Day 65 jan 31st
Alarm awoken again.... Three times in one week.... It's like been back at home....
This time it's getting us up for a 6.30 Tuk Tuk ride to the airport...so not so bad really....
Today we leave Cambodia for Malaysia.... Arriving into Kuala Lumper where we'll be staying for the duration of our stay...
The morning air has a chill as we ride through the back streets of Siem Reap but shirees got her North Face coat back out again as her bag can barely contain all she owns so has decided for ease we wear the coat for the flight... This decision saves us on the ride as we both manage to huddle under it until we arrive at the airport...
Siem Reaps airport is lovely looking on arrival... You weave your way trough a lovely flowery and palm tree garden before coming to the drop off zone were we bail out of the Tuk Tuk and check our bags in... Mine comes in at 24.6 kg and Shirees is 19.5 kg.. Plus our hand luggage, which is another large backpack that's pretty heavy.... No wonder our little Honda huffed and puffed on those Vietnamese mountain roads....
We are through security and into the departure lounge straight away... And Shiree shoots straight off to the loo to be sick.... She'd been fine until we arrived at the airport then felt sick... Was sick.... and 3 minutes later now feels fine again.... Crazy !!
We are flying with Air-Asia which is a popular budget airline here like easy jet... The planes nice and modern... Airbus a320 and we are soon airborne.... There's a book in the plane about Malaysia which I open to find a picture of Kuala Lumper... I'd arranged our trip here and told Shiree not to research it so I had to close the book up pretty quick and keep her from looking at it... It was not that hard though as Shiree slept most of the two hour flight which went without issue.... I had an Indian guy sat next to me that was obviously very sleepy.... He acted like a nodding donkey all the way there... I can't believe he didn't wake himself up.... His head was up and down like a yoyo...
We arrive into Kuala Lumper airport bang on time and exit the plane and start the long outdoor walk to the arrivals area.... Malaysia is further south than anywhere we have been before and you can feel its hotter....much hotter !
It's roasting as we walk around the airport in all our heavier cloths... We do get the opportunity to have a good look around the airport as we do though which I enjoyed... Even Shiree wanted to stop to take a few photos of planes with cartoon like graphics on them....
After a lengthy wait at passport control we leave the airport via taxi for our hotel....
You don't have to be in Malaysia long before you notice its a very different country to the other countries we've been to......
It's clean and tidy.... There's law and order, road etiquette and a massive lack of two wheeled transport...that's been replaced by four wheeled transport...
To sum it up, Malaysia is Asia with money, and it's perfect....!
After an hours taxi ride in a car.... Sat on its seat, not in the boot we arrive outside our hotel.... It's a huge, sophisticated high rise hotel has a consiage service... They grab our bags and quickly decide to find a trolley as we go into the hotel to check in.... We are on the 18th floor so jump in the lift and up we go... It's surprising how quickly we climb and within seconds the doors ping open and we find our room... We open the door and its great !! You first enter a large modern living room with an end walk made of glass.... The view of Kuala Lumper is brilliant ! On the left of this room is a door into the bedroom with also has a window wall and from the bedroom you have a lovely modern, dark grey tiled bathroom full of chrome and glass that's clean !! Oh what a novelty.
We spend a couple of hours in the hotel just enjoying our environment... It's a nice place to be.. We lost an hour coming here so by the time we do leave the hotel it's dark... We head out in search of food... This place is huge, and so different from what we've become used too.... There's shopping malls and high rise hotels everywhere.... We are back in the 21st century again.....
There so much money here and it's still really hot... I like it.
We have no idea where we are going, but stumble across a restaurant with an interesting menu... We both go for an Arabian dish called a Kofta Tagine which is a lamb dish and very tasty !! After spending a few hours just relaxing whilst watching the world go by we leave and head off for another wonder... We decide to avoid the Petronas Towers as we are going there
tomorrow so head in any other direction that takes our fancy..... We pass a road that's packed with people eating out in the street, there's Chinese lanterns hanging above the road and food stalls on both sides.... We wonder the road admiring it all... There's more live lobsters and sea food here, it's kept in a cleaner environment than anything we've seen before and looks inviting. We notice some Dragon fruit that's been sliced in half and its dark red like beetroot... It's normally white inside and at first I'm not sure it's not just been died, but then we find more and more on different stalls so buy one and try it.... It's very similar to the white variety but tastes slightly better...
Shiree spots a stall selling freshly squeezed sugerbeat juice... The back half of the stall has a machine that squashes the sugerbeat sticks between two large rollers.... There's a juice trap at the bottom and bottles are filled and sold from this.... It's really quite nice and isn't as massively sweet as you'd imagine it would be..... We're so full we only have a little before screwing the lid back on and saving it till tomorrow....
We're off to the hotel now to bed.... Times flown and it's late....