It was an early morning start at the Hotel Elegance, breakfast at 6am and a 6:30am pick-up by taxi to take me to Hanoi International for a flight to Kuala Lumpur. After approximately 10 days in this fascinating and wonderful place I was flying back to Malaysia to meet up with my travelling buddy and future NYE cohort, Mr Jet Frichot.
Walking out into the darkness, Hanoi provided me with a light drizzle to accompany me on the drive out of the city to the airport. My head touching the head rest, I drifted off, my eyes opening every now and then with the start and stop of the taxi dodging its way through the morning traffic. Meandering through a combination of daydreams and reality, enjoying the rain falling on the windshield, my time in Vietnam had been as enjoyable as I had wanted it to be and my travelling buddy had been an absolute legend – even if he did absorb all the attention and interest from every passing stranger ! :)
The flight out of Hanoi with Air Asia X was set to leave at 9:20am and get into Kuala Lumpur somewhere about 1:30pm local time. I did recall when I was setting up arrival times for myself and for Frichot’s flight out of Saigon that arrival in KL was going to be within 15 mins of each other. Assuming that all things went to schedule I had kind of imagined us somehow catching up in the arrivals hall or even in the customs line prior to baggage claim, perhaps a little far fetched but that what I had imagined. As I disembarked in KL and walked through to customs the lines were all full but still I scanned the lines for my long haired friend just in case. It was kind of amazing but as I was doing the scan I saw Frichot turn around and catch me dead in the eye – you can’t get an international rendezvous organised better than that my friends. As Jet was already in queue it allowed me to jump probably about 20 mins of boredom and progress through customs without any hassle at all, and then, there we were, back in old KL where it had all started just a few weeks earlier.
Before jumping onto a KL Sentral Express, Frichot and I parked ourselves at the local Macca’s for what Frichot had promised was going to be a major culinary experience. In his earlier solo escapades he had discovered the McDonalds in Malaysia have their own local delicacy, the Prosperity Burger, made in either chicken or beef, that is absolutely soaked/drenched in a relatively hot pepper sauce. This he explained was a must, so we rounded up a chicken and beef burger each in order to take the challenge. Biting down into that pressed mystery meat, pepper sauce oozing out of the bun and dripping onto the table, I’ve got to say, from the perspective off eating an item that was absolutely hideous in form and being equally as messy, the end result wasn’t too bad [Click on the Prosperity Burger Challenge Link to check it out!]. As an interesting side note, we were also later to find out that ‘prosperity’ in Malaysian actually means oblong, thus the obvious shape of the burger. Needless to say, the pepper sauce on the burger was bountiful and I just assumed that the volume was somehow linked to the ‘prosperous name’.
After our savage Malaysian dining experience we ‘swam’ through all the humidity that the KL atmosphere had to offer and parked ourselves into a KL Sentral transit bus which was thankfully air conditioned to the hilt. The ride from KL LCC into the city takes approximately an hour and we both crashed out for a while, I assume our early morning flights having gotten the better of us.
Frichot getting caught out - did someone order a cup of HTFU?
It was good to catch up with Frichot again. I mean I’d only had a few days in Hoi An on my own, and that was cool, but because the trip had been absolutely freakin’ awesome thus far I was really looking forward to getting back into the ‘Frelisher’ combination and ‘claiming’ KL for all it had to offer so that we could rock out 2009 in style and bring in a new decade with the exuberance and requisite excitement that was required.
Offloading at KL Sentral we managed to score ourself one of those ‘union’ taxis after a moderate wait and quickly made our way to the Traders Hotel which was to be our ‘humble abode’ for the next two nights. Now let me just say, we chose this place primarily due to its outlook onto KLCC park, it’s view of Petronas Towers and the great bar (Skybar) that they had on the top level of the hotel which was to be our vantage point for viewing the fireworks for NYE and also our one stop shop for all things alcoholic. What I didn’t expect however was the view that we encountered when we opened the doors to our room! Whoa!! The towers were virtually standing right in front of us, and at a height of 451 mtrs, it was more than ‘just’ an impressive sight to have as the backdrop to your room….it was ‘freakin’ awesome’! I remember Frichot and I rearranging the couches in the room slightly to face the window, and as we ransacked the bar fridge and looked out onto this spectacular view we discussed our trip thus far, the monetary difficulties that he had encountered in Saigon and also our plans for the next evening – we had the mandate – Close out the decade in style!
The view of Petronas from our room - as taken on arrival
Welcome to Kuala Lumpur
Night shot of Petronas taken from our room at the Traders
I love this shot - Frichot in the zone!
After a fair bit of time chatting and watching the evening set in, we went up to the Skybar for a while in order to check out the surroundings and then dropped down into KLCC park to see what we could find.
For this evening there didn’t appear to be much going on in the immediate vicinity so we jumped a taxi to the Beach Bar, which was a place that I remembered from my trip to Laos earlier in the year. I have to say however, what I encountered on this evening bore absolutely no resemblance to what JJ and I had found approximately nine months earlier. The set up of the bar was absolutely the same but on this evening the place was packed, and not for the reasons that you may imagine. As we walked in and checked out the clientele we realised that there were a disproportionate amount of females congregated in groups both sitting inside and outside the bar, whose choice of attire was far below the bar set in relatively conservative Malaysia. These girls obviously were out to make some fast money and this place obviously was a place where the setting up of these transactions were done freely. Jet and I picked ourselves a few drinks and sat outside to observe how business was conducted and to see how these girls ‘stalked their prey’. It was amusing for a while and I readily admit that a few of them were just more than a little gorgeous but that was a track I wasn’t going to take. In any case, we finished up at the Beach Bar relatively early and hiked it back to Traders for a couple of nightcaps in our room before closing out the day. Tomorrow however was going to be another story and we were preparing ourselves for what it was going to deliver!
KL Tower taken from the Skybar @ Traders
Petronas taken from KLCC Park
For this evening there didn’t appear to be much going on in the immediate vicinity so we jumped a taxi to the Beach Bar, which was a place that I remembered from my trip to Laos earlier in the year. I have to say however, what I encountered on this evening bore absolutely no resemblance to what JJ and I had found approximately nine months earlier. The set up of the bar was absolutely the same but on this evening the place was packed, and not for the reasons that you may imagine. As we walked in and checked out the clientele we realised that there were a disproportionate amount of females congregated in groups both sitting inside and outside the bar, whose choice of attire was far below the bar set in relatively conservative Malaysia. These girls obviously were out to make some fast money and this place obviously was a place where the setting up of these transactions were done freely. Jet and I picked ourselves a few drinks and sat outside to observe how business was conducted and to see how these girls ‘stalked their prey’. It was amusing for a while and I readily admit that a few of them were just more than a little gorgeous but that was a track I wasn’t going to take. In any case, we finished up at the Beach Bar relatively early and hiked it back to Traders for a couple of nightcaps in our room before closing out the day. Tomorrow however was going to be another story and we were preparing ourselves for what it was going to deliver!
