Wow... do I ever have some catching up to do on my posts. I haven't posted anything since Vietnam, and that was over 2 1/2 months ago!!!
Well, I finally left Vietnam around July 6 working my way to Indonesia by way of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I needed to get a 2 month visa for my stay in Indonesia because of visits with my mom and a friend from Canada who were both coming to Bali a little more than a month apart from each other. The only way to do this is to get your visa ahead of time from one of the consulates or embassies in one of the major cities in SE Asia. I initially tried to do this while I was in Ho Chi Minh city, but in order to do this I needed to have all my flight information on when I was arriving and departing, etc. At that point in my trip I knew none of this. By the time I knew exactly when I needed to be going to Indonesia to meet up with Mom, I was in the middle of Vietnam. China Beach, near Danang to be exact. And nowhere near and Indonesian Embassy. Hence the stopover in Kuala Lumpur. My flight from Danang was to Ho Chi Minh City, so it seems logical that I could've gotten the visa there, but at this point my visa for Vietnam was running out and I couldn't afford to spend the time there waiting for the application to be approved.
It all worked out perfectly in the end as Kuala Lumpur is a very easy city to get an Indonesian Visa (except of course if there are holidays, or an election going on - which was the case when I was there). All in all, I spent 5 days in KL arranging my visa - which I actually got in one day, once I had all the logistics worked out on my flight information.
Not much exciting to write about KL. Arrived in the city late at night - around 1am. So finding a place to stay at this hour wasn't easy. Just so happened that this Swedish couple, who also flew all the way to KL from Danang on the same flights as me, asked if I wanted to share a taxi into the city - 75 Km away. Good thing they asked or this would've been an expensive cab ride for me! Once in the city, we headed to China Town where all the budget places to stay are. We ended up at this funky (and I do mean Funky, in every sense of the word!) little guesthouse called "Le Village". They were full, but actually managed to accommodate us in this tiny little room with two beds and a mattress on the floor. We made do for the night, although it was quite strange sleeping in a room with two (almost) complete strangers walking around in their underwear! Quite funny looking back on it. They checked out the following day, and I decide to keep the funky room since I was only going to be staying a few more nights. Certainly not the nicest place I've stayed in, actually probably one of the worst. But anything else certainly would've been much more expensive. And I hate to pack up and relocate any more than is absolutely necessary.
So other than running around making arrangements for my visa, I did manage to take in a few sights. The Petronas Towers are quite amazing! Until recently they were the tallest buildings in the world. An equally impressive shopping mall is situated at the base for those who are looking to part with some cash. But the best views of the city actually is from the KL Tower, which appears taller than the Petronas Towers, but only because it is located on a hill. One of the other guests from my guest house took me to a chinese temple one day where I had a "numerology" reading. That was cool too. Otherwise I spent most of my time just wandering around Chinatown.
