AirAsia proper was a much improved experience compared to Thai AirAsia, which I’d flown to and from Bangkok last month. Leather seats, new A320, less aggressive anti-outside-food-and-beverage policy, and reasonable prices and better selection on the inflight service. We snagged exit row seats—not as impressive as the missing-seat legroom I had on the tired 737s of the Thai version, but still a good three times the normal legroom or so. After a flight that was shorter than I expected (because I’d forgotten that Malaysia and Singapore share the +8 timezone with Hong Kong, despite all the +7 countries between them), we were at the very unimpressive LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) in the outskirts of KL International Airport.

After waiting for immigration to get its act together, searching for phantom (yet to be installed?) ATMs, and so on, we caught a bus to KL Sentral (the transport hub) where we ate and got in touch with our couchsurfing host. We took a Komuter (Malay transport words aren’t too confusing, eh?) train to her home town of Shah Alam, the capital of Selangor province (surrounding KL) and something of a bedroom community. It does have a fantastic(ally big) Blue Mosque, which we didn’t see since Friday is a tough day to get in mosques.

I’ll write more about our couchsurfing experience later (after we’ve finished it), but suffice it to say that it’s been very welcoming at times and very… cross-cultural at others. And some cultures are more cross about some things than are others. Remind me if I don’t write about it, there’s a lot to write… it may have to wait until I’m back in Hong Kong.

Today we’ve been out and about in KL. The dearth of people at what I thought would be packed tourist hotspots… even perhaps for locals… even outside of prayer hours… has been very strange. Merdeka Square, where independence was declared, is pretty and big and centrally located… yet for a while we were the only people there. Friday can’t explain all of it, as Malaysia’s substantial Hindu and Buddhist populations don’t have anything special to do on Friday. The weather is a bit gray, so going up the towers isn’t that interesting. However, the Petronas Towers are neat-looking and the surrounding gardens are nice. Chinatown is… kind of Chinese. I don’t think any Chinatown will cut it after Mongkok.

Food is great, lots of it from lots of places. Western, Malay, Thai, Chinese, Indian… yum.

The exchange rate is not so great these days, from 3.77 in the days of the printing of my Lonely Planet to 3.4odd today. Prices aren’t great in general, but I guess that goes with development.

The highlight of KL was easily the Batu caves, a complex of limestone caves north of the city containing Hindu temples and big golden god-images. And the aircon bus ride provided some much needed cool relaxation. Overall verdict: KL isn’t packed with attractions (unless you’re better dressed and cultured and timed, for all the lovely-looking mosques), but it works. Unfortunately, impending floods (if you’ve been watching news about Malaysia, more of them) are expected to hit the area north of here over the weekend. This includes Georgetown and Penang Island, our tentatively planned next stop. But, according to Thorn Tree, some attractions in the south, specifically Melaka, are visitable despite earlier flooding there, and the routes to Singapore if we decide to dip down remain passable. We’ll go somewhere southerly tomorrow, most likely, and hope that Penang etc. clear up in time to see stuff up there on the way out.

Our couchsurfing host has provided us with palatial accomodations and been fantastically generous. It’s a little tricky to have to coordinate our schedules with him, resulting in having to nurse drinks or mess around on the Internet to kill time waiting for him once in a while, but it’s not bad.1960

Friday we arrived after a preposterous additional security search in HKG, where US airlines (even flying away from the US) are subject to the TSA’s baffling liquid regime. We had checked one of the backpacks to prepare for this eventuality, but it was still a pain. After everyone underwent the liquid screening, both of my travelmates got the magic SSSS on their boarding passes entitling them to additional screening on the jetty. Luckily for them, an on-time departure trumped security and they were waved past.

After wading through touts we found a recommended taxi company and made it in to town for the fair price of 60 Kdong. Not bad, though our glacially-paced set of buses in Hong Kong was around half the price.

Saturday was a day of hard-core sight-seeing. We saw the War Remnants Museum, the Presidential/Independence/Reunification palace, and the girls went motorbiking while I did a little more spelunking through old colonial buildings around the Notre Dame cathedral and post office. We also saw the Ben Thanh (sp?) market and crossed quite a few streets, which is something you might not think of as exciting if you haven’t been to Vietnam.

On Saturday we went for a package day-trip to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels. The Cao Dai temple is the Holy See of a local combination religion, and can only be explained by pictures (to come). The Cu Chi tunnels are a 200 km system of, well, tunnels, used first against the French and later against the Americans. We saw the traps, crawled through a section, and all the usual tourist stuff, in addition to taking bus rides on some more interesting roads. It was good to get out and see a bit of the countryside, though.

Today has been a day of chilling out so far. We had some iced coffee and sat/walked in the Botanical Garden for a while. But it’s about time to meet our host for lunch, so here I sign off.
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