay there for a second night. The next night we just armed ourselves with DEET and checking the bed every 3 hours. We were okay!

The next day Joey and I made our way over to the Petronas Towers which are the 5th tallest buildings in the world. Big whoopty doo. We went quite early in the morning to get our free ticket to go to the bridge that connects the two tours. We had to wait until 4:45 for our showing, so we ended up staying in the mall all day. Both of us bought rash guards for diving and then we saw Alice in Wonderland in the theatre which was quite fun. The bridge itself was only 42 storeys up so it was nothing spectacular, neither was the 3D propaganda Petronas movie we were forced to watch.

The next day we were glad to be getting out of KL. Although it was a nice clean city, there wasn't much to do, and besides it's a city. Joey and I have learned from this trip we don't like cities. Unfortunate for us we were headed to Singapore!

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