Inspired Travels

Right now I’m in Malaysia with Tim, Rahul, Scott and Nate. I’ve just spent like an hour an half in Zara in KL, in Lot 10. I heard that zara is coming to Oz next year.

We landed in KL last night at like 10.30pm. A bus transfer to Central, then a train ride to LCCT, then a taxi later, we got to our hotel. From one of our rooms, we can see the Petronas towers. It looks awesome at night, and every panel in the building looks like it has been lit up. I imagine the electricity bill must be huge. We’re going there later tonight to check it out.

We had dinner at like 1am in the morning, and we actually had very little cash (ringit is the local currency). I went to 2 different ATM’s and they were both out of order. I heard another tourist at the ATM say that all the ATM’s on the street were not working. I asked the guy working at 7 Eleven what was going on, and he said that the banks were closed, and it will be working at 2am. I raised my eyebrows slightly and walked out. I then came back in and asked “can we use creditcards?”. I was then told 2am again.

It occured to me that being Sunday and after seeing a few mosques around and the signs being in Arabic, that it was probably a day of rest for Muslims (Malaysia has a very large Muslim population). I had been in Morocco before, which was a Muslim country and I recall something particulary about Sunday. I don’t remember the ATM’s not working.

For lunch today, we had some Arabic food. We had some dips, lebanese bread, shish kebabs, wine leaves. Pretty good food! It was a little Arabic area, as I noticed that 4 of the restaurants included Iranian, Moroccan and Arabic cusine nearby.

I hadn’t realised that there were many Muslim people in Malaysia. There are ladies walking around with the traditional black dress, clothed from head to toe, some with only a slit for their eyes. It must be incredibly hot given the humid temperature. I had read somewhere that this is because for married women only the husband can see them.

Malaysia is an interesting place – its quite diverse in its population. I hear Cantonese and Mandarin in the street, Arabic, Malay, English. There’s a big Indian population here as well (the Indian club near our hotel was still pumping music at 2am in the morning).

I’ve hit up about 3 to 4 shopping malls already in Malaysia including Pavilion Plaza (more upmarket), Lot 10 (upmarket), Sungaiwang (like MBK in Thailand, cheaper) and someother one. I’ll prolly do some more shopping before I leave for Singapore.