He Forgot His Pants!

Groggy and tired do not begin to describe waking up in the morning of our second day in Malaysia. It’s just something that I wish I could call a Mulligan on and do-over. Not that I’d know what to fix – I don’t think becoming ill was necessarily something I could have done something about, but I feel like if I could do the past few days over, I wouldn’t be in this mess right now. But, as they say, there is no rewind or instant replay button on life, so I rolled out of bed and got ready to face my day with as best a positive outlook as I could muster.

After I grabbed breakfast, I went over to the Union for our trip departure where they told us some interesting information. As always, the field office has failed again. In this case, because our trip fills three buses, they could only fit two buses at one hotel and the one other bus would be at the other hotel. Of course this creates a problem because there are people on the trip that I know, and I’d obviously like to spend time with them. This sends a monkey wrench into the gear works. Why this was not told to us by the field office so that I could make sure that I would be able to be with my friends on this trip is something beyond what I’m capable of comprehending, so the field office says.

So my friends Brianne, Kim, and John were all on the trip with me, but then they started splitting up the buses, Brianne got sent to the hotel with two buses, and Kim, John, and I were all together on the one bus at the other hotel. And there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. To make matters worse, Nurse Brenda was one of the trip leaders, but she was sent to the hotel with two buses. I wasn’t ill in India, but I am now. I think what happened in the middle of the night was the onset of the cold, and now the clogged nose and accompanying cough are welcoming themselves into my head.

You may remember that Kim and John were both in my safari vehicle back in South Africa. So, I was excited that I’d get to do another trip with them. And I’m sure they were thrilled that they weren’t split up like they were in India, but that’s a story better told by them.

Much to our chagrin, we still had to take a tender to shore. Nobody had come in the middle of the night and magically built a long bridge or walkway out to the ship. Anyway, the tender was down there waiting for us, and we boarded in with our oversized backpacks and took the five-minute boat trip back to the pier. For some reason, we went to a different pier than we did yesterday, and it seemed like it may have been closer and more convenient, but I’m not one to figure that out.

Of the three buses for the trip, they did not tell us how full the buses would be, so I took my seat on the bus, next to the window, with my backpack between my legs, and waited to see if anyone would want to or have to sit next to me. Nobody did. So, for the multi-hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur, I’d be able to stretch out, which I was quite happy about.

As we exited Penang, again driving by the breweries, we drove over the really long bridge connecting the island to the mainland. Coincidentally, the bridge is called the Penang Bridge, and is only 13.5 kilometers in length. As we drove over the bridge, we could see our ship sitting in the middle of the harbor, and it stuck out like a sore thumb because it was right in the middle of the waterway. It seemed as if we could have parked off to the side a little more and made the tender ride a bit shorter.

The scenery as we were driving was quite impressive, in my opinion. As I said earlier, I really didn’t know what to expect from Malaysia, but I was pleasantly surprised. For a long while, the majority of what we saw was highly organized palm plantations. It was clearly a well-devised system where a plot of a few acres would have all been planted at the same time, and then the next larger plot would be bigger and bigger until eventually an area was barren, and then the next had seedlings. It seems a very effective system to me. And all I saw was clean and new-looking machinery for the job. It didn’t look like something that was scrapped together at the last minute.

About an hour into the drive, we pulled into a gas station for a rest stop. I made a startling discovery here. The gas station was named Petronas, the same as the towers. Perhaps there’s a relationship between the two! But more on that revelation later.

Again, I felt bad for the girls. The line for their restroom was long, and there was no line for the men. I can’t help but feel guilty to bypass their entire line. It almost feels wrong, but what am I going to do about that?

Our next stop was about another hour later for lunch. As we were driving, the scenery was getting very pretty. We were entering into the areas with the huge limestone cliffs jutting out into the landscape. And the entire landscape is very green. It’s very nice to see coming off India, where everything was shades of brown (aside from the splashed of color the clothing offered.) But lunch proved to be interesting, to say the least.

First, we couldn’t figure out where the restaurant was. Our tour guides had to come tell us that it was through a dingy doorway and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. So we get up there, and there’s an array of circular tables and lazy susans. What a surprise!

I was in the back of the line, so by the time I got up there, the choice for tables had dropped rapidly. So far, including yesterday’s lunch, they’ve divided our group. It’s not as much a division as it is a segregation. The vegetarians have to sit at their own table, obviously out of convenience for the restaurant, but they don’t get to sit with their friends. To us, it seems a bit odd and unfair, and honestly, funny.

Eventually we found a table near the door, the first table that everyone walked by, and waited for lunch. Like yesterday, they plop bowls and platters of food on the lazy susans and we serve ourselves from there. There was a very interesting soup they gave us. It looked like a combination of urine and swamp water. It was a yellowish-green with stuff floating in it. I passed on it, largely because I’m not a soup person, but I think even if I was, I would have passed, just because I’m not a big fan of clumpy liquids in general.

Another incident happened with the soup. One of the servers spilled it on one of the girls of our group. And it’s not like this is a luke warm soup. The steam indicated it was quite hot. Brenda had a look at her and she didn’t have any kind high degree burn, just enough to warrant ice and extreme discomfort. I didn’t hear the scream. Apparently most other people did. I’m not sure how I missed it.

On top of it all, some of the dishes they served us were less than appetizing, namely the fish wholes and chicken feet. I can’t say that I was a fan of those. But we kept looking over at the table with our tour guides and they were eating absolutely everything. Our tour guide’s name was Raymond and he was like a machine. There were only a small number of them at the table and they nearly polished off everything that was put in front of them. It was quite impressive because our table had twice the number of people, the same amount of food, and we ate just more than half of it.

After we finished eating, we left the restaurant and waited around in a little shop downstairs until our guides showed up again to let us back on the buses and continue onward. They came down about ten minutes later, and we were on our way. Not long after departing, we entered into a thunderstorm, and its accompanying traffic. This is when I decided it was the best time to take a nap. I woke up a while later, and it was still raining, and we were still stuck in stop and go traffic, in what looked like to be about the same area. I could be wrong, I’m not entirely sure of my surroundings.

I didn’t think that we really needed one, but about an hour after leaving lunch, we stopped at another rest stop, and nearly the whole bus got off to go. Didn’t these people just use the restroom a couple hours ago? I guess they just don’t make bladders like they used to.

Shortly after leaving the second restroom stop, I could tell we were nearing a city. The houses moved closer together and the buildings started to grow taller. Obviously, there’s one thing that I’m looking for to let me know that I was almost in Kuala Lumpur, but the Petronas Towers continued to elude me. The search became increasingly more difficult when another thunderstorm rolled through, with quite a wallop of rain to punch.

And then it happened, the city of Kuala Lumpur appeared before us. I cannot begin to explain the excitement that I had upon seeing a real city again. Cities without tall buildings, like all the ones we’ve recently been to, don’t count as cities, and should have their own lesser subcategory. The buildings are so numerous and tall that on our approach it took a bit of looking around to find the Petronas Towers, but they were there, in all their glory, and that’s quite a tall glory. The best part about the Petronas Towers is that they’re not one building, but two, with a fun Skybridge in the middle connecting the two.

As we drove further into the heart of the city, the traffic became gridlock-like, as we just happened to arrive during rush hour, which was wonderful planning on the tour’s part. I don’t know if that was an oversight of the tour operator or the ship field office, but if I was a betting man, I’d double down on the field office.

As we drew further into the city and closer to the hotel, we were stopped in a street behind a traffic light, and I looked out the window of the bus to my left and noticed a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven. I haven’t seen either of those since leaving the states and I looked at Starbucks and my mouth watered for a good iced latte. Something that I had always heard in fables was suddenly apparent to me. As I turned my head to look out the right side of the window, without the bus ever having moved, there sat another Starbucks, directly across the street from the other one. This reminds me of the old joke that the only reason why they’re there is to take advantage of people with Alzheimer’s. They would walk out of one Starbucks, look across the street and feel like having a cup of coffee and head over. It’s the only logic that helps to explain this.

Our hotel was on the opposite side of a block as one of the Starbucks and, I kid you not, we passed two other 7-Elevens on the way to the hotel. Back home, 7-Elevens are not incredibly common. They’re around, but they’re not prevalent, and there’s certainly an average of less than one in each town. Here, there’s an average of one on each city block. I had no idea of the monopoly that 7-Eleven has on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. I never thought that the ubiquitous Starbucks could ever be second to anything, and Malaysia has proved me wrong yet again.

So, we’re dropped off at the hotel, and after we aimlessly mingle in the lobby while our rooms are situated, we head up to our room to drop our stuff off. Raymond told us that we’ve got some time before we have to be back at the lobby for dinner, and we’re free to roam if we feel compelled to do such.

I met Kim and John down in the lobby and we headed back to a Starbucks that we passed on the way in, but not one of the ones that were across the street from one another a couple of blocks away. No, this was a different Starbucks. Again, the thought that this is the most non-Western port on the itinerary comes into mind again, and only one explanation is possible. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and I think the deans wanted to tell us that without making it sound like they were being insensitive and blunt about it. Instead they beat around the bush and left us all dreadfully confused. As I see it now, the key is that in Muslim culture, they don’t really believe in going to a bar and drinking excessively, which could become a point of conflict for a number of students (and staff) on the voyage. It’s an odd way of getting a point across to tell people to be sensitive to culture, but it’s nothing new, and the point was most likely lost in translation somewhere.

So I ordered my caramel Frappacino and was quite happy with it. All three of us were quite happy at the caffeine intake. The ship coffee is just not good enough stuff. While enjoying our beverages, we headed off to explore the immediate surrounding area. This included an expansive indoor mall and an outdoor market unlike every other outdoor market I’ve yet seen on the trip. It very much reminded me of a flea market back home.

But anyway, because it was gloomy and raining off and on, we went into the mall first, and that was an experience in and of itself. It was civilization, it was a nice mall. Right when we walked in there was an odds and ends toy store, and the staff was demonstrating a number of the items to the passers-by. Again, I kid you not, one of the toys was a man sitting on a toilet who would exclaim sighs of relief when you pushed down the plunger. I could not walk by without trying it myself. After trying it, I shook my head and kept walking forward.

The rest of the mall had stores (notice I said stores and not the customary shops or stalls verbiage) selling music, appliances, clothing, electronics, and anything that you would expect to find in a mall. After feeling like needing to find more Malay stuff, we went back outside into the drizzle and over to the outdoor ‘flea market.’

At the flea market, every vendor sold kitschy souvenirs or handbags. I didn’t really need either, so we didn’t spend an incredible amount of time there. After walking around for a brief while longer we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go out to dinner for the evening. The evening was marquee’d to be one of good food and a wonderful performance, but as always, I would be the judge of that.

We boarded the buses and headed off to do a lap around the block, even driving back around the front of our hotel, for reasons unknown. We didn’t stop there, we didn’t let anyone on the bus, no one got off, there was seemingly no other purpose than the driver made a wrong turn somewhere. But, after looping around most of the block again, we were on our way in a new direction.

A couple blocks away from the hotel again, Raymond got on the microphone on the bus and proceeded to tell us about a place he called ‘action street.’ He point the street out as we drove by it, and while he didn’t go into great specifics, and neither will I, a gentleman would be able to go over to ‘action street’ in the evening and be able to enjoy himself to some ‘action’ if you know what I mean. And we couldn’t get him to shut up about this ‘action street.’ It sounded like some place he’s enjoyed visiting a number of times. We couldn’t figure out if it was places you would go to participate in some ‘action’ or if there were individuals that one would approach for ‘action’ but I for one was not about to find out, and I honestly cannot vouch for all those on the trip. I assume the moral high ground to be good enough for the trip, but I don’t know all these people, so anything’s possible, really.

At dinner, Kim, John, and I sat with Pat and Barbara, two of the lifelong learners on our trip, again with the logic that they’re better company than a number of people that were on the trip, and we were not disappointed.

Dinner consisted of what would later turn out to be the only real Malay meal we would have in Malaysia. Every other place would be Chinese, or some other kind of nationality transplanted in Malaysia, but this was our one opportunity to experience Malay food, and we didn’t know that at the time. My personal favorite was the pig that had been roasted on some kind of skewer, then gutted of all meat and filled with rice. That’s called resourcefulness in my book. Another fun item they had was small bite size meat chunks on sticks. I had the most difficult time getting them off the stick sometimes, and it’s embarrassing when you’re at a table of people and the stick of meat gets stuck in your teeth and I’ve got a stick of meat hanging off my face. I’ve had better moments, but all crises were averted. I was really hoping for a nice dessert (preferably one that had donuts), but I was disappointed. Not only were donuts nowhere to be found, but over 95% of items sitting out was anything that resembled dessert items, and to top it all off, most of them had some kind of fruit in them. Who puts fruit in desserts? Where’s the dessert police when you need them?

As dinner was winding down, the stage at one end of this large, open and very nice restaurant began to light up and come to life. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure what I saw, but I’ll do my best to convey these acts to you. It was almost as if it was an off-Broadway production of Malaysia’s Got Talent. Here’s a photo from the variety:

There were about five or six acts of a few minutes apiece that usually consisted of dancing to loud music in wildly colorful costumes, and it all seemed well and good – until the finale number came around. Then I felt like something went awry and it really took away from the performance. I’m not sure if it’s something that happens in every show, but I doubt it. This time it was a fault of the performer. It had to be – there’s no way that something like this could have happened preplanned.

One of the performers came back out on stage – with no pants. I was appalled. The very least he could have done before coming onstage was to check if he had remembered his trousers. The only reason why I had doubts that this is the same for every night is that it seemed as if the finale act could be subtitled ‘The Asian Village People’ from one of the villages that we passed along the way earlier today. They were all dressed one more bizarre than the other, and one was without pants.

I thought maybe I was the one being deceived so I started telling the other people at my table, “He forgot his pants!” And they didn’t notice until I told them! How could you not notice a man without his pants! Pants were invented for a reason – and that reason is to be worn, especially when performing in front of a large group of people. Maybe he knew we were Americans.

Anyway, after our lovely dinner and a show, we went back to the hotel and took stock of what possibilities the rest of the evening had in store. At this point, whatever kept me up last night has progressed into a cold. I’ve got the nose thing and a cough is just starting to come out, so I really wasn’t in much of a mood to go out. Other people who were feeling fine were planning to go out, and I even heard the phrase ‘action street’ being thrown around. I wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot pole.

Kim and John didn’t feel like going out either, so we tried to find something decent to watch on the television, and we came across three things that I didn’t think we would find. The first was one of the first episodes of Prison Break, which has apparently just started airing here, about a year and a half behind the US. I was trying to explain the forthcoming plot, but I lost myself along the way. Next we found a program called Fashion House. This is a program that is clearly made in the US, but I have never seen or heard of it. I believe Morgan Fairchild was in it, but I could be wrong. It seemed like a soap opera gone awry. The third program was CNN International, which I think I last saw in every hotel that I was in while in India. In the miracles of time change, President Bush was giving a press conference in Rose Garden in the morning, and here we were ready to go to bed. I don’t remember what he was talking about exactly, but I remember intermittently laughing at him. I went to bed at the conclusion of the conference.

Day 3 in Malaysia started early with a wake-up call at 5. There wasn’t supposed to be a wake-up call at 5, it was to be at 8, but that’s another one of those mysteries of Malaysia. As a result, I never really fell back asleep, which was lovely with the intensifying cold I’m still trying to fight off. When the second wake-up call came at 8, which wasn’t much of a wake-up call because I was already woken-up, I was on the tired side.

What was funny was that I later learned that our bus leader, Leslie, argued with Raymond about when the wake-up call should come. We had to be on the bus at 9:30 and Raymond vehemently wanted the call at 7. Leslie wanted it at 8:30, and apparently after much raging debate, the time of 8 was agreed upon. I’m not entirely sure why Raymond wanted us up so early, but that’s just another mystery of Malaysia.

At the continental breakfast (which seemed a bit more like an intercontinental breakfast to us) I found mini-donuts. They were sugared, and they were delicious. I tried to eat other breakfast items as well, but after the Rice Krispies, I downed six mini-donuts. And there were room for more. It certainly wasn’t the greatest donut I’ve ever had, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the arteries around my heart were getting a little clear.

The day was broken up into two parts: the part in the morning with the tour, and the afternoon where there were no activities planned, and we had it to ourselves. And what a thrilling morning it was! The fact that I was just so tired and bent out of shape with my cold didn’t help at all. I really wish I could have been more energized, but the bunny with the drum was nowhere in sight.

The first place we went to was the King’s Palace. From what I remember, all of the states within the country elect a guy to be in charge of it, and from those elected, the elected officials decide which of themselves gets to be the King. I think that’s how it works. Although I’m no scholar of Malaysian government.

The King’s Palace is sorta visible behind the giant black and gold gates that stand in the entry. You end up taking photos of yourself in front of the gates as opposed to in front of the Palace, but that’s how it goes with sitting heads of state sometimes. The King’s Palace is apparently a very popular stop among tour groups because there was a veritable bevy of buses parked outside the gate in what appeared to be designated parking areas.

There was also a guard on a horse, whose sole purpose I believe to be to stand in for photos. It’s like the guards at Buckingham Palace. They look important while you take silly photos with them. It’s the same kind of deal here. But because the only thing to do here is look at a mansion through gates, something that I can do everywhere back home, we didn’t spend an incredible amount of time here.

The next stop on the Magical Malaysian Tour, that was ready to take us away, was the ambiguously named National Monument. What’s at the National Monument? A number of monuments, actually. There was a large obelisk, a horseshoe shaped colonnade, a pool with fountain, and a giant sculpture surrounded by a moat, amongst other things. The giant statue was made by the same guy that did the Iwo Jima statue in Washington DC, and there were a number of similarities between them. And, like the statue in DC, this one was ginormous (combination of giant and enormous.)

Raymond dropped us off here for a while and when the time came to head back to the buses, the buses had moved. We were given a specific amount of time in which to meet back at the bus, and I had planned my time for the bus drop-off point, and I was quite surprised to see that the bus was no longer there. Instead, the bus went back to park on the driveway, which was about a five minute walk downhill. And through it all, I was still one of the first ones back to the bus, and when I left the monument park, I didn’t see another soul from my trip, so how I passed them all remains a mystery to me.

At this point, with the cold I have, and the lack of sleep I’ve built up, I was starting to fade at 11 in the morning. It was going to come to a point where I was fading in and out of interest, so I really needed the next stop to be something to wake me back up. The next stop was on the outskirts of downtown Kuala Lumpur, right next to what we were told was the world’s tallest flagpole, and I should have seen that as a sign of things to come. Imagine the world’s tallest flagpole, and then imagine a flagpole about two-thirds the height of that, and that’s this flagpole. It makes you wonder why someone hasn’t decided to build one taller. That seems like something that’s right up the US’s alley. I’ll have to write my local congressman and let them know.

But the stop wasn’t for the world’s tallest flagpole, no, it was for the national history museum. Now I would finally get to learn the fascinating history of Malaysia through boring museum demonstrations, replicas, and displays. I should start keeping track of the boring museums of the world, because I seem to be very good at finding them, both domestically and abroad. This museum was probably the last thing I wanted to go to, because it did nothing to help keep me awake, and those sentiments soon echoed through the rest of the group. I think a portion of the group dodged the museum early because they all came back to the bus rather tardy. There’s no way that they could have lost track of time in the museum. I was checking my watch in there every few minutes.

As I said earlier, I don’t read the descriptions of the trips before I embark upon them so I don’t set myself up for disappointment, but from what I remember reading about this trip, we would be visiting the famous Petronas Towers. While my memory was correct, my interpretation was quite off. I assumed that we would be going up into the towers. That assumption was incorrect. We would be visiting, and not stopping the bus as we drove by. What we would be going up into is the KL Tower, the former tallest tower in the world (which is now the Taipei Tower in Taiwan.)

I didn’t even know that Kuala Lumpur had a big tower in it. No sooner did I know that it existed was I going up in it. The tower is quite large (421 meters,) and much like when I was at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, there’s not much to do up there except look down. There was a lovely view of the Petronas Towers across the way. And if I was hungry or needing an overpriced souveneir, I would be able to spend all my money to my heart’s content.

All I wanted on the tower was a photo of me in front of the Petronas Towers, but that involves some tricky backlight capability that apparently my camera is completely incapable of performing. I had three or four different people try to take a photo of me in front of the towers and either it was a whitewash behind me in the photo, or I was completely dark and the towers were there.

And again, upon leaving, the buses were not only not where we left them, but nowhere in sight. This time, I was walking with a group, and we just could not find the bus, so we decided to walk out into the back of the parking lot, and as far away as they could have been, there were the buses. Remarkably, all of us were back on time, but our guides were not. They came waltzing back to the bus over five minutes later. I’ve never sent the tour guides be the last person back to the bus, but this is already Raymond’s second offense.

On the way out, Raymond was telling us that they had a race to the top when it opened and someone made it to the top taking the stairs in only 10 minutes. I vehemently disputed this. There’s no way you can make it up all those stairs in ten minutes without some kind of jetpack. A four person relay team, with fresh legs spaced throughout the stairs wouldn’t be able to make it up that in 10 minutes.

Our next stop was lunch at, of course, a Chinese restaurant. Let me tell you, there’s a big difference between a Chinese restaurant in the states, a Chinese restaurant abroad, and I’m sure, a Chinese restaurant in China. It’s food that nobody seems to be able to get a hold of. Coincidentally, the restaurant was in the middle of the Chinatown section of Kuala Lumpur on a fascinating little side street.

Lunch, served again on lazy susans, was okay. It was nothing special. Although, on the other side of the restaurant, there was a wedding reception. This wasn’t the type of restaurant that I’d have my reception at, but it sure sounded like they were all having a good time.

After lunch was our infamous drive-by of the Petronas Towers. If you blinked, you missed them. Not because they were small, they’re quite large, but we drove past at quite a speed because they don’t let you stop in the middle of the roadway – it subsequently backs up behind you. We were all a bit disappointed that that was all that we got to see of the towers, but I figured that I’d be able to formulate some kind of plan later.

Then, we were back at the hotel, and had the rest of the afternoon and evening to ourselves. So, Kim, John, and I decided that we would try to find a travel agency to purchase a Japanese Rail Pass. The purpose of purchasing the Japanese Rail Pass is quite complicated. Word on the ship is that it’s cheaper to purchase the rail pass outside of Japan. What the pass allows you to do is hop on and off the trains in Japan without having to buy tickets each and every time. The rail pass is expensive, so you’ve got to figure out if it’s cheaper to buy the tickets by the ride, or the flat rate of the rail pass, and it all depends on how much travel you depend to be doing. And I have no idea how much traveling I plan to be doing, so the rail pass, at this point, is a good idea.

So, we’ve got a map where a travel agency should be, and we head off into the sweltering heat of Kuala Lumpur in the mid-afternoon. Unlike yesterday, the sun was blazing down without a cloud in the sky, and with my penchant for being absent-mindedly lackadaisical about hydrating myself, I was mildly concerned. I was glad I had my hat on, because it was bad out. Don’t forget that we’re still equatorial here, just a few degrees north, I believe.

And our map was only sorta correct. We did walk by the place the first time out, and when we decided to turn around because the two maps we had displayed two completely different orientations of the same part of the city. They were showing the exact same part of Kuala Lumpur, and were completely different. On the way back, we passed by a small building with what looked like a travel agency up a flight of stairs. We went upstairs and did find a travel agency. We asked them about the rail passes, and they said that they don’t exist and they couldn’t do anything for us. Because we knew they existed, we said thank you, and left immediately. There was no point in sticking around there any longer.

As we headed back to the hotel, we decided to go back in and explore the mall we were in yesterday a little more, with the added reason to want to cool off a little bit, because by now, it was downright balmy. We wandered around quite a bit, while every once in a while I fought off some dizziness from what had to be mild dehydration, but I survived. I found a fun t-shirt that said Kuala Lumpur on it, and purchased that. I didn’t buy it because it glows in the dark, that’s just a fun added bonus.

As we were leaving we decided that we wanted a decent meal in us. Between the ship food and all the Chinese food, we were feeling like we didn’t care where we ate, as long as we’d get a good meal in us, so we decided on the American institution, now owned by the Native Americans, the Hard Rock Café. I haven’t been in one of those since leaving Nassau. We were planning to meet up with our friends Lisa and Kendall, who were in the ‘other’ hotel. Until then, though, we had a little over an hour to chill out in the hotel before having to catch a cab over.

I freshened up before heading down to the lobby and I met Kim and John before we went out into the mean streets of Kuala Lumpur to grab a cab. Actually, we didn’t have to do much at all, there was one waiting just outside the hotel, and we took that one over to the Hard Rock.

I sat in the front seat, and ignoring the advice that they told us in preport, about saying that we’re from Canada, upon the taxi driver asking where we were from, I said the US, and he became very chatty. But very chatty about the wrong stuff, like the President. He asked me what I thought about him. If that isn’t a loaded question, then I don’t know what is. I said that I wasn’t a fan, and he went off about him. I just wanted to get to the restaurant in one piece, so I nodded and agreed as he went on.

I did interrupt at one point to ask about visiting the Petronas Towers and how to get in. Our driver told us that we’d have to get there at the crack of dawn and sit in line to get tickets, because they sell out quite quickly for the day. So it then appeared that we’d be having an early morning the next day.

Thankfully, we arrived at the restaurant soon. But there was what I would call a small problem. In Malaysia, driving is on the opposite side of the street and it was rush hour traffic. The Hard Rock was on the right side of the street and we were dropped off at the left side, and there were no intersections or crosswalks anywhere. In fact, there was a divider between the roadways in this busy central part of the city. We found a break to cross the street when traffic slowed, but if the break didn’t come when it did, we may have been stuck on that side of the street for a while.

We debated whether or not to wander around until Lisa and Kendall came, and we figured we’d walk around the block because we were quite early. I think we made it fifty feet before we saw that there was no sidewalk and nowhere to go, and we turned around. We went into the store inside the Hard Rock, because you see all sorts of people with Hard Rock shirts from Las Vegas, or Miami, but who has one from Kuala Lumpur? Come on, how could we resist?

And while we were in the store, Lisa and Kendall arrived, so we sat down after we finished our purchases. Much to our happiness, everything was in English and most items were recognizable on the dinner menu. I ordered a nice steak, something that has eluded me in the past few months. I’ve had steaks on the ship, but they don’t count because they were not tasty by any stretch of the imagination.

While the five of us were at the table, I found myself drifting in and out of the conversation. I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t maintain focus with the group. I know I was ill, and I think that had everything to do with it, with the mild dehydration and lack of sleep, but for the parts of the conversation that I was actively conscious for, I had a great time, and we all seemed quite happy to get a decent meal in us. With our last leg of countries ahead of us, none of us we really too sure about how food would treat us.

Towards the end of our lovely dinner, the bizarreness of Malaysia began. Women in skimpy sailor outfits started to wander around aimlessly in the restaurant. They were shortly cordoned off in the back, but then, I guess, escaped. They all walked in single file, all eight of them. After we paid and were on our way out, it looked like they were going to start to do something, but we didn’t stick around. All I know was that there was a big beer advertisement that had been put up to promote whatever was happening the rest of the evening.

The fun part came after we exited the Hard Rock and had to hail cabs back to the hotels. There really wasn’t a stopping lane in the roadway, and there was nowhere to pull off, so we walked down to the nearby hotel with a drop-off circle, and I put my hand in the air to hail a couple cabs. I saw a few empties drive by, but eventually we hopped in a cab, and told him to take us back to our hotel, the Royal Bintang. He had no idea what we were talking about. We had to direct him back to the hotel. I always assume that taxi drivers know the area they’re driving in, but I’ve rarely found that to be true.

We took a brief stop at an internet café before packing it in for the night, and because we were determined that we would make our run for the Petronas Towers bright and early, we headed back to the hotel afterwards. For our last day in Kuala Lumpur, and our last day in Malaysia, I was going to make sure that it counted.

I saw something in the morning that I found fascinating, and mildly disturbing. The Penang Bridge that we took off Penang two days ago, and the only way back to the ship we’d be taking this afternoon, was closed yesterday for a bomb scare. That would have been annoying. Hopefully, when we were crossing it later in the day, we wouldn’t have any kind of difficulties, as the bridge had since reopened.

I woke up on Thursday April 5 at 6am. I was a bit groggy. My roommate for this trip, Galen, was not in the room when I fell asleep, but now materialized sometime in the middle of the night. I dressed and freshened and then presented my breakfast voucher downstairs, just as breakfast was opening at 6:30. I was the first one in the breakfast area. I’d call it a dining room, but ‘breakfast area’ just seems like the more appropriate term.

John came down a few minutes later and said that Kim wasn’t feeling well and she wouldn’t be joining us on our adventure. I enjoyed my breakfast of sugared minidonuts again, and just had the Rice Krispies and then filled up on mini-donuts. If I find something half-decent for breakfast, I’m not going to change. Breakfast is tough enough for me: I don’t like eggs, bacon, or omelets, which eliminates a great number of breakfast foods.

We finished breakfast just before 7, and went down to see if there was a cab waiting outside the hotel, and this time there was no such luck. Our last cab ride that we took last night only charged us 5 ringitts with the meter on, so I was only going to get in a cab that gave us the flat rate of 5, or put the meter on.

Surprisingly, traffic in Kuala Lumpur at 7 on a Thursday morning is very light. If this were New York City, you wouldn’t be able to see across the street there’s so many vehicles on the road. I hailed down the first cab that came down, and I asked him how much to the Petronas Towers, looking for the answer of either ‘5 ringitts’ or ‘I’ll turn on the meter.’ The first cab said 10 ringitts, I sent him away, and he drove away annoyed.

The second cab said he’d turn on the meter, so in we went. The cab ride without the traffic was less than five minutes, and again came out to be about 5 ringitts. If you’d like to know the conversion rate for that, I don’t know, I’ve already forgotten it.

When you’re standing at the base of the Petronas Towers, you really get the sense of their enormity, which is something that you don’t get when you’re doing a quick drive-by, looking from a distance, or seeing it on news or television. It defies a bit of logic in that sense. Also, they’re so big that I couldn’t get myself and all of the towers into one photo.

So, then John and I first try to get into the towers, which proved trickier than we expected, but we eventually found our way in. Then, we had to find where the line was for tickets to the Skybridge Tour. Let’s make something clear, there is no way for the public to go to the top of the towers, they can only take the tour to the Skybridge that connects the two towers, so that’s what we were trying to join. I think we had initial difficulty finding it because we had to go down a flight of escalators. I would have figured it would be on ground level or even up some stairs, but that’s not how they do things here in Malaysia.

Anyway, we get down to what looks like an afterthought of a lobby area, and there’s one or two people on line. So we figure that we’ve got some time to kill and might not as well spend the entire time down here, so we take the escalators back up to the ground level and walk around.

The towers themselves are not just towers. There’s a full symphony orchestra hall as well as a large mall with all of the higher-end stores. As we were leaving the lobby of the towers, to head to the back where the mall is located, a very loud alarm began to go off, and I felt like I was back in New York City, because nobody reacted. It’s not that nobody reacted, nobody so much as flinched, and it was loud. I had to cover my ears when I walked by. I thought something was wrong with the building, but apparently, that loud alarm indicates a state of normalcy.

In the rear of the Petronas Towers is a mall that is about as nice as malls get, and none of the stores were open. Don’t forget that this is still just past 7 in the morning. There wasn’t a soul stirring around anywhere. So John and I did a lap around the mall looking for something interesting, or even for something to happen, and nothing did. Seeing that there was clearly nothing else to do here, we decided that we just might as well head on down to the line and claim our spot.

When we returned back downstairs, I expected to see a handful more people on line, and there was nobody new, and we were gone for over 15 minutes. I know the early bird gets the worm, but this was ridiculous. However, I shouldn’t say that no one else new arrived, sitting off to the side was my roommate Galen. I last saw him in bed back in the hotel room about an hour prior, and now all of a sudden he magically appeared here in line. I did a bit of a double take. But now our group had grown 50% in size.

The first thing he asked when he saw me was whether I ever came back to the room last night. I guess he didn’t notice me leave in the morning, or that I was in bed when he came in last night. But I’m not going to hold that against him. The line wasn’t going to start moving until 8:30, which was over an hour away by the time that we sat down, and the fools that we are, we didn’t think to bring a deck of cards, or any type of time-passer for that matter. But, as it would turn out, there would be plenty of entertainment around us.

As seen in the above photo, this is all of the people that were in front us, sort of. I’ll get to that in a moment, but let’s first introduce the cast of characters in the photo. In the center there are four very nice girls from another Asian country, I’d guess Japan, for no other reason that it’s as good as any. The other people in the photo are irrelevant for the purposes of this story.

Sometime around 8, a gentleman in a business suit walks up to the line in front of us, and gets in line. Nobody else started joining the line until about quarter to 8, and then the line started to form quite rapidly. The photo below is the line behind us, and the people that he cut in front of.

I don’t think any of them noticed. The man in the suit did do it as if his place in line was being held for him. He walked right into line and opened up his newspaper and stood reading it. The girls in front of us noticed that the man cut the line, and judging by the confused expressions on our faces, they began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

Galen, always one to make things more interesting, decided to read the man in the suit’s newspaper over his shoulder. We were hoping for some kind of reaction out of the guy, but no, there was nothing. And Galen kept inching in a little closer and closer, and there was no rise out of this guy. And when there’s no rise out of the guy, it’s no fun anymore.

So, after what seemed like much longer than just over an hour, they open up the grates to the ticket area, and the line starts to move, and the man with the newspaper starts to move with it. At this point, we don’t really care what he does, as long as he doesn’t get a hold of enough tickets that he takes up the whole morning.

One of the workers started going up and down the line getting a read on how many people there were in each group, because finding out at the desk was a bit too much to ask for, I guess. Anyway, the attendant stayed with the girls in front of us for a couple minutes, which we figured was quite long. And then another attendant came over to talk with the first one, and the second attendant came over to us and told us that the girls told them that the guy in front of us cut the line, and he asked us to confirm that. We gladly confirmed. The person asking how many was in each group went directly from the girls to us, skipping over the guy that cut the line. We gave the girls a pleasant smile of thanks. If that isn’t a lesson in international politics and conflict resolution, then I don’t know what is.

So, the line starts moving up to the ticket counter, and the guy in the suit moves up to the ticket counter and they tell him that they’re not going to give him tickets, but he moves into the waiting room anyway. We pick up our tickets and go into the waiting room for them to call our group, which was the first one of the day.

In the waiting room, I see the guy in the suit arguing with one of the security guys near the elevator. I have no idea what was going on, but I looked away, and that was the last that I saw of the man in the suit. As quickly as he came into our lives, he was gone.

I thought the waiting room was really cool. It wasn’t just a waiting room, it was a mini-science exhibit about the towers. There were little toys all over the place. My favorite was the lightning demonstration that they did behind a protective window to prevent electrocution. It was demonstrating what happens to the towers in a thunderstorm. In short, they get struck with big bolts of lightning, and is grounded into the ground. But in the demo, they had really big discharges onto the mock towers. I enjoyed it.

In another part, they had a small stool that you would sit on a press a button corresponding with another building in the world. The stool would then move backwards and forwards indicating the amount of sway that a building would have in high wind. It moved really slowly, so it was like a really, really lame ride at Disney World. I found it quite funny how ridiculous the ride is to watch with someone sitting on it. They just look very unhappy at the dullness that’s provided.

The last thing that I was able to get my hands on before my number was called was something that I could find no logic to at all – logic puzzles. They had nothing to do with the towers and just seemed like a way to help pass the time. There were four in all. I figured out the first three, and the fourth one said that no one had ever solved it, so I didn’t even bother wasting my time on that one.

Then they called our group and we were handed special passes. Our group was broken into a red and blue group. My group was red, and we got to go first. And apparently that meant that we were the first group into the 3-D propaganda film about the Petronas Oil Company. This was the point where I had the realization that these towers were all for one company – an oil company – which makes a lot of sense. Oil built the towers.

The 3-D film was interesting, almost. It was propaganda promoting the Petronas Oil Company. They’re not going to just let you go up into the Skybridge without first trying to brainwash us about how great oil is, and how great they are at pulling it up out of the ground and sending it elsewhere. After a while, my eyes started to hurt. I think they were having a tough time focusing on the images that seemed like they were moving closer and further away. I was also convinced that it was going to be an interactive 3-D movie and they’d be squirting stuff at us or shocking us through the backs of the seats, but what would they squirt at us? Oil?

After the film, they led us back to the elevator, and then I felt like I was entering the Tower of Terror. They clearly have a normal elevator to take the public up in, but we were entering into the service elevator, and I was not incredibly thrilled about it. This elevator did not even look like it was going to make it back up to the ground level. I think my ears popped more on the way up the towers than they did yesterday heading up the KL Tower, which makes no sense at all, but I’ll blame the service elevator for that, as I have nothing else to blame.

When we get up to the Skybridge, which is roughly halfway up the towers, they let us lose into the Skybridge, and don’t tell us how much time we have to spend up there. I’m guessing that 15 minutes should be sufficient, which is enough time to take a few photos of yourself, look up, down, and admire the handiwork, as well as the view. This was the photo of me that was taken about 5 minutes into our stay on the Skybridge:

And just after that photo was taken, they told us that our time had expired. 5 minutes, count ‘em. 5 minutes and the next group was up and waiting, and they were chasing us out. I would have like a little more time considering all the time that we spent waiting, and the time that I had to get up in the morning, but I was up in the Petronas Towers, which was the initial goal, and that was accomplished successfully.

Before I knew it, we were back down in the service elevator, handing over our fancy red passes, and back in the waiting room on our way back outside. The alarm that had been going off earlier had since been extinguished, which is a good thing, I assume.

Back outside, there was a line of taxi cabs waiting to take us. I asked the first guy if he would turn the meter on, and he very impatiently answered that all the cabs in the line charge 15 ringitt as a minimum. I thought about going to ask the other cabs, but I was sure that the answer would be the same, and it really wasn’t worth arguing at this time of day, which was about 9:30 in the morning. The three of us just wanted to get back to the hotel.

Once we did get back to the hotel, there were two options of what we could do before the bus left the hotel in a couple hours. We could explore more of the area surrounding the hotel, or go back to bed after our adventurous morning. We decided to go back to bed for an hour.

We lost a small handful of people since we last saw them because they opted to leave the trip and fly back to Penang, rather than spend hours and hours on a bus driving back. I wasn’t about to shell out any more money on transportation that I already paid for. So, we all boarded the bus again and left the lovely confines of Kuala Lumpur. I was sad, as I was leaving a city behind, and I didn’t know if or when I would be seeing another with tall buildings. Vietnam isn’t exactly known for its tall buildings.

Anyway, we go off in the bus and travel over hill and dale for less than an hour before we stop for lunch in what looked like a shopping mall. But not like the mall back at the towers. This was a mall that had a KFC at the entrance and an arcade on the top level. Raymond led us up three escalators to the arcade, and we think that we’re going to be taken for a ride and we’re eating somewhere where we really don’t want to eat.

As it would turn out, there was a restaurant at the other end of the arcade, complete with large tables and lazy susans. None of us were really in the mood for another one of these meals, so if it wasn’t very good, people were going to start leaving and searching for other forms of sustenance elsewhere in the mall.

I think I was at a table of 10 people. We lost two after the second course came out, and once they left, the rest of the table started to grow weary of the food and began to exit at quite a pace. And it wasn’t just my table, the other tables were experiencing the same kind of drop off rate. And to be honest, the food coming out was not very appetizing, and I was only picking and choosing through some of it, but I was eating enough to the point where I wasn’t going to have to search for more food. By the end of the meal service, there was me and one other guy at the table. They’d all left in search of something better. The exodus was quite impressive and something that I’ve yet to see on this trip. But, there’s a first time for everything.

As I left the restaurant, I passed a small cookie store called Famous Amos. I decided that since my lunch left me desiring a little bit more, I would pick up a bag of cookies for the road. Not only did my lunch leave me wanting more, but I know that the ship food would be returning to my diet, and I wasn’t incredibly thrilled about that either.

As we made our way back to the buses at the time we were supposed to be back at them, we found that our bus was locked, and Raymond and the driver were nowhere to be found. This is the third time on the trip that our tour guide was late and held us up, which I believe to be unprofessional. And we were all quite annoyed at him when he showed up ten minutes later with the bus driver.

Back on the road, I had my suduko puzzle book with me, still the one that I picked up in Brazil, and I passed the time on the bus with that for a while. It was a relatively uneventful ride back to the pier. As we drew nearer it became important to be the first of our three buses back. In past trips, the hold up is the slow moving bag check. Here the hold up would be the bag check, and the even slower moving tender system. I was not looking forward to all the time we could possibly be spending in line. While our trip was due back around 6, two other trips were returning at approximately the same time, and if our trip was the last one back, we would be spending the entire evening on line.

As we pulled up, one of the trips was back already, but the Singapore trip was not in yet. I hurried off the bus to get as best a spot on line as I could, and I was still quite far back on line. About five minutes after my trip jumped on line, the Singapore trip came back. I found this situation funny because of how long those people would be waiting on line, and how close they were to arriving back ahead of my trip. You’ve got to laugh in life, otherwise you go nuts. A couple people around me didn’t think that is was very funny, and I don’t know why they thought that. If I was on the Singapore trip getting back at the end of the line now, I’d probably be laughing even harder, so I don’t see what the problem was.

There were two people checking bags and a tender coming about every half hour. I was on line at 6 and entering the tender at 7. That’s a bit ridiculous if you ask me. They should know that there’s all these people coming back at the same time and that they should be accommodated appropriately. But that would be convenient for us, and I don’t think that’s a priority.

Anyway, as you can see above, they really packed us in there. And at the end of the day, as crowded as that small life boat is, it was blisteringly hot and humid, and did not smell that great. I was so glad to be back on the ship, because that meant that the tender episode was over. We would not have to tender at any of our remaining ports.

I called home to alert those back in the US that I was not going to be left in Malaysia, and then spent the remainder of the evening picking up the gossip about what happened in all the other trips and misadventures that transpired across Malaysia.

All in all, I enjoyed Malaysia, considering that I knew nothing about Malaysia when I set foot back on land. And the fact that a cold walloped me in the first night in port and is still packing a heavy punch did not help matters, but I did what I could with what I could. My cold medicine is running dangerously low, but all I’d have to do is make it to Vietnam, where Mom comes out and gets to replenish my medicine cabinet, amongst other important things as well.

I can’t wait for Vietnam, and I can’t wait to see Mom again. I didn’t talk to her when I called home because she’s already on her trip out here, and I don’t know where she is. She first flies into Thailand and then into Vietnam. So for the first time, I can honestly say that in the scope of it all, I have absolutely no idea where in the world my Mom is.