We Got on a Bus Again

Wednesday 26/11

As we had gone to bed very late the night before, it was not easy to get up early. But we had decided to start the ride to centre early, so we would not have problems later on. We knew that with bicycles it was not easy to get around in the city.
Pedro lead the way again, as his navigation skills had proven to be fabulous since the beginning of the trip. I was surprised how easily he found the way through the highways. Needless to say, I was delighted that I did not have to get on a highway again. It had been much too scary on the night we arrived to Kuala Lumpur.

We tried to ride towards the Petrona towers, but there was a think mist in the air, and we could not see the towers, it was as if they had sunk to the ground over the night. We stopped near the towers to take the last pictures, first we stopped on the other side, where there was a parkish area. We sat down to enjoy the view, and then an officer came to tell us that we are not allowed to park the bicycles there. It seemed ridiculous as we were the only people there (it was quite early), and we were not disturbing anyone or damaging anything. As the officer left we remained in the place and took pictures. We then went to the front of the building, and again officers were eyeing us as if we had a visible bomb on us. It was so silly of them! When we stopped for pictures, two (not just one, but two(!)) officers approached us to tell us that we should keep bikes on the side. It all seemed as a joke, I really did laugh out loud. But we got the pictures taken and then we headed towards the KL Sentral where our bus was going to depart from.
We stopped in some shops to buy snacks for the trip. We arrived at the bus stop early, and then we waited. The bus was right on time. The driver, his helper and Pedro placed the bikes and our panniers in the buses baggage area. The bus was very comfortable. It had two seat row on one side and one seat row on the other side. There were not many people on the bus. Each seat had a screen in front of them where the passengers could watch movies, listen to music or play some games. Seemed extremely fancy. Then the helper guy went around to give each passenger a pillow. Later on he gave everyone a snack. We did not expect this at all! Later on I found out that we could have taken a regular bus route, not a fancy one, for half the price. But who knows, maybe the other companies would not take our bicycles, so either way, it was good.

We disembarked from the bus and headed towards the town centre where we would get in a hotel and see the city. However, along the way I had encountered a problem - another flat tire. The back tire was very used by now, I had suggested to Pedro that we should change it before the tire itself gets a hole, but we never did that. We stopped there were I had discovered the flat tire under a highway where there was a decent place for us to rest the bikes. Pedro again pulled out his repair kit and was awesome to fix the inner tube.As he was fixing the tube, cars and scooters were passing by and giving us strange looks. At one point there were some police officers, it looked like they were trying to regulate the traffic. The tire was fixed we were ready to keep going.

Once we arrived to Georgetown centre we got to our hotel. We showered and settled in, then decided to go out and find where the port is to go to Langkawi, as we figured that would be a good option to do later on. We found out that there are three ferries per day going across. The ride is about three hours, and they had two in the morning, one at 8:15 and one at 8:30, and one in the afternoon at 14:00. As it was late, we headed to the hotel to decide about the plan for the next few days.

We ended up deciding to stay in Georgetown for the next day, and take the first ferry the following morning. It ended up being a great idea!

Kuala Lumpur

Tuesday 25/11

We set to to wake up at 8 in the morning to we would not get to the Batu Cave when it was extremely hot. But with getting ready and stopping near the metro station for breakfast we ended up taking a lot of time. We had to get to the city with metro Ampang Line, switch at station Bandaraya to Line Port Klang stop Bank Negra and ride it all the way to Batu Caves. 

Metro chip.

The ride was an hour long. What we found interesting was that they had special coaches for ladies only.

Coach for ladies only.

Once we arrived the view was already intense. We first saw a huge statue of Lord Rama.

Peter Lamb and Lord Rama.

We kept walking, but already from there we saw the amazing statue of Lord Murugan and the high stairs we were going to climb. They consisted of 272 uneven concrete steps.

Lord Murugan next to the 272 steps.

While going up the steps we met the monkeys that our host had mentioned on the previous day. The monkeys were used to tourists, extremely rude and cheeky. They are known to steal from tourists anything that they can grab or snatch from hands. One of them actually grabbed a fruit out of Laura's plastic bag! 

Cheeky monkey with the stolen fruit.

The climb was not as bad as we expected it to be and we were up in no time. The view from the top of the big flight of the stairs is phenomenal.

View from the top.

We then continued into the caves, water was dripping form the walls, it was wet, fairly dark and humid. Once you get there, there is another smaller flight of stairs that take people right to the temple. It looked sad inside as in the corners there were old things, like unwanted furniture and garbage. But there were also beautiful pieces of art. 

The cave is deep but on the top there is a huge hole where light came in. We walked around while taking pictures and enjoying what we saw.

Inside the cave.

Then it was time to head back down. Again we got to see the nice view from the top, and meet some more monkeys along the way.

Monkey enjoying coconuts.

We then took a metro back to the centre. Santiago and Laura got off a stop before us. We got off at KL Sentral so we could go to the bus station and decide how to get to our next stop.

Peter Lamb pointing out to the rules of metro.

Due to lack of time we decided to head straight to Penang. We were thinking about taking the train, but again, there was no way they would allow to take the bikes on the train. And also, to our surprise, tickets to many of the destinations were sold out up until December, some even the end of December. Later we found out that is was most likely because it was school holiday in Malaysia at that time. So it was decided, we were going to take the bus. After a long time of thinking and looking through multiple options to multiple destinations we got tickets to go to and island to Georgetown in Penang. We got tickets for the following day noon and paid 149 ringgit for two tickets and we did not have to pay extra for the bikes.

Rainbow in KL.

With that finally settled we walked around a bit, but then it was time to meet up with our fellow couchsurfers. Alina and her friend Yan were nice and offered to give us a ride to go see the Petrona towers. For that we had to meet up with them at the metro station Kampung Baru. So we all gathered together and went for some food. As Pedro and I had recently eaten we just had some drinks. Yan joined us a bit later, sadly she had had a car accident. But thankfully she was fine and the most damage to her car was that the front number plate was falling of because a screw was lost.
Alina and Yan then drove us to the towers were we took some time to take pictures.

The Petronas Towers.

Couchserfers and the Petronas Towers.

After more and more pictures we got back to the cars. We then drove to a hilltop where there was a beautiful view over the city!

In some time we were back at our host's house. Guy from Indonesia ran off to get to the airport, he had an early flight the following morning, so he decided to stay the night there. Back at Alina's place rest of us stayed to chat, and once again it was very late when we got to sleep.

View of KL from a hilltop.

To The Big City

Monday 24/11

The hotel where we stayed not only had a pool, but also breakfast included in the price. We decided to seize the inclusive breakfast, but as it started only at 7 in the morning, it meant a late start for cycling. And since we did not have internet in the room we took our devices to the breakfast table and in the end we only finished our breakfast after eight. Further more, we took a long time packing, so we started cycling only at around 9:00! This was no good, no good at all. But turned out Pedro had a plan to cycle till Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which was around 50 km away, but Kuala Lumpur was 110 km. And his plan was to take some transportation from the airport to the city. This turned out to be a good idea as we started much too late to get to the city, and it also started to furiously rain while we were at the airport.

It was very difficult to get to the city with bicycles. The train was not an option, as they don't allow bikes there. And as for the bus, the only company that might take bikes had transfers to the city only from the other terminal. To get to the other terminal we ended up paying 12 ringgit. Of those 1 was for each person, and 5 per each bike! Unbelievable! And we never got the bike ticket. Meaning that the driver most likely put that extra 10 straight to his pocket. Then from the terminal we payed 10 per person to get to the city. There was no extra charge for the bicycles. This seemed strange until we realized that the driver sold us d tickets. What a joke! Turns out the guy has a full pocket of tickets with other time stamps that he resells to the passengers. There is even another guy who encourages people without tickets to save the walk to the ticket counter and buy tickets from the driver. What a scam!
But we got to the city, and that's all that really mattered at this point. We got off the bus in KL Sentral. It started to rain again so we did not go anywhere, just sat in a place where there was internet so we could get in touch with a girl who said she could host us. Yes, Pedro managed to get a positive response even though he sent the couch request only in the morning. Alina had already agreed to host four other people, but was kind enough to also accept our last minute request. The four other people surfing the same couch were:
One guy from Sweden, Kim, who has been travelling the world for two and half years now.
Then there was a couple from Argentina, Laura and Santiago, they had been travelling for a few months now.
And there was also a guy from Indonesia who was on a two week trip in South East Asia. Unfortunately I do not recall his name.
It was difficult to get to Alina's place because the city is not very bicycle friendly. As we had no other choice, we got on the highway, at one point I got myself into a very dangerous situation. The car did not see me even though Pedro was riding in front and indicating that we're switching lanes. The car approached with a high speed and the driver was clearly not paying enough attention. I heard tires squeal and now I just wanted to get off the road ASAP!
After a while we finally got to our host's home, and I was glad to put the bike to the side for now. It first looked like nobody was home, but soon Alina appeared in the window and came down to let us in the house. We sat down for a quick chat, but soon it was time to take a shower. Around that time Laura and Santiago also arrived to Alina's place, and minutes after them Kim came. While I was in the shower, Yan, a friend of our host had also came. It took some while for everyone to shower. But once everyone was ready Alina and her friend Yan drove us all out for dinner. We stopped in a place where there were many vendors selling local dishes. So Yan went to order food from many vendors and then we all tried the different dishes. Some were really spicy, but for me all seemed very tasty. With bellies full it was time to drive back to Alina's place because the Indonesian guy was waiting already by the door. As we were in a car with Yan, she took her time to drive back and was super nice to stop by the Petronas towers so we could get a close-up glimpse of the tallest twin towers in the world. Once we also were back, we all stayed up for a long chat. We had agreed to go to the Batu caves with the Argentinian couple the next day.
It was very late when we all finally headed to sleep.