Malaysia - here we come!!

We left Colombo at 7.10 a.m. on the 15^th of July 2005 on Flight No.UL 312. Mum and Dad came along with us to the airport to see us off. We landed in Kuala Lumpur at 10.45 a.m. (Colombo time) 12.45 noon KL time. They are two hours ahead of us. I must say the flight was a pleasant one with a friendly crew and decent food.

Having landed in the KL airport, we had to take the aero train to the baggage claim. That, I thought, was very impressive. Imagine having an airport large enough to have to take a train ride to get to the other end of it - Wow! Having cleared immigration quite easily we then proceeded to the taxi counter.

A note to other greenhorns such as ourselves who are too sure about how to set about this…. use the airport taxi counter located just within the premises. As you leave the main doors leading to the reception or waiting area, you find loads of touts for hotels and taxis and limos and so on. The people are dressed kinda officially and yell out quite imperiously making you feel that you have done something wrong and need to speak with them and clear it up… you will then find yourself pressured quite expertly into tours or whatever. We had this experience the first time we landed in Thailand, and learned never to respond to these commanding voices!

Anyway, we went over to the taxi counter where we booked a taxi to our hotel, the Grand Centrepoint Hotel. The taxi only cost us 67.40 RM. We then went out to the gate indicated and found another helpful individual out there to help us locate a taxi which took us to the hotel, if rather the long way around.

Grand Centrepoint Hotel, is not has grand as it sounds being a kind of budget hotel, but I was so glad to see it. My friend Kumudu had already booked us in for three nights, so in we went to register ourselves and then upto our room (No.503). What a lovely albeit noisy view we had. I could see the Sogo shopping complex straight ahead of us, and the Maju complex and University, then to my left, I could see the Communication Tower and the monorail line.

Practically as soon as we reached our room the phone rang. Kumudu had been worried cos’ we reached the hotel late. Anyway, she came along to see us to welcome us to KL and accompany us to the Sogo Shopping Mall from where she took a taxi home.

Sunethra and I wondered around, found a hawker street food stall and had our first Malaysian meal, Mee Goreng Mamak which cost all of 3.50 RM per plate. It turned out to be a mixture of noodles and various kinds of meat and fish and prawn. We walked around a bit more imbibing the atmosphere. We soon felt rather tired and went back to the hotel for a hot shower, hot tea and then to bed. Thus ended our first day in Kuala Lumpur.