SE Asia Vacation begins

I guess I will have to blog this over a couple of posts, a little bit at a time. I just returned from 10 days in the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia and Cambodia. I have been wanted to go to Cambodia for a few years now, but didn't want to go it alone. I traveled on this trip with my friends Marty and Stu. Marty is a co-worker of mine at the airline, and Stu used to be a stew years (and years) ago, but is now a professor. They are travel warriors like myself, and enjoy traveling to places off the beaten path.

Traveling standby is always a challenge, and we actually circumnavigated the globe on this trip as we went to Malaysia out of Newark with a stop in Stockholm, as Malaysia Airlines has a direct flight and it was wide open and we came home via Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

We arrived in Stockholm the morning of the 19th and had a two hour wait. The crew had been really great to us going over and had given us four bottles of wine to take with us (they got off in Stockholm and a new crew flew on to Kuala Lumper with us). The Swedes had a problem with my wine as they made us go thru security, so they confiscated it, but returned it to me before I reboarded the flight.

By the time we landed in Malaysia, two days after we left Newark, we were pretty whacked out, after having flown two red eyes in a row, but we arrived so early at KLIA (Kuala Lumper International Airport) that we breezed thru customs and immigration with no troubles. The airport is about 45 miles from town, and they offer a bullet train, but with the cost of that, it was actually cheaper for the three of us to take a cab directly to our hotel.

We were able to check in upon arrival, even though it was early in the morning. We were afraid they were going to make us wait until check in time at 2pm. Since Marty and Stu wanted a smoking room, we were on separate floors. My room faced the Petronas Towers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Tower).

Given that we had two days of filth on us after our long trip over from the states, we decided to chill in our rooms for a few hours and regroup at noon. I took what felt like the best shower of my life, and took some time walking around the property, got some postcards, mailed them out. We wanted to go up into the Petronas Towers, but we found out you have to queue at 8am for tickets and they only let you go to the skybridge on the 44th floor, so we passed on that. The concierge told us how to get to a part of town called Bukit Nanas, which was two monorail stops away, where we could find some restaurants and do a little exploring.

We quickly discovered that the traffic in KL was horrendous and made pedestrian activities very difficult. The best way to cross a street was to cross when someone who looked like they were a native did, otherwise you would wait 15 minutes for a crosswalk light.

When we got to Bukit Nanas, we were ravenous, and ended up eating at a place called The Ship (http://www.theship.com.my/home.htm) which was credited as having the best steak in town. I got the fixed lunch menu and got a free hand towel as my gift at the end of the meal. I also introduced Marty to Tiger Beer, a popular SE Asian brew.

When we left the restaurant, it was pouring rain, so we went to an Irish pub and waited out the storm. On the way back to the hotel, we passed a Mickey D's and I snapped a rather interesting shot that reminded you Malaysia was an Islamic country. Actually, the population is a mix of native Malay people who are predominantly Muslim, as well as ethnic Chinese and Indian populations. The three groups do not usually intermingle socially, but there is harmony and not really any religious tension over differences that you would find here in the US or other countries. All the rooms in the hotel had a Kiblaat, which is an arrow that points towards Mecca too.

One of the things I found made eating easier was that everything is Halal. I do not eat pork, but neither do Muslim folks, so I found it nice to know that all the ham and sausage and bacon was either beef or chicken based.

We booked ourselves on a little day tour for the following day that took us outside of town to see various sites and spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying to get over our jet lag.