Hello!
Following on from our whirlwind tour of Singapore, we had a fairly sedate time in Kuala Lumpur. This was owed in part to our sudden obsession with politics, brought on by the big old Brexit vote. Anyhoo, here is a breakdown!
We spent our first day in Kuala Lumpur visiting the city centre. Getting around on the train system in KL is relatively easy, but it’s not quite up to the super polished Singaporean version that we’d just left. Kuala Lumpur is still very westernised, but overall is a much more Muslim-oriented city overall, with the majority of women wearing headscarves. This stronger Muslim undertone was also highlighted by the public notices that we saw, such as the ‘No inappropriate behaviour’ sign on the subway that had a big cross through a picture of two people kissing. Another confusing one was in a corner shop close to our hotel. This shop had a huge notice across the beer fridge stating ‘It is illegal to sell alcohol to Muslims’. We thought this was quite odd. Did they check if you were really a Muslim at the counter? Surely being a Muslim has the same kind of sliding scale as being a Christian, whereby some are more devout than others? Isn’t drinking alcohol a decision that you should make personally? I honestly know little about the Muslim faith so I really don’t know at this point! Perhaps this is something Google will teach me about. Anyway, I’ll move on!
The city itself, while polished in the centre, had more noticeably impoverished areas in the outskirts and was less well kept and litter-free than Singapore. The main centre, KLCC, is an impressive modern area with a huge park, fountains and with what appeared to be the largest shopping mall we’ve ever seen at its centre. The main attraction is the Petronas Twin Towers which loom above you as you wander around. They look distinctly more impressive at night, when they’re lit with thousands of white lights. Rich referred to them affectionately as ‘glow sticks’ the whole time we were there. Way to step on Kuala Lumpur’s most distinctive landmark, Rich. We paid to do a trip up to the top of one of the towers, which included a visit to the Sky Bridge between the two. We went at sunset and were treated to great views of the city. Unfortunately, it did dawn at us that we were stood in, and therefore couldn’t look at, the only truly iconic buildings in the KL skyline. Ah well! To remedy this, we also went for a drink in the Sky Bar, which is a bar at the top of one of the huge hotels in KL. It directly faces the towers, so we got our fill of the view whilst I sipped on a Singapore Sling (I really have a taste for them now!) and Rich had a pint. It was nice, but not too budget-friendly. Our waiter also looked like he wanted to throw himself out of one of the open air windows. As a result, we only stayed for one drink….
Other things we got up to in KL included visiting a big outdoor food hawker market called BLAH which is established in the old red light district. It was noisy and smokey and the food looked amazing but I can tell you right now that it was not friendly towards those of us who are watching our meat intake. No veggo options. None. It was fun to witness the mayhem however!
Now, a few words on budget, something that we spent a lot of time debating about during our visit to Kuala Lumpur. In our early planning days when Rich was still perfecting the 100’s of strange and mind boggling equations that make up our excel budgeting sheets, we had always planned to visit North America for a road trip. As we had recently finalised our next steps in the travel plan (a month in Thailand and 1 week in Cambodia), we took a day out from stomping the KL streets to do some serious planning. Alright, Rich did some serious planning and I just agreed with him whilst drawing. Anyway, we had decided to go to North America after Cambodia, and planned a trip encompassing LA, San Francisco, Disneyland, the Sequoia National Park, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Dead Man’s Canyon, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon and Santa Fe. We’d even planned to meet up with family friends (shoutout to Sandy and Lenny!) and Rich’s mum (shoutout to Diane!) in Santa Fe. Sandy had been so amazing and found us FREE accommodation for our stay with her neighbours. We were so looking forward to it….
And then the next day we had Brexit.
Now I’m not going to use this blog to air any political views and I’m not going to voice my opinion about which way the vote swung. Opinions aside, we were both absolutely sure that Britain would vote to stay in the EU. So sure in fact, that we’d decided to leave off booking anything in America until after the outcome, so that our money would be worth more.
Owing to the time difference in KL, we got to waste pretty much an entire day sat on the edge of our hotel bed watching the votes roll in one by one. We were so frigging shocked about the result!! When Britain voted out of the EU, the pound plummeted, effectively robbing us of more than 10% of what we’d budgeted to spend in the US. “It’s ok!”, we told ourselves, “We will be mostly camping in the states anyway!”. So we went back to our budget sheets and took a closer look at the cost of campsites in National Parks and hostels in the cities. As it turns out, the cheapest hostel in San Fran will set you back more than $80 a night….for a DORM room!!! AirBnB was even more expensive. Horrified, we moved swiftly on to campsites. Apparently, these are very hard to come by in the US. Around 90% of sites were fully booked for at least a year (kudos to Americans, you plan the shit out of your vacations!). The rest were RV parks and seemed to cost over $100 a night! Flights too, had increased overnight. We suddenly found ourselves in a situation where we had to decide: should we blow a huge portion of our now reduced budget travelling through another expensive western culture? It would mean going home earlier and sacrificing destinations like Seoul and Tokyo, but we were so excited to see Diane, Sandy and Lenny too. With the British aerospace industry on the rocks even more than it already was as a result of the vote, we also had to consider that Rich might find it even harder to get a job on our return to the UK. This made it even more important for us to ensure we had some money kept back as a buffer for job hunting. We literally debated the decision back and forth for hours. We went to the cinema for a break (it was so cold I thought my nose was going to fall off), and then we walked out and debated it some more.
We finally came to the decision that we’d have to cut out America from our trip. Our money could go so much further in Southeast Asia and although we hated disappointing people, we knew it was the best decision for us given the circumstances. So in short, we are really sorry Diane, Sandy and Lenny! We really did want to see you all so much but we are sure you’ll have an amazing time without us.
I felt like it was important to include this budgeting debacle in our Kuala Lumpur post because I want what I write here to be a genuine reflection of what we are experiencing. So, although we spent five days in KL, half of our time was spent huddled over a computer sipping god awful instant coffee and worrying about the exchange rate. That’s the truth.
We are still a little annoyed about the whole affair, but for the sake of our sanity, we are putting it behind us. We now have an opportunity to reshape the rest of our trip, which is no bad thing! We occasionally have to do a reality check when things don’t go 100% to plan during our travels. We are still getting the opportunity to travel he whole frigging world after all!
As I finish writing this post, we’ve also just reached another important travel epiphany….but I’ll leave the details of that one to our Thailand blog!
Bye for now!
Jess & Rich
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