Monday, January 20, 2003

2003/01/20

Well, well, this is better. We slept awesome last night, even though it was a dive. The air conditioner was making loud, strange noises all night, and eventually broke, so no more air for us. We had decided yesterday that we weren't going to stay there another night, so we checked out this morning. Our Let's Go book gave a "thumbs up" to two hostel's in Chinatown, so we walked to those two, took a look a them, and they are nice. We'll be staying in one of them for at least the next two nights.

Anyway, I'll back up and give more details of our trip so far. Flying into LA at night was so cool. LA/area is HUGE!!!!! Lights and lights for as far as the eye can see. It was massive. And warm. LAX is hard airport to get around, and figure out where you're supposed to go. There were no signs telling us how to get to international departures, and we only had 1.5 hours (our flight was late leaving Calgary), and we were running around, trying to find our way. When we finally got to the ticket booth, we didn't have to wait in line, there was no one at the Malaysian ticket counter. (You should have seen the mile-long line for the Mexicana counters though....WOW, glad I wasn't getting on one of those planes.) AFter he checked us into the computer, he says to us, "Hold on a sec, I think I have something for you" and walks away. We look at each other, wondering what the heck he has for us. He comes back a couple of minutes later with a voucher for a stay at a hotel on KL on the flight back from Australia (we have a one night stopover, and get a free room at this hotel). Hopefully we don't lose the voucher before we come bac. Haha.

Taipei airport, where we stopped for 1.5 hours, was kind of a dive. Not a particularly impressive airport. It reminded me of being in Japan, with the strange Mandarin (?) alphabet, and hardly any english. We landed there about 5:30 in the morning, so there wasn't much to do in Taipei airport that early.

Malaysia Airlines is cool. Every seat has their own TV screen, and you can watch movies or TV or play Nintendo games or multiplayer games with other people on the plane. Way neat. Highly recommend Malaysia Air. Very friendly and courteous too. You even get a menu for breakfasts, lunches and dinner!!!! Air Canada sucks after flying Malaysia!

When we got to KL, it was totally beautiful coming into to land. So green, and we circled the airport once or twice, flew over the blue ocean, lots and lots of beach. It was amazing. It was cloudy and just a tad of rain when we landed, which was nice. I dind't want the sun to be beating down on us. Getting of the plane, we met up with Jason and Stephanie, two other Canadian's. We've been hanging out, they are on there way to New Zealand in a few weeks or so.

Anyway, a lot of KL is pretty dumpy and dirty. And of course, the hostel we were at last night was no good. The new one is much nicer.

Last night, we stopped at a Reggae bar and restaurant and had supper. I had beef burger, everyone else has vegetable fried rice. The whole bar was decked out in Bob Marley stuff. It was pretty good. We walked around Chinatown after that. Holy moly, talk about crowds and crowds of people. And so many people selling there wares on the streets and in back alleys. It's an experience. Walking back to the hostel, on the sides of a lot of the buildings, are all kinds of little lizards, maybe 3 or 4 inches long. Crawling all over the buildings. Oh, and you should see some of the Islamic temples around here, pretty impressive. We got back to the hostel about 9:30, and Courtney and I crashed. We were wide awake by 6:00 this morning, so we got up, chatted, figured out what we were going to do today, and just vegged for a while, dreading the cold shower we were about to take. (Did I mention that that dive of a hostel only had cold water????) Oh well, it was nice to shower anyway. Oh, when Courtney was going to shower, she saw one of those lizards scampering in the hallway of the hostel. Lizards don't frighten her, she's only scared of cochroaches, so everything was good.

We waited for Jason and Stephanie, and we headed out to find the new hostels that Let's Go recommended. Along the way, we stopped at a McDonalds and had breakfast (we've seen lots of McDonalds, a KFC, a Burger King, and a Starbucks so far). We continued on our journey, and found our new homes for the next couple of nights.

We were planning on going to the Batu caves today too, but the hostel we're staying at, we can't book in until after 12:00 (noon), so by the time we get settled, we might want to put the Batu caves on hold until tomorrow. Right now is a huge Hindu festival at the Batu Caves. When we were at the McDonalds, they had an english newspaper, and 1.5 million (!!!) showed up at the Batu Caves yesterday for some sort of Hindu festivities. We're hoping that the festivities continue on all week out there, it should be an impressive site!!

The new hostel we're at is on the third floor of a building, on the 2nd floor is an internet place, so that's were we are right now. We're not sure what we're doing this afternoon. We'll have to ask buddy at the hostel if it's too late to go to the Batu Caves this afternoon, or whether we should make it a whole day trip another day.

Courtney bought a really nice sarong last night at the markets. Only paid about $9 CDN for it. Looks nice.

Just a note for people leaving commens on my journal. I enjoy reading all the comments, and I do read them all!!! Please leave your name at the end, so I know who left the comment (unless you want to remain anonymous!) Also, as a general rule, I won't reply to any of the comments. If I do reply, it'll probably be embedded in the next journal entry somewhere.

I also may leave questions to some of you, instead of sending an e-mail directly, you can just reply to the journal.

(Darren, we didn't see the hostel with bakery underneath, although it's probably right near here somewhere. That was 3 years go too, maybe it's changed since then.)

I actually feel comfortable now, as we were walking to our new hostel, I'm now back into the "backpacking" feeling again, and feel comfortable. Yesterday, I was just in a dazee, didn't know what I was doing, really. That was probably party because I was so tired too. I'm all settled in now, though.

Courtney is going to try to post some pictures tomorrow, onto her MSN Photo Album, so if that happens, I'll post the URL for that in another journal entry. Oh, here is that URL:
http://groups.msn.com/2001SummerPhotos/jordanpictures.msnw

Courtney is already sore from carrying her backpack! Hahaha!!!

Darren: What time of year were you at the Perentian Islands??? Apparently the whole east side of the peninsula is dead right now, rainy season. Rainy season goes from Nov. to Feb. or something. Any other suggestions for beaches/islands in Malaysia? We might just head out the Perentian islands anyway, and see what we can find. Maybe everything will be dirt cheap because of the rainy season, and maybe El Nino is affecting it so it'll be nice! Yah!!!

Anyway, I'm gonna sign off now, I see my visa bill is waiting for me in my Royal Bank web site, so I should go check it out. Courtney tells me these systems are 128-bit encryption on them, so all is well.

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