Oops... I've become a bit complacent about posting this up... Hope everyone celebrated the New Year with a bit of flair! I enjoyed my first proper HK NYE Countdown with a few friends :)
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The day began midnight... Tapping away at the new iPad, connecting to Facebook, installing new Apps... and reading Clarissa's blog for things to do in Singapore. One good thing I took from that was to get the "ieat hawker" app: a portable food directory that sooooooo easy to use, and very convenient too given how "dai pai dong" (hawker stalls) are famous in Singapore. Crawled into bed at 1 and managed a respectable 4 hours of sleep before being shaken awake by my uncle at 5am, to catch a 6am CityFlyer A11 bus. Things were a bit chaotic, with last minute checks to make sure we got everything... Camera - check, ipad - check... Watch...oops. Oh well... Try to function these few days without a watch then!
After checking-in, the four of us (Uncle, Auntie and my brother) had brekkie at Popeye, a fried chicken eatery that served Halal food. A handful of hash-brownlets, two chicken sausages, one tub of tomato soup macaroni and a cup of HK milk tea later, I was well fed and ready to cross Immigration and Customs at HKIA. I briefly split off from the others to go walkabout and explore the shops around the Airside, and got a 'how-to' magazine for the iPad. It was almost 0810 before I started heading over towards the gate: 0845 was the scheduled departure time, and I thought I would be able to leisurely stroll across half the International terminal, and get there within 10mins. Well... The second part was right... I got there at 0820, with the other three were standing at the counter, waiting impatiently for me to get my butt over there.
Taxiing off to take-off took a while... but a four hour flight and a questionable meal later, we were landing at the second terminal at KLIA: Kuala Lumpur International Airport. It was aircon'ed comfort all the way, into the Aerorail shuttle train... until the train moved into sunlight: only then did we start experiencing the humidity and 30C weather. Anyways, traversed the main terminal, collected baggage, passed through I&C, and we hopped into a taxi to take us to Kuala Lumpur CBD. Turns out it's a little like Hong Kong: the big airport is about 40mins away from the CBD.
I'll have a tendency to jump over the boring stuff: so after a somewhat scenic ride, we checked into two rooms at the Hotel Concorde, KL. After a quick refresher, Uncle led the way walking to KLCC shopping mall/Suria Centre. Like any male in a shopping mall: its always confusing the first time, but becomes more familiar by day 2.
The food court at Suria Mall was an interesting experience: halal food in KL is rampant, with the odd place being non-Halal. So a chicken and "char siu" chicken rice for me, and assortment of a chilli Penang Kway Teow and other dishes for everyone else meant that we became rather full over the next hour, and also glad to be out of the humid weather. After lunch, we went walkabout in the centre, and surprisingly I got a bit of shopping done: stopped at UniQlo (horribly corrupted Japanese-Romanisation of 'Unique') and bought 2 jackets that were 40% cheaper than RRP. Now the stuff in KL is usually more expensive than in HK, but we thought maybe the tropical climate make it almost impossible to sell jackets.
Now KLCC/Suria Mall is literally the shopping area of the Petronas Twin Towers... much like Centrepoint Westfield is for Centrepoint. Long story short: it costs RM50 to go up and have a look around, with all tickets for the day already sold out. So we bought tickets for the last session tomorrow, at 6pm. More on this tomorrow...
Judging by how short these paragraphs are, you can probably guess I was quite tired already; and so we kept on walking... but started walking to dinner! Firstly: the monorail. Now no offense to Uncle, but he insisted we go in THIS direction... turns out we walked further 'up' the line for the previous station, when we could have saved time and effort walking to closer Bukit Nanas station instead. Anyhows, we boarded a fully jam-packed train to Chow Kit, a region known for its Chinese (non-Halal) foods, and also a fruit market where Auntie and Uncle bought a kilo of Longans for snacking later at night. And... and... and we still kept walking. It was nearly 7pm before we got to the Seri Pacific Hotel, for a dinner at Kofuku.
Now what is Kofuku? A Japanese buffet where people queue up a fair bit for to get in, and you'd pretty much need to book a table... and still line up anyway. Turns out Uncle made a booked from HK before we left. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but there was a fair selection of sushi, sashimi, teppanyaki, mixed stuffed like soups, fried rices and noodles, salads, veggies and tempuras, etc. And the desserts... Oh, I'll probably go on and on about desserts this holidays.
To be honest: the desserts leave a bit to be desired. There was a GOOD range of tarts, cakes and fruits, but the sugary stuff wasn't quite sweet enough... Including the bean cakes :(
After dinner, we took a taxi home, asked the driver how long and how much it'd be to go exploring Putrajaya. Needless to say, we arranged for him to take us tomorrow for 3 hours for only RM100!
More tomorrow!
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