Filling in the gaps

LITTLE INDIA, SINGAPORE - 2nd December 2009

Having just undertaken an epic feat of packing, I am shortly departing for Changi Airport and onwards to Australia. Before leaving, however, I thought I'd write one last blog from Asia and fill in a few bits and pieces that didn't make it into my sleep-deprived entry from KL.

I'll start with my hostel. In classic backpackers' fashion, I decided on a place to stay by opening up Lonely Planet, looking at the first recommended place, and going there. The place is called the Prince of Wales, and is an Aussie-joint that features a pretty good bar downstairs (with your 10th beer on the house!), and a large dorm room that must sleep about 20 people upstairs. Being what it is, it is full of Europeans, mainly Brits, 95% of whom are en route to Australia. The setup is great - the atmosphere of the place means you invariably meet lots of great people who've usually had some pretty amazing experiences in their own travels. For example, I went wandering down to Chinatown with a couple of guys this morning, and one of them is a New Zealander who basically travels the world doing freelance photography. He's been to some 150 countries, and seriously knows his stuff - but had some great tales to tell.

Anyway, the big feature of Singapore yet to be mentioned, and what I am definitely going to miss the most when I leave, is the food. Going back to what I said in an earlier blog about Singapore combining everything, cuisine here caters to everyone. At one end, there's the expensive side. Last Thursday evening I met up with yet another fellow Pembrokian, William Abi-Habib, who's just moved out here with a new big-money job with a Korean construction firm. He's worked like a dog, but as Friday was a national holiday we were able to chill on Thursday night down at Boat Quay - a fashionable restaurant area on the Singapore River. Dinner included lobster, tiger prawns, seafood noodles and an excellent white wine - I have no idea what the cost was but I owe Habib a damn nice meal when he comes back to London!

At the other end of the scale though, I've been a regular customer at a plenty of the city's many Food Halls. They are a great invention - take the open seating plan of the Food Courts you see in British shopping centres, but fill the edges of the hall with a multitude of stall-like structures, each one selling a certain speciality at a bargain price. Different parts of town have different specialities it seems, but what I've sampled has ranged from seafood noodle soup to duck fried rice to mutton biriyani to mixed parathas with sambhar - all excellent, none more than about £1.50.

Then, there's the chilli crab - a local speciality that I sampled with Rui and Neha on Saturday night. Mangloreans would see the similarity with a classic crab curry - it's fully shelled crabs cooked in an incredible curry, and you're given an apron at the table and use your hands to break open the shells and get to the sumptuous crab meat. It's a mission, but a seriously rewarding one!

A final thing to mention before I go (I'm now late so better be quick) is Times Square Mall in Kuala Lumpur. People in London got excited about the size of Westfield when it opened, and indeed the size of Bluewater. You should come to KL and see this place. Take the physical area of Westfield, and make it 14 stories tall, all filled with shops, except one section that is filled with a massive indoor roller coaster. The place is mind-bogglingly vast - the economist in me was struggling to understand just how so many shops in one place is financially viable... but it is something that has to be seen to be believed... particularly when you're on the 14th floor looking down at row after row after row of escalators, intertwining down to the depths of the building where you see a floor... but that floor itself is 5 stories up. Crazy.

Now I'm seriously late, so this ends this. Next stop, the Land Down Under.

Sleep 0, KL 1

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - 30th November 2009

In a move away from the norm on this blog, I'm going to briefly adopt a writing style honed to perfection by a Miss Z. Anderson of (the original) Gotham City.

29th November 2009:

• 8.45am-9.30am: wake up, have shower, make breakfast, brush teeth, get changed, leave
• 9:45am-4.45pm: Sentosa Island (+transport) with Neha (another Pembrokian visiting Singapore)
• 4.45pm-5.45pm: Another shower, pack things for Kuala Lumpur
• 6pm-10.30pm: Night Zoo safari with Neha with transfer to/from her hostel
• 10.30pm-11pm: Walk 2km from Little India to Golden Mile Complex to catch KL bus
• 11.30pm-4.30am: Bus journey - too cold/short a journey to sleep.

30th November 2009

• 4.30am-5am: Walk around aimlessly in deserted KL city streets. Get some Malaysian cash from an ATM.
• 5am-5.30am: Overhear some British accents and befriend a motley crew of a couple from Cornwall, a guy from London and two Norweigian girls - all have been up all night. Have a sociable beer before they get a taxi home.
• 5.30am-7.15am: Sit in 24 hour internet cafe as nothing else is open. Pass time/bring blog up to date.
• 7.15am-8am: Walk to Petronas Towers to join queue for tickets to observation bridge
• 8am-8.45am: Towers closed to public on Mondays (who knew?!) - spend hours taking photos of Towers from various angles.
• 8.45am-10.30am: Walk to various tourist spots (galleries etc), have breakfast.
• 10.30am-3.30pm: Take Monorail to Chinatown - walk around, see sights, have lunch, walk around some more, see cool historic buildings
• 3.30-6pm: Discover massive rainforest by the side of a main road - go exploring up random dirt path. Turns out to be massive protected rainforest (see below) - get totally knackered but v.satisfied. Walk back into town.
• 6.30pm-present: Wander into Times Square Mall. Mind-bogglingly massive. Have dinner.
• 11.30pm-4.30am: Bus leaves back for Singapore.

Roughly speaking, I've not had a proper bit of shut-eye in about 36 hours, and in the interim period have walked all over Sentosa Island (a big theme-park style semi-man-made island to the south of the city), all around the Night Zoo, all the way from Little India to Golden Mile, and then spent all of today (16 hours since 4.30am) walking all over KL - all of which in typically equatorial humidity. I'm absolutely shattered, and have resorted to spending a lengthy period of time here in the internet cafe not so much for the internet as for the comfortable chair and the air conditioning. However, I don't think I have ever been more satisfied with any other 36 hour period of travelling - especially when I come to write it all down, and you realise just how much you've done and how much you've seen (and how far you've walked... although you can't really replicate that in words).

Today in KL has seemed like a dream. The fact that I arrived in the middle of the night has given my time here a strange time-warped dimension - it's as if I've somehow fabricated extra hours in the day. Such a feeling prevailed throughout the day - every time I looked at my watch I was continually surprised as to how early it was. Looking back from the evening, you realise just how easy it was to see so much when you just wander around (especially with a map!).

KL has been cool (though definitely not literally) - it didn't immediately stand out to me in the way Singapore did, but then no other city ever has. But wandering around - and wandering about I did - you gradually get a feel for the vibe of the place. The Petronas Twin Towers are the standout attraction, but there's far more to the city that them. All the same, they are the most beautifully constructed skyscrapers you'd ever want to see - their towering height is elegantly balanced by a gradual tapering of its chrome structure; the tapering itself grouped into 5 distinct blocks symbolising the 5 pillars of Islam. Photos will follow once I'm back in Singapore.

KL's finest feature in my eyes was, however, found by complete accident on my way to pick up another Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt to add to my collection. Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve, it turns out, is located in Kuala Lumpur City Centre and represents about 10 hectares of preserved land that remains in the same dense natural rainforest state that was existent pre-urbanisation. The only human influence has been the construction of the KL Tower - a communications/observation tower (v.similar to the CN Tower in Toronto) right in the middle of it. However, as you're trekking up the dirt paths rising steeply from the busy city roads underneath, you are soon totally surrounded by dense growth, and the sole sound is the whining of crickets or the rustle of monkeys jumping around overhead. The air is thick and dense with moisture, and as I worked myway through the overgrowth I soon found myself constantly wanting to scratch the incessast itching on my arms, legs, face - pretty much anything exposed - as all sorts of bugs, flying or otherwise, feasted on my (presumably) delicious O+ blood. It's damn hard work, and you sweat like a pig - and after about 45 minutes walking there's not much worse than looking up to see a never-ending set of stairs stoned into place ahead of you. I counted 152 - one after another - and sat and panted like a dog for 5 minutes afterward. What made the whole experience so good for me, though, was not just the satisfaction of being out with nature, but the fact that this place was not mentioned on my map, or on any of the tourist destination landmarks around the city. I didn't see a single other human all the while I was walking... it was just me, the bugs and the monkeys. And it was awesome.