The trip to KL

My apologies for finishing this blog came more than a week late. To make a super-duper long blog as short as possible, I'll only be writing out the more interesting events in detail. But it's still very long, so read at your own leisure.

The trip was organised by 1 of Karen's cousins, Josephine, as a family outing. They wanted to get enough people to book a whole coach to ourselves, so Karen asked us (her year 2 classmates) along. There were 17 of us altogether (not enough for a whole coach, but no one else wanted to go). Of the 17, 3 were Karen's friends (Bryan, Yap and me).

I'm sure many are puzzled as to why the 3 of us joined Karen's family outing. Actually, it's not the 1st time we did so. We've been to Genting Highlands with her family last year (together with a few other classmates as well). That was the 1st time we went out with her family and we found out that her family members are very easy to get along with. Karen's mom and aunties were not those typical aunties that you see everywhere in Singapore. They're very humurous people with a sense of adventure and are quite young at heart. This trait must have rubbed off their children, for Karen, her sisters and her cousins are similar in this aspect.

The other reason why I wanted to go for this trip is because I hardly get to hang out with Bryan and Yap. Although we're all in ME and NUS cycling sub-club, we hardly go out because of differences in schedules and cliques.


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The Palace of the Golden Horses

Thus named because its main theme was horses - horse statues and sculptures, horse head figurines in the most unimagineable places (pillars, arm rests of chairs), hoof-shaped furniture legs, horse-shoe patterned carpets, and places named "Derby", "Stable", etc. Luckily they didn't expect their customers to eat out of troughs like horses as well.

There is a small sign just outside the entrance of the hotel saying something like: "Customers are requested not to wear slippers, shorts, singlets (etc etc etc informal wear) to maintain the atmosphere of the hotel". Too bad, this wasn't shown when the contract was formed.

Only 2 out of 7 rooms (2 to 1 room) were ready when we arrived. How can anyone claim to be a 6-star hotel, when they give excuses like "The previous customers checked out of the rooms only 1 hour ago"???

Karen fell in love with the place more and more as she explored the place. She claims that the building and its surroundings are very spacious, unlike those in Singapore, and that gives her a feeling of freedom. What beats me is why she loves shopping when she hates crowds and crowded places.

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The Mines

I have absolutely no idea why they named the resort, shopping centre and theme park next to the Palace of the Golden Horses this. The resort looks nice, kind of like the higher end resorts I came across in Pulau Tioman because it has a man-made lake beside it and man-made beach ni front of the chalets. Wakeboarding services are provided on the lake (is that drool coming out from Erin's and Jeremy's mouth?).

The shopping centre is rather boring, because it sells mainly food and souvenirs. The theme park is not much better, except for one part, the "Snow House". It's a place with ice sculptures and other things made out of ice blocks, like slides and arm chairs. The place is probably around -20 degree Celcius. In fact, I could see vapour escaping from my mouth when I talk.

Sitting on the ice constructs while waiting for our photos to be taken is really a pain in the ass. And it makes you wet too. The vapour from our breaths make the camera lens fog

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Getting around in KL

The only mode of transport out of my hotel is taxi, because The Palace of the Golden Horses is at the outskirts of KL. No monorail (their equivalent of our MRT) or buses go to the hotel. The hotel does have its own taxis for hire as well. We rented the hotel taxis to go to Berjaya Times Square. The charge per taxi was RM 25. The hotel taxi was quite interesting in design, because the passenger seat beside the driver was replaced by a space for luggage, and there were 2 rows of seat in the rear facing each other. Of course that means I have a problem squeezing in with my friends. The aircon on the taxi was practically non-existence, which means 5 of us (there were 5 in my taxi) were enjoying a little sauna on prior to shopping.

After walking around Berjaya Times Square, we proceeded on to Sungei Wang. Although the 2 shopping centres were rather close to each other, we took the monorail (for 1 stop) because it was raining. KL's monorail is our equivalent of the MRT, but it's very much smaller. More comparable to the LRT I think. It only had 2 carriages, but it's roof was so low my hair could touch it when I stand upright. So much for having fresh air up there. The monorail is always packed, as though KL has 24 hours of peak hours. Once is enough, no more monorail rides for me.

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Foot Reflexology Heaven

"Malaysia, truly Asia" is the slogan used by Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board (does this department name sound familiar?). If the capital of a country is supposed to reflect its country best, then I guess Asia should be very well known for foot reflexology. Foot reflexology centres are abundant every where in KL. No matter where you go, you can see a foot reflexology signboard. They even have centres operated by the blind.

Anyway, Karen was quite excited about trying out the cheap cheap full body massages available there. The cheapest one in Sungei Wang costs RM 45 and lasts for 1 hour. There were also other choices, such as "head, shoulders and back", "foot reflexology only (of course)", etc. I decided to take my chance and try the full body massage, since my legs were tired from the long hours of shopping.

Hey, the massage is not the indecent kind. And it is being carried out by a blind man.

Anyway, my advice to everyone is: do not go for cheap full body massages! The masseur doesn't know how to massage the correct places. Worse of all, he's a big set man who uses his body weight to exert force when he massages. You can never imagine the pain. He spent about 40 minutes massaging my legs (I didn't even tell him my legs are tired!!), 5 minutes on my arms (why on earth would anyone need their arms massaged??), 1 minute massaging my head (and ruining my nicely gel-ed hair), 2 minutes on my abdominals (is he trying to kill me??), and 5 minutes on my neck and shoulders (and these happen to be the most important areas...). I can do a much better job than this guy can.

I came out of the centre feeling worse than before. Sharon (Karen's 2nd younger sis) said I looked as though I was going to die. She's almost correct.

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