KL, anyone?

So this morning, everyone was up early, Jo and Tom to catch flights, the others, who knows why. I figured, "What the hell?" and joined the two. At the airport I got on the same flight as they headed for Kuala Lumpur. An hour later, we touched down in KL. From the domestic airport to the Sentral train station, Jo and I said goodbye to Tom and hoppd on the monorail. Packs and all. Fifteen million stares later and a photo having been taken of us by two Chinese dudes, we found a place to stay.

In what they call the Golden Triangle, we are at Summer Guest House. We surveyed a few recommended spots but decided on a basement room at Summer. It's in the basement, no window and is basically a bunker. The fan in the room at max capacity sounds like a chopper above you and is actually pretty soothing when trying to get to sleep. Linda, the manager of the house gave us a good deal and we'd seen a couple of strange places already.

The Golden Triangle is shopping mecca in KL. They even have a Forever 32 (as I call it). We spent the day walking getting acclimated with the city. I dropped off some laundry and we explored the city. In the evening, we took an outside bistro table and ordered chicken with coconut milk rice. It was good but spicy. And as they dropped us the bill, they told us we had to pay right then. The prices apparently change for dinner at 7pm and, from what we understood, we had to pay right then to avoid paying dinner prices. The family of six next to us, however, had not yet received much less paid their bill. I have to admit, I'm still confused why they wanted us out so quickly.

After dinner, we headed for the Petronas Towers. Malaysia's Twin Towers were built of Islamic construction out of a special cement in squares fitted on top of each other to make an octagon, a traditional Islamic design. At one point, the lights of both buildings went out. I figured, hmph, it's run by a gas company. Maybe they cut off the lights to conserve energy. We then realized that it was in honor of Earth hour. How cool, right? It hurts a little bit, I have to admit, to look around here and see so many things that New York has (or once had). A Times Square, Twin Towers. I cannot imagine what would have happened were the attack to have happened here. It's still unimaginable and staring up at these buildings, it was magnificent and yet painful. The city is a huge mix of cultures and religions just like New York.