Our flight from Toronto to Shanghai was delayed for 3 hours because they were trying to "fix the entertainment system". 3 hours went by and they decided it couldn't be fixed, so after de-icing again, we finally took off. At least we had an exit row so lots of room for legs. And I have to admit the food wasn't too bad- something like General Tao chicken but it was pork instead. ..And the sleeping pills we took were fantab- knocked me out for 7 hours straight and Shameiz for about 5 hours. .. And even had a flight attendant, a nice lady from Quebec, be really friendly to us, telling us funny stories and giving us some travel tips for Malaysia (big surprise for Air Canada where, in my experience, all the flight attendants seems to hate their jobs and therefore hate you too). But alas, after 17 hours, when we finally disembarked the plane, we found out that we had just missed our connector to Kuala Lumpur. We were told that Air Canada would put us up in a hotel and the AC representative gave us instructions to go to customs and another AC rep would meet us there. HA! The AC rep was nowhere to be found. Luckily we were not alone. Joined by 6 others, plus Shirley who took up the role of tour guide, after a long couple of hours we had found our way through customs, pinned down the Air Can agent, and made it to the Ramada hotel.
Here's a pic of the group waiting for the shuttle bus to take us to the hotel:
Mini review of Ramada Inn.
Hotel room: Clean, a bit cramped, no cockroaches, beds as hard as rock.
Food: Dinner = meh. Wine tasted like water and green curry was just ok. Breakfast = awesome. Buffet of Western style and Chinese food. Hashbrowns fried to a golden crisp, fried rice spiced to perfection, and some yummy green vegetables (yes, I said vegetables). Yumm.
Kuala Lumpur is kinda small.
And there is not a lot to do there. So really the one afternoon and evening we ended up having in KL because of Air Canada wasn't too big of a loss. We visited the Petronas towers, which don't look that tall when you see them in person, but do look pretty cool at night when they are all lit up:
.. and then took a cab to go to Chinatown for some shopping at the night markets. Our cabbie was pretty cranky probably because we bargained him down to 10 MYR from 20 (he wouldn't use the meter and we knew that 10 was more than enough) and the traffic was pretty bad, so he dumped us in Little India and told us to walk a few blocks to Chinatown. No bother. Little India was interesting to see.. lots of stores with fried foods... and lots of garbage on the sidewalks. Hmm kind of reminded us of Delhi. :-)
Chinatown was pretty interesting too. Night markets with the usual- watches, clothes, bags, belts, clothes, perfumes and colognes, foodies, you get the picture. McD's with Red Bean desserts and a "Prosperity Beef Burger Meal". Here's some more pics of Chinatown:
Too bad we didn't get to go to the Reggae Bar. Jet lag took over at approximately 8pm and we had to boot it back to the hotel before we both passed out.
Mini review of Renaissance Hotel in KL.
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Had both a dry and wet sauna. :-)
Langkawi.
... to be continued...
