Savages Asia Adventure: Kuala Lumper

10th to 15th October - Kuala Lumper

For one of the first times we arrived at a location during day time, this gave us an advantage we’d normally never have on finding our accommodation. A good mile walk or so and we arrived at Oscar Guest House, its a decent little place with incredibly friendly staff which is usually all a place needs. Our evening was spent at Reggae Mansion, a cool bar that other travellers had previously told us about, costing about £3 per drink was the most expensive we’ve had but it was worth the rooftop bar looking over part of the city. Only a few of us rose early the next morning and eager to see what the city had for us we set off and wondered the local China Town markets arguing prices with vendors and laughing at some of the bizarre designs printed on the fake t-shirts. Upside down Nike ticks etc. We rushed back to our hotel just in time for the arrival of Paul and Jenny, they’d decided to come and visit us out here for two weeks which was a breath of fresh air in the group, even if we were now eight! We set sail after some long needed reunions back into the depths of the city and ended up in the largest, most confusing mall in what i imagine, the world. Think of Ikea and the difficulty of leaving the store, multiply it by a rather large number and you’ve got this place. Adding to the confusing just after some brilliant food in the mall we stumbled upon this huge opening where you could see down several floors, looking up at first i believed to be seeing an orange, metal structure most likely for holding the building together, turns out it was a full sized roller coaster! It came with an entire loop and several massive drops. How is that even possible? None the less like kids we ran to the entrance to the ride where a security guy met us and shared the bad news. It was nearly £5 a ride, which in England i’d of laughed at and thrown my money to him, however out here thats a full days food budget! We found several other things to do in the mall and decided we’d come back for them another day as it was well into the evening.

The next morning after far too much free toast and jam at the hotel we had arrived nice and early at Lagoon Theme Park which had a variety of different areas like water and theme parks along with what appeared to be a small but well looked after zoo. The whole day was really good with a few little roller coasters, a zip line and some decent water slides, especially this one where you would shoot down on a three man dingy into this huge, half-pipe shaped tube and with decent momentum you could fly up and down the sides reaching a good twenty or so feet. The day ended with a torrential downpour and the group got split up for some reason, luckily we found shelter and waited it out before leaving, i guess it is expected in rainy season, Paul and Jenny stood there amazed at the sheer amount the sky opened up, i guess me and the others have become desensitised to it now!
The day after delivered more fun, not just because we had a well earned lay in but we headed to the mall for a more relaxed day of clothes shopping where i finally bought a new top and shorts, bowling, which is always a good laugh with sliding shoes and we had also booked for something we had considered previously, The Escape Room. Its an elaborate series of rooms that you must solve puzzles to move forward. Each game has a theme and after reading the different synopsises we chose ‘The Art Gallery Heist”, armed with a simple torch, eight young, intelligent minds and 45 minutes to complete the challenge we entered the first room which was reasonably simple, finding clues behind paintings to open a padlocked, hidden door. Our second room took longer after going under and over a set of motion detectors and solving two more combination locks through finding hidden numbers both in paintings and on the walls. Robin at some point went through one of the motion detectors setting off a loud alarm, we’re all in panic thinking we’ve failed, but instead it was just a constant noise putting us off and making it a struggle to hear people! We finally got somewhere using the torches UV light which illuminated a secret code on the wall and we entered our final room. The clock was ticking and with quite a while left we settled our eyes on 12 different colour framed prints across the walls. They were different in many ways and at first we struggled to connect the dots. With our final five minutes we began struggling to decide what the final code for escape could be. Only moments were left and we threw several combinations in and crossed fingers. Boom. The alarm sounds and we’re busted. Turns out the correct code was much easier to find than we thought. With all of us thinking we’re masterminds we had over complicated the situation! Gutted but it was a great laugh and definitely something different.

That evening we took Paul and Jenny to Reggae Mansion for a few drinks which ended in me having a good amount of gin, several games of pool later i ended up in Mc Donalds with everyone, but for some reason i was sat separately, across from what seemed to be a more drunk local who i think really wanted to have a staring match, harmless of course but none the less i tried to hold in the laughter awkwardly, ate my food and we set off back home. Obviously without my new and interesting friend. Our final day was quite relaxed, the main temple in Kuala Lumpur is Batu Caves which i really wanted to visit so we got there after a short drive in the afternoon, in all honesty we had fun just walking up the stairs due to the monkeys wondering around, nicking things from tourists, bottles of water, plastic bags, literally anything they took a fancy to. The caves themselves were quite impressive, huge colosseums of rock descended from the roof whilst the temple was a short walk inside. I’m glad i got to visit the temple and see the huge golden Buddha standing outside, the photographs don’t do it justice. Our time in the city had come to an end and i’d go as far as saying it was the most interesting city yet. It was surprisingly green in terms of trees and parks along with the people being very friendly and warming. Our next stop is Indonesia, one of the countries i’ve looked forward to the most for photographic opportunities. The landscapes are scattered with Volcanos and rice fields, hopefully i’ll at least capture a few!