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.
|
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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