Talk about getting great bang for your buck; the Air Asia flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur was something of a steal at 300 bucks NZ each. Thrown into the mix was a $40 discount for our onward flights to Penang, courtesy of Flight Centre – word of advice fellow travellers: get a cheapo airfare with a low budget airline on the internet and the company will beat it by a buck and throw in a future discount! The flight time was eight hours, the plane was half empty and we arrived 30 minutes ahead of time. What more can you ask for?
Straight onto an express bus and 50 minutes later we were in downtown KL. All for the outlandish price of two bucks NZ! The fact we were arriving during Chinese New Year was always going to complicate things, but after a short stroll through China Town we found a shithole with two dorm beds left – another silly price: four bucks NZ. “Done”, we said, and waded into the sweaty, brick dungeon.
KL is the hub for Air Asia, and as such the perfect place to base yourselves and take advantage of ridiculously cheap flight deals. Our flight to Penang, already booked, cost us the better part of 25 bucks NZ, and with accommodation so cheap in the Malaysian capital it was time to hit the street hawkers and roam the stalls for some much needed Asian fare.
Let’s be honest here. We’d done KL before, on our way to New Zealand. This time round we had no intention of exploring the city as we did everything on offer last time around. This time around it was all about the food, and the Tiger! How ironic then that we should spend our first
nigh
t gorging on wonderful Malaysian grub at the very same place in China Town when passing through with Marit’s parents.
During our brief stay we were both taken aback at how much dirtier and run down the city seemed, and it had only been three years. While new buildings, most of them posh hotels, were popping up everywhere, recent additions to the crowded skyline looked tired and poorly maintained. The streets, too, seemed far busier, and the atmosphere claustrophobic. Why? Well for one thing the Asian invasion that is the migrating Chinese have descended on this city in their tens of thousands.
Even the open spaces that worked as natural boundaries were gone and the countless ethnic neighbourhoods had merged into a sprawling mess. In short, KL has become “another Asian metropolis”, and the sad thing is that there’s only worse to come.
Talk about getting great bang for your buck; the Air Asia flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur was something of a steal at 300 bucks NZ each. Thrown into the mix was a $40 discount for our onward flights to Penang, courtesy of Flight Centre – word of advice fellow travellers: get a cheapo airfare with a low budget airline on the internet and the company will beat it by a buck and throw in a future discount! The flight time was eight hours, the plane was half empty and we arrived 30 minutes ahead of time. What more can you ask for?
Straight onto an express bus and 50 minutes later we were in downtown KL. All for the outlandish price of two bucks NZ! The fact we were arriving during Chinese New Year was always going to complicate things, but after a short stroll through China Town we found a shithole with two dorm beds left – another silly price: four bucks NZ. “Done”, we said, and waded into the sweaty, brick dungeon.
KL is the hub for Air Asia, and as such the perfect place to base yourselves and take advantage of ridiculously cheap flight deals. Our flight to Penang, already booked, cost us the better part of 25 bucks NZ, and with accommodation so cheap in the Malaysian capital it was time to hit the street hawkers and roam the stalls for some much needed Asian fare.
Let’s be honest here. We’d done KL before, on our way to New Zealand. This time round we had no intention of exploring the city as we did everything on offer last time around. This time around it was all about the food, and the Tiger! How ironic then that we should spend our first
nigh
t gorging on wonderful Malaysian grub at the very same place in China Town when passing through with Marit’s parents.
During our brief stay we were both taken aback at how much dirtier and run down the city seemed, and it had only been three years. While new buildings, most of them posh hotels, were popping up everywhere, recent additions to the crowded skyline looked tired and poorly maintained. The streets, too, seemed far busier, and the atmosphere claustrophobic. Why? Well for one thing the Asian invasion that is the migrating Chinese have descended on this city in their tens of thousands.
Even the open spaces that worked as natural boundaries were gone and the countless ethnic neighbourhoods had merged into a sprawling mess. In short, KL has become “another Asian metropolis”, and the sad thing is that there’s only worse to come.
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