Seat of Our Pants » Malaysia

Our Favorites – Malaysia Edition

Jaime — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:40:11 +0000

We’re still on our Annapurna trek in Nepal, which is a little too off the beaten track to access the internet. While we’re busy trekking and are off-line, we’ve put together some of our past favorite posts/locations to keep you busy.

Enjoy!

Malaysia:

We’ve been in and out of Malaysia three times on this trip – and we actually never planned on visiting the country in the first place. But, true to the nature of this trip (you know, moving around by the seat of our pants), we didn’t have much of a plan to begin with.

We’ve been to Malaysia three times now because Asia’s discount airline, Air Asia uses Kuala Lumpur as their hub. At first we were just happy to add another country to this trip’s list but as it turns out, we really enjoyed ourselves each time we were there. It’s the perfect place to stock up on travel gear and eat delicious western food.

Check out the best that Malaysia offered us by clicking the photo below:

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur

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Malysian Airline’s Aftermints

Jaime — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:04:55 +0000

These were served to us with dinner on our flight from Delhi to Leh. I figured they were small breath mints but, to my surprise, something all together different fell out of the packet.

Check out the contents by

They tasted like mint, but looked like and had the consistency of birdseed. I spat them out.

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Bearded Bread, Anyone?

Jaime — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:28:03 +0000

We ran across this sign in Kuala Lumpur’s Central Station. It’s a mighty bold statement.

I’m willing to bet that almost everything beats a tart covered in flossy meat. Just sayin’.

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Censorship

Martin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:49:57 +0000

For the most part, traveling as a tourist involves meeting new people, seeing beautiful sights and immersing yourself in a new culture. Sometimes, you are awarded with new impulses and insights into other ways of life.

At other times, travel involves a window into what living under a different form of government means. I was browsing through a copy of The Economist, one of the most reputable and respected publications on the planet, when I saw this huge, black square. The lead image in an article detailing the financial plight of the Los Angeles Porn industry had been blacked out with a magic marker. Apparently, the Malaysian government doesn’t want their citizens to see whatever was underneath; probably a naked bum or two.

Interesting.

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Poste Restante

Martin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:48:31 +0000

If you’re on the road, receiving mail may be a problem. Enter the Poste Restante service – a system where you send your letter or package to a post office. They then hold it for the recipient till they pick it up. It is pretty cool that this still works – I haven’t heard of anyone using this service outside of 1930s books, but today I found myself at the Kuala Lumpur main post office.

Me: any poste restante for Martin Engstrom?

Malaysia Post: sure, here’s your parcel.

Me: Thanks.

Couldn’t be smoother. We like it.

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Kuala Lumpur

Jaime — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:00:45 +0000

Thanks to that super lame movie Entrapment, starring Sean Connery and Katherine Zeta Jones (circa 1999), I pictured Kuala Lumpur as a very different place than it actually is. Rather than the ramshackle ghetto (plus fabulous twin tower) depicted in the movie, the city is actually modern and easy to get around. It has fast become our favorite Southeast Asian city – our little home away from home.

Air Asia, the discount airline that is responsible for making our flights around SE Asia so easy, uses Kuala Lumpur as their hub. It’s for this reason that we’re here for a third time in four months. That, and you can eat sushi here. And drink wine. And drink lattes. Really, the list could go on and on…KL (as it’s known here) is a place where you can let the food and wine snob come out for a while.

Fried rice be damned! It’s filet mignon with truffle shavings for me tonight.

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The Daily Downpour

Jaime — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:54:24 +0000

When it rains in Kuala Lumpur, it RAINS. We were caught yesterday by the deluge while on a shopping trip. This video is a clip of that downpour. It rained this hard for an hour straight.

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Fish Eat Tourist

Martin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:38:10 +0000

Normally it’s the other way around. However, this is the latest trend in Malaysian spa treatments: You let 10,000 fish nosh on the dead skin on your feet. It is supposed to be the cure-all for everything from Corn Virus to Athlete’s Foot.

The owner of the feet on the picture said that it felt ‘weird but nice’ and that ‘you get used to it’. It’s not that we wimped out or anything. It’s just that we have perfect feet, the both of us.

No, really.

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Seat of Our Travel Plans

Martin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:07:41 +0000

While we’re chipping away at our projects here on eastern Flores, our medium term travel plans are beginning to crystallize.

The immediate future sees us flying to Bali on the 7^th, where we’re set to spend three days. At the moment, Bali is chock full of tourists, but we’re hoping to make the best of our little stay there. We’d be happy if we can see a couple of temples and take in a performance or two.

After Bali, we have a three day stop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This will be the third time on this trip that we’ve touched base with KL. Bangkok used to be the main travel hub in South East Asia, but evidence points to KL being the number one these days. Good for us: we happen to like it – it has all the modern conveniences, and we plan to re-stock on a bunch of travel supplies while we’re there. Oh and they have great sushi and high speed internet!

After that, we’re off to India. We’re flying in to Delhi, but we’ll only stay there for a night before we hop on the next flight. Our destination is Leh, far up in the northern province of Ladakh: the Tibetan part of India. Once up there, we hope to do some trekking, but as we’re going there at the end of the season we’ll be pretty weather dependent. Altitude acclimatization will also be a factor: Leh sits at more than 3000 meters (9000 ft).

Looking further ahead we hope to make our way southwards from Ladakh through Himachal Pradesh, Uttarkhand and maybe Punjab and Bihar. After that, the picture is muddier, but Nepal is definitely in our sights.

We’ll report back here as soon as we know more!

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Say What??

Martin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:51:28 +0000

When traveling, you are constantly exposed to languages you don’t understand. For some reason, my brain never stops trying to make sense out of what I hear and read. Sometimes, though, you just have to shake your head and move on.

Nothing to see here, folks …

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