Monday, April 7, 2014

Day 82- Welcome To Malaysia. Where Most People Are In Fact Not Malaysian At All And More People Speak English Than In Most Canadian Cities.

Faster than we could say "Singaporean-Malaysian Cruise" our two night cruise was over.  We awoke bright and early at 6:30am and headed down to the main dining room for our last all-inclusive meal.  In keeping with the theme of the cruise, the wait staff managed to get our order wrong and the food also happened to be rather crappy.  I think it was safe to say that we wouldn't be sailing with Royal Caribbean anytime soon again.  Making our way off the ship we had to scan our "cruise identity" cards so that they could keep track of everyone leaving and to make sure everyone's accounts were up to snuff.  As Colleen went to exit, the card machine started beeping rather excessively and everyone was staring at the two of us.  This was in turn followed by her being whisked away by a handful of employees who told her that her account had not been paid.  It turned out that Visa had decided to put a hold on her credit card, which in turn caused her to become the centre of attention for everyone within gawking distance of us.  Thankfully after a quick phone call we got everything sorted out and the crew released Colleen with her sparkling clean criminal record sheet still intact.

If that doesn't look disgusting, I don't know what does.

Now that the cruise was in the past, it was time for us to lug our backpacks across the city to the bus stop.  Luckily we had a few hours to kill before our bus ride to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which was a good thing as the two of us weren't moving too quickly with our 35-pound backpacks in temperatures that were approaching 40 degrees Celsius.  After much pissing and moaning (mostly from Colleen I might add!), we made it to the bus terminal where Colleen immediately sent me on a mission to find a magnet and post card to commemorate our visit to Singapore.  I figured this would be easy given the fact that we were near a major transportation hub.  I was severely wrong.  I marched around for over an hour trying to find her these God-forsaken mementos.  Let me just say she better not ever lose that magnet, cause I lost a lot of bodily fluids to track that fuckin' thing down!

Street feline trying to kill me!


By the time our bus arrived and started to load up a little after noon, I was looking forward to the air conditioning more than anything.  The bus had some of the most spacious accommodations  I have ever seen for this mode of transport and the seats even had some massage mechanism built into them (I couldn't figure out this technology).  The bus ride itself was pretty uneventful, minus the fact that we had to get out with all of our luggage at the Singapore-Malaysia border to clear customs.  This was definitely a hassle bitch, but on the positive side Colleen added a couple of stamps to her passport which excites her almost as much as topless pictures of Charlie Hunnam.  The bus ride ended up taking a couple of extra hours as the traffic was quite heavy due to the Chinese New Year holiday and the fact that we had our daily dose of torrential rainfall. 

I'm not making any promises.


We made it to Malaysia!

 
Arriving in KL (Kuala Lumpur) a little later than we had anticipated, the bus dropped us outside of Berjaya Times Square.  Berjaya happens to be one of the twenty largest shopping malls in the world and its vast amenities include over one thousand stores, a multi-level movie theatre, a bowling alley, an amusement park, an archery range, and a ton of other stuff that I can't be bothered trying to recollect at this exact moment.  Our hotel (Furama Bukit Bintang) was supposedly located only a couple of minutes away, although it probably took us closer to half an hour to find as we were extremely disoriented and overwhelmed by our new surroundings. 
 

Colleen seems unimpressed with one of the largest shopping malls in the world.


...But Colleen they have a roller coaster.
 

Getting in the spirit for the Chinese New Year.

Some interesting things I observed in my first couple of hours in Malaysia:

1) Since it is a Muslim country many of the women wear head gear.

2) The actual percentage of "Malay" people is quite low.  In fact Chinese immigrants make-up 30% of the population, while Indian immigrants make-up a further 15%.

3) I was ignorant to how widely spoken English was.  Just about everyone spoke English and the signs for all the stores (at least in Kuala Lumpur) were in English.

4) Our hotel room had an arrow on the ceiling pointing towards Mecca.  You know, just in case I need to make a pilgrimage.

5) It is not the easiest country to find a beer in! Because of the fact that it is a Muslim country (albeit a liberal one), all of the convenience stores that did sell beer would have signs on the refrigerator doors stating that Muslims were not allowed to purchase it.  But what if the Muslim wears a disguise?

 

Once we got settled in to our room, we headed over to the mall for some good old fashioned Western food.  Unfortunately for us we decided to eat at Nando's, where we received some of the worst service I have ever seen.  I had read that most restaurants in Malaysia tack on a 10% service charge to your bill, so none of the staff seemed to give a fuck if you actually got served or not.  I mean, like 10-15 minutes to grab me a Diet Coke that was ten feet away.  And it's not like they were busy, they just truly did not give a fuck.  We would discover in the coming days that this was par for the course in just about every restaurant  around and my patience (or lack thereof) was being thoroughly tried.

All those people and their damn "Paking".

~Brentski~

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