So Not Lost!

And so the adventure ends.

It was my biggest and longest trip since last year’s three-week Southeast Asian trip, and my first major one this year (not to mention the first one with my new passport). It was an exciting one for me, too, visiting a new country for the first time, and revisiting a city I’d been last year, even for just a few hours. I decided not to set my plans in stone apart from my flights to and from Laos. In the end, everything worked out amazingly.

Revisiting Kuala Lumpur was nice, especially since I was visiting (and being hosted by) someone I’d hosted here in Singapore. I had a great time with him, even as we did the touristy thing and posed for photos in front of the Petronas Towers. Kuala Lumpur was also a nice little middle ground, a sort of transitionary destination between the orderly cleanliness of Singapore and the developing dustiness of Laos.

Petronas Towers

Flying into and landing in Laos was an amazing feeling. There are few things better than looking out the plane window and knowing that you are about to set foot in a whole new country. It was practically a sea of green that was greeting me on my arrival in Vientiane.

Vientiane was a lovely little city, slowly coming into its own but still one of the most relaxed Southeast Asian capital cities. Sure, it doesn’t have the ease of getting around that Singapore does, but it doesn’t have the hectic hustle and bustle of Bangkok or Manila, nor is it in any imminent danger of suddenly sprouting skyscrapers like Phnom Penh. (There is currently a law prohibiting the construction of buildings taller than the seven-storey Patuxay.)

Patuxay Park, Vientiane

Vang Vieng was everything the guidebooks said it would be: Packed with backpackers going tubing, full of restaurants and bars playing nothing but Friends and Family Guy. Some might not like that, but I definitely enjoyed myself and ended up staying a little longer than planned. Traveling by myself allowed me to meet a lot of new people, including (and especially) one that became my travel buddy in Vang Vieng.

partying at Bucket Bar in Vang Vieng

When a trip ends, there always seems to be the feeling that you never have enough time to travel. Maybe I feel that way because I’ve yet to do a trip longer than three weeks long. In Laos, I met a handful of people who were winding down on their seventh or eighth month of travel, and were just about ready to go home. But I only had a week, and while a week might be plenty for some people, it simply wasn’t enough for me.

And so this Laos adventure ends. I think I’ll definitely go back; there’s still a lot I need to see in Laos. Now I’m looking forward to where my travels will take me to next!

View of Petronas Towers from KL Tower - Click to View Hi-Res Image

The Petronas Towers are the world’s tallest twin towers, but you can’t view the city from the top; free tickets can only take you to the Skybridge on the 41st and 42nd floors. On the other hand, you can go all the way to the top of the KL Tower (the fifth tallest telecommunication tower in the world). This grants you a great view of the city, and as you can see in this photo, you can view the Petronas Towers from this vantage point. There are even guides in the tower that helpfully point out what exactly you’re looking at from above.

I hope you enjoyed the TravelTuesday Picture of the Week! Enjoy the rest of TravelTuesday on Twitter and follow me @hyperren. Come back next week for another PotW!

I woke up on Saturday morning wondering if I made the right decision to stay for just one full day in Kuala Lumpur. On one hand, I’d already seen all the major sights and destinations that I wanted to visit: Petronas Towers (even if I didn’t get to go up on the skybridge), KL Tower, Bukit Bintang, Merdeka Square, Little India, Chinatown, and Jalan Petaling. On the other hand, there were still a lot of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to enter a single museum, for example, though whether or not that was such a big loss is still debatable. I didn’t stay long enough to get the hang of the railway system. I missed out on some quick day trips outside of the city center, like Putrajaya or the Batu Caves. As I started to gather my things, I contemplated staying in Kuala Lumpur just a little bit longer.

I didn’t have a set schedule for Kuala Lumpur and Singapore; all that was set in stone was that I had to be in Singapore by Tuesday morning to catch a plane to Macau. I debated whether or not to spend a little more time at Kuala Lumpur at the expense of time spent in Singapore. Ultimately, I decided that not seeing everything at least gave me some incentive to return to Kuala Lumpur in the future. With that decided, I called up the bus companies to figure out the departure times of their buses to Singapore. I settled on one that left at around noon.

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The second half of my whirlwind tour of Kuala Lumpur began after the lunchtime rain. While seeking refuge from the rain in a restaurant along Jalan Bukit Bintang, I tried to plot out the rest of my day. The guidebook I borrowed included suggestions for some walking tours around Kuala Lumpur’s Colonial District and Merdeka Square, Little India, and Chinatown. Each tour route seemed to flow into each other, so that was the perfect itinerary for the second part of my day.

I walked towards the nearest train station, but I was sidetracked by a couple of malls that I had to go through in order to get there. Okay, that made it sound like I didn’t want to go through the mall; the truth is that my guidebook mentioned a Borders bookstore at one of the malls I was going to pass through, so I had to check it out. Being at Borders was like the mothership calling me home. The bookstore carried a lot of books that I was interested in: Plays and scripts, travel books, even Broadway music sheets. I picked up a few books (a couple of plays, a Bill Bryson book, and a pocket guide to Singapore) then continued with my plan for the afternoon.

The first stop on my walking tour was supposed to be Masjid Jamek, one of the oldest mosques in Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, I spent so much time distracted by Borders that by the time I got there, it was closed to visitors (or at least I assumed it was closed to visitors). The exterior looked absolutely wonderful, and I had a nice view from the top thanks to the train station beside it. It’s too bad I didn’t (or couldn’t) go inside.

From there, I walked towards Merdeka Square, passing beside the Sessions and Magistrates Courts. That building was built in 1910 to house the Federated Malay States Survey Department. It’s a pretty (and large) building that was a good introduction to the architecture at the old Colonial District.

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I only had one full day to explore Kuala Lumpur, so I wanted to make the most of it. I borrowed a Malaysian guidebook from my CouchSurfing host Angelo, and I had some idea of what I wanted to do that day. Unfortunately, my day started out as a comedy of errors.

I meant to wake up early to have enough time to do laundry and head to the Petronas Towers, get a ticket, and go to the observation deck. Unfortunately, my exhaustion from the day before made me wake up later than I had hoped, so I had to scratch the Petronas Towers observation deck from my plans.

I was further delayed by my almost comically bad attempts to make it to the nearest train station. I made it as far as outside the apartment complex when I drew a blank on where I was supposed to go. (That’s what I get for not paying attention when my host picked me up from the station and brought me to his apartment.) I made a wrong turn and walked further away from the station. To make things worse, when I finally figured out what direction I needed to go, I totally forgot that people drove on the side of the road opposite from that in the Philippines. So, instead of looking to the right before crossing the street, I looked left. Needless to say, the driver of the car coming in from the right was not pleased to see me walking down the street, oblivious to her presence.

The Kuala Lumpur rail system was quite possibly more confusing than the one here in Manila, probably because there were more lines and stations in KL than in Manila. I knew I had to switch stations and train lines at some point, but of course I couldn’t figure out where the other line was when I got to that point.

Once I had figured everything out, I ended up at Suria KLCC, a mall so huge they actually offered maps of the mall for visitors. (Maybe that’s something the owners of SM Mall of Asia can take a cue from. I still get lost and confused in that place.)

After eating a quick breakfast, I began to look for Petronas Towers. I consulted my guidebook and my Suria KLCC map. I went outside, looking for signs and directions pointing me to Petronas Towers.

I should have just turned around and looked up.

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