Man,
Today has been long and I lost an hour traveling, so it’s even earlier than I’m used to, but I’m just beat!!
My morning started at like 430am, had to get to the airport, which was about a 45 minute drive. The hotel (and pretty much everyone I talked to) said to get to the airport 2 hours early. My first piece of advice, if you ever find yourself leaving Thailand through Krabi, 1.5 hours is more than enough. I spent 20 minutes just waiting to queue in the security line. Once it was finally open it was a breeze. But let me tell you, you can tell the EU and American travelers. They try to take off their clothes and all the crap in their bags. Security just stared. This girl from the EU dumped her water, took everything out of her bag and finally went through. No one else did that. So neither did I. My water bottle was full of water. They could care less. They just want to make sure you don’t have a gun?? I’m actually not even sure what they are looking for.
I flew Air Asia again (by the end of the trip I may have a free flight, unless I can transfer the points to American). Their international planas are nice!! More leg room, newer seats!!
And apparently not many people take the morning flight cuz the middle seat was open, And there were many empty rows. It was a quick 1.5 hour flight to a new country, Malaysia.
I landed and saw Uber ads all over the airport, I was so excited!! Once I opened Uber it said it was no longer available and I had to use Grab. I knew that was coming. Anyway, used Grab got a car assigned. After 22 minutes the car hadn’t moved and the driver wasn’t responding. So I canceled. Called another one, got assigned and after 5 minutes he said he was blocked in. So I canceled him. The third driver was assigned and after a minute said he was blocked in and would go look for the other driver. He never found him. So I gave up on Grab and went to the taxi stand. The guy I got was so nice. We talked about the city, and what I was going to do. He even offered to come tomorrow and take me to the airport for the same price. I then talked him into taking me to the Batu caves before the airport. So he said, ok 150 ringgit (roughly $35). So for $35 he’s going to drive me 30 minutes north to the Batu caves, wait for me, then drive me the 1.25 hours back to the airport. I like taxis here!!
The airport is like an hour out of the city, I honestly feel like that was a poor design decision, until I was entering the city, they literally have no room. I feel like 1 in every 5 apartment/flat buildings was well over 25 stories, usually with a twin tower right next to it.
My hotel is nice. It’s 2 years old, and a 15 minute walk from the towers. I paid $57 for a basic room, but was given an upgrade to the suite!! I was even early for check in by 2 hours and they let me have my room. This room is on orbitz for $144. So I’ll call it a win. I should have waited a day to do laundry though, cuz it has a washer/dryer combo for free in my room!!
I dropped my stuff off and headed out to the towers. The Petronas towers are the office towers for Petronas, an oil and gas company. On my walk over there I passed a ton of food places and a hop on hop off bus. None of the food was Malaysian, so I passed. I inquired about the tour, But wanted to do the towers first.
The towers are pretty cool, tallest twin towers in the world. You get to go to the bridge between the two towers and then up to the 86th floor on one of them. They finished them in 2.5 years. Two general contractors, One from Japan and one from Korea. I enjoyed my time, but would have loved more construction information on it.
They are also 90% done with the core of another tower called the Signature tower. It will be 40 meters taller than the twin towers. That tallest building title won’t hold long for signature tower though,because another building is being built that will be 117 meters taller than that one!! It’s only in the footings stage right noe, But by 2022 it will hold the tallest building in Malaysia title.
After the towers I found the bus stop for the hop on hop off bus. This is usually my favorite way to see the city, it drops you off eight at the places you want to go!! And it was only about $16 for the 24 hour ticket.
They said it was about a 2.5 hour ride. I decided to ride it and then eat after. There were 23 stops. After an hour, we’d only made it to 5 stops. So I gave up at stop 9, walked around for a bit, and found stop 17 and got back on to ride to near my hotel. It took another hour. By this time I was starving….so I decided to eat whatever was closest. Italian!!
I had an Italian pizza for dinner. I couldn’t help it. I was starving, so I ordered the 4 cheese pizza and was in heaven. I ate the whole thing. Since I didn’t eat lunch and had only had a banana for breakfast it seemed reasonable to me.
I grabbed an ice cream and a Gatorade and came back to the hotel. It was by far the hottest day of the trip so far, I know I didn’t drink enough today so I’m sure that had something to do with it as well.
I’m looking forward to the Batu caves to hike up the 330 stairs to the temple on top.
Malaysia is a hodgepodge of people and religions. Many people are Muslim, but I’ve also seen temples and churches. The tour said everyone takes pride in that here, that they all can get along.
I’ll do the caves then head to the airport for my final stop of Singapore!
Normal Travel Girl 
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