The Journey Begins

It’s only been 2 days – but I feel like I have seen so much!!! Setting out from home at 6:30am turned out to be a great time to watch the overweight, not-built-for-lycra men (and a couple of women!) of Adelaide pretend they are pro-cyclists in the Tour Down Under. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a great time to get to the airport efficiently! However with aManda the Maniacal Mazda Motorist at the wheel, we just made check-in on time, and spent the next couple of hours catching the last minute news and travel advice from those also stupid enough to compete with the Tour Down Under road closures, and see me off.

Denpasar Airport was a hole. Well, that may be a little bit harsh, but as a transit visitor, I hated every second of it. The plane landed, and was parked in the middle of nowhere, quite a distance from any terminal buildings. I can understand that for people heading to Bali for a leisurely holiday, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, it is a nice novelty to walk on the bitumen, and catch a bus to the terminal, but for someone who was already feeling a bit under the weather, carrying ridiculous amounts of Haighs chocolates and hand luggage, and wearing jeans and a jumper, the novelty was lost quite quickly! After finally getting to the front of the ridiculously slow customs line, I was greeted with the news that I had to purchase a visa, even just to transfer on to my next flight. Begrudgingly, I paid my visa (lucky they took Australian dollars!) and made my way through the crowds of yelling taxi drivers, collected my luggage, and made my way to the dingy departure terminal. Checking in, and glad to be rid of my luggage again, I was greeted by my next surprise – on top of the Visa I had just purchased, I now had to also pay an Airport Service Fee, just to get through to the departure lounge. Still not sure what service I hadn’t paid in the tax on the ticket, and with even more begrudge than before, I paid my way in (lucky they also took US dollars!) to the terminal, for 4 hours of enjoying the passive smoke of all the people who clearly didn’t care the terminal was supposed to be smoke free. Not the best stop-over ever, but hopefully it will make the Saudi Arabia one seems better in comparison!

However, with this negativity aside, and without talking myself up too much, I did bloody well with my flights! Everything went well – both budget carriers ran on time, the non-guaranteed connection in Denpasar went without a hitch, and by some miracle of the long-legged-flying God, I self-check-in’d myself into empty rows on both flights! I had so much space to spread out, lie down, and even just move seats for no reason other than a slight change of scenery/view of the dandruff sitting ahead of me.

Arriving in the less than impressive Kuala Lumpur Budget Carrier Terminal (tin shed with no air-conditioning), I jumped on a coach transfer to KL Sentral station, soaked in sweat, hair already curling, and desperate for a shower. I was supposed to meet CS host Faiz at 9.30pm, however had no idea the bus would take so long to get into the city – arriving just before 10.30pm! After finally making my way to our classy designated meeting spot (McDonalds), I was disappointed, but not surprised to find he was not there, and went about trying to change currency, and locate/operate (not as easy as it sounds) a payphone.

Finally meeting Faiz at 11.40pm, I will admit I was pretty glad to be on my way to a shower… or so I thought! Instead, Faiz had a much better plan – and I found myself out to dinner at an Indian/Muslim Restaurant in the centre of the city, looking up directly at the Petronas Towers… at 12.30am. According to Faiz, the restaurants he goes to (I get the impression he still parties harder now at 26 than I did at 18!) have 2 really busy period during the day – the first dinner sitting at midnight, and second sitting at 3am (when the nightclubs close of course). After a night/early morning tour of Merdaka Square, the Petronas Towers, KL Tower, and many other sights, it was off to Faiz’s Condo for the long awaited shower, and a good night sleep.

Faiz (and housemate Kimi) live in a Condominium less than 10km south of KL, in quite a nice residential area. It’s fairly spacious, with 3 bedrooms, a living area, and a kitchen… however there’s one added bonus I think makes the place pretty special. You see, it’s on the bottom floor of the complex, with 18 condo’s directly above… and it has exposed plumbing. Now, the plumbing is actually pretty useful, providing space to hang things in the bathroom, and adding a modern ‘warehouse-y’ feel to the place, however it does also mean that when any one of the 18 condos above flushes the loo… you know all about it! Being quite the multicultural city, with a wide selection of cuisines, I do wonder if different condos produce different sound effects on the way down, but think I will wait for Mumbai to investigate further.

Day 2 saw us headed east of KL, on highways which reminded me of the fateful hospital visit in Thailand, to the Batu Caves. ‘Batu’ means ‘rock’ in Malay, however, regardless of my lack of knowledge of the Malay language, I decided it is also an appropriate name because the caves are the home to a number of animals, including BATS. The cave was discovered, by some person, at some stage, for some reason, but most importantly, it lives up to its name. It is a cave. The entrance to the cave comes directly off a road which I am sure carries more traffic daily than Adelaide does in a decade, and without my expert guide Faiz, I would have had no idea I was even close to such a large site of natural beauty! The cave is in a limestone outcrop, and is found at the top of 272 steps protected by a huge gold statue of Muruga. After discovery, the cave became home to a small Hindu shrine, and then another, and another… until today, where it contains a number of different colourful, decorated shrines, and many overfed, tourist-loving monkeys.

We spent the afternoon heading south of KL, through palm plantations reminiscent of Jurassic Park, developer-built housing estates reminiscent of Harry Potter, and estates of illegally built houses/structures reminiscent of Hannah’s bedroom at home. I found it quite ironic, yet sad, that the houses in the illegal estates are ramshackle and roughly constructed, built of whatever unwanted material people could find, yet many of the houses garaged cars newer and more expensive than mine! Our trip south took us to Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia, which was a completely unexpected place! Until the 1990’s, Putrajaya was a large agricultural area, producing rubber and palm oil, however it is now a huge, extensively planned, and expensively built city, with no people! I was blown away at the number, size and modern features of the offices, towers, bridges, residences, and landmarks of the city. Every garden bed and round-about is manicured to perfection, every space is filled with perfect, full, and beautiful tropical gardens - even to the point where the street lights have hooks suspending hanging pots of flowing tropical plants! We saw workers tidying, raking, weeding, planting, watering and tending to plants and gardens all over the city, yet there were very few people around to appreciate their work!!! Faiz tells me Putrajaya is like a ghost city – no one wants to live there. The government workers who live there during the week don’t shop or spend their weekends there, there’s no university to attract young people to live, and tourists aren’t taken there, because without more people, there is nothing to do! It was a very interesting place, and it just baffles me as to how and why the government continue to spend so much money and time on developing and maintaining the city, when no one is there to enjoy it. 

I’ve just realized how much I have written, and will point out I have no plans on being this detailed in every destination! I will however finish with a passage from the book I read on the way over – Tropic of Capricorn (2008, BBC Books), by Simon Reeve.

“When we leave our borders we should remember travel is a desire of many, but an honour for a few. As such it carries certain responsibilities. For the time has long gone when we could happily settle for weeks on a sunny beach without considering the environmental impact of our travels, or the fact that our boutique hotel is owned by the son of the local dictator. None of us should now be travelling blind, and learning more about the places we visit makes for a more interesting experience, a more rounded adventure. So following the Tropic of Capricorn is important to me, but the real idea is to use it as the central thread of a journey that teaches me more about issues and places of which we hear little in the West.”

If only I had a Tropic to thread my plans together too.