updated later...

I got two tickets up to Kuala Lumpur for Mas and myself. It be a great time to head up and see a bit of Malaysia for the weekend of the 26th-28th. Considering that it takes only 4 hours to get there by bus (compared to the check-in, flight and transport via plane), it made good sense to take the S$25 coaches. It took some convincing to get Mas to agree and I am unsure how the weekend would have been if she hadnt come along. The trip was great and worked our brilliantly.

 

Mas's friend David Wood hosted us at his place and was most hospitable. Friday was relaxing, and I met up with Angie Woon as we had arranged during the week. Her invite to visit her in KL had been pending since August last year and was possibly the only time I would have to take her up on it.

 

The weekend was a great break from the normal, organised Singapore. Strangely, Kuala Lumpur has a lot in common with Johannesburg. It is a big, sprawling city with plenty of land, developed with a fair amount of infrastructure (roads, skyscrapers, subburbs) and a few more featrures such as a monorails and subway. The ciy is crowded, bustling with various hubs of entertainment and shipping. It was taffic congested as per ususal, something totally strange to me and absolutely unbearable. We waited 20 minutes to drive into the parking lot at Mid Way mall and then a good while on our evening trip to Kuala Selangor.

 

Sam, a friend of Davids grrlfriend organised an evening trip into the north of Malaysia on saturday, 27tth to go view the glow worms. We drove about an hour and got lost a few times *hehe* until we found our evening dinner. It had become 10pm by then and by-then starving, found a local hawker hall serving chilli crab, pepper crab, chinese bread, squid, prawns and the like. All six of us ate well, and had as much as we could eat for the surprisingly low amount of RM92. This didnt leave us much time to head to the firefly viewing which we had planned. I think we made it onto the last tour along the river, an attraction that had been popular even 20 years ago. Mas and I were aked onto a low floating wooden boat, directed by a single standing oarsman along the rather murky water. She was quite surprised by her own adventurous self claiming she would otherwise never do this (hehe, and even remarking that her mother would not believe her if she told her). The scene was serine with a vast open sky, little movement around nor in the air, and the christmas tree like shimmering of the fire flies along the waters edge. It was a pefect setting, and thus perhaps chance that I did have the opportunity to go with Mas. She strung together a question in Malay to enquire about how deep the water is, which they claim was over 30 feet and quite a dauting thought for a girl who can not swim. Luckily this was after the steady paced trip and return on the river.

 

The remainder of the weekend was slow and relaxing. Time to sleep in, some good moments to chat and interact, and a new impression of Malaysia. While being Islamic and a mix of culturures, I definitely found it changed my initial perception and gave me some clarity on what this culuture has achieved.

 

The ride back ended in near disaster, attributable to my fault and that alone. I had mixed 19:00 with 09:00pm, and thus missed the last bus home from KL to Singa. It just so happened that we arrived at 20:30pm to check into our bus when Transtar had put into operation a second bus which was ready to depart. In the confusion of realising that I had mixed my timing, we quickly secured two new seates on this just-about-to-leave coach to head home. Thank god this bus had been put into service and there was space for us two lost passangers.