Another slow morning culminates when the access card we have don’t work at the door to the gym.
Back up in the room we find that check out is 11 not 12 and start getting ready to move out. First breakfast though. Muesli with banana for breakfast is heavenly after a long time with white bread and eggs. 

We’re out at 11:01 and check out. The check out processes in Norway are usually done in a flash here it’s another thing all together. The lobby is filled with people waiting for their rooms to be cleared by one guy that probably earns his salary in the hour between 10 and 11. It’s finally our room that’s cleared and we’re out of there.

It’s a short walk to our new hotel and lucky us, the room is available. It’s a small hotel in a back alley, but it seems clean and it has a nice little backyard. We settle in and spend a little while in the yard reading.

Then we go to the “hop on hop off” bus and drive off. It’s a small price to pay for getting around the city and it stops on all the major sights. We take it a few stops and get off at the National Museum.

Malaysia have a long history, stretching back 300.000 years. There’s an important findings made here that shone light on human migration back then. In recent years there’s been colonial powers like the Portuguese, Dutch and British present. Independence was made in 1957, but from 1948 to 1960 there was a big internal trouble with the communists. Pretty grotesque behavior by the commies there for a while.

The old capital, Malak, are on our to-do list, so I’ll come back to that one. Kuala Lumpur was made capital after they leveled out the marsh and chopped down the rain forest here. A little if it is still left within the city’s border.

After the museum we stopped by the royal palace where we got ten minutes to take pictures. Then the sky opened up and it rained like crazy. We had to get lunch so at one stops got off, ran like maniacs in the rain and into a restaurant. We got good food, but both started to get cold. Back on that bus, now even wetter after running back to the bus stop, we had to sit indoor where the air con blew on max. Now we really started to get cold.

We played with the thought of getting off and grabbing a cup of hot coffee, but the rain ease up and we got off at Kuala Lumpur Tower. 421 metres high it’s a pretty good view over the city from the upper deck. Since we came right after the rain had ended there were almost no-one else there. We were a total of six people on the upper deck. No noise, no pushing and shoving, just a nice view with a dramatic skyline.

We waited for what seemed like forever for the bus to come after we got down. It’s rush hour and it’s unpredictable when they arrive. We met the bus after ours on the way up the hill as we drove down. Maybe five minutes between the two then. No worries, we’ve got all the time in the world.

We got off on known ground and walked into the street close to our hotel that’s filled with restaurants out in the street (Jalan Alor). We ended up ordering way too much and took to go half a duck for tomorrow. Strangely the chicken and ducks are way bigger here in Kuala Lumpur than in Vietnam.

We install ourselves in the new room. I find that the shower gotta be the best one yet, and the air con is working. The bed is atleast half the size of the one we had on Phu Quoc and a lot softer than most beds here in Asia. I guess in gonna sleep like a baby anyway.

“Reading – it’s the third best thing to do in bed.”

– Becca Fitzpatrick