Transfer to KL

Sunday February 24th

Got up a bit later than planned, and went looking for a place for breakfast. It was very difficult. Nothing seemed to be open at 10 on a Sunday morning. Its a bit strange, this is supposed to be a backpacker location. Anyway I checked out of the hotel and headed down to get the ferry back to the main land. I kept looking for a place to pay the ferry, but it seems its effectively one of these places where you pay return one way and the return is free. So I got away with it.

The ferry leaves you at the bus terminal, where the challenge isn't to find a Kuala Lumpur bound bus, but the next one. I got on one but we sat around for a good 3/4s of an hour while we waited until we were full. Other buses may have left first if they filled up. They are all different companies, so there is no measure of co-operation. The bus itself was very comfotable, and the road is excellent, although the bus did struggle a bit as we went up through the Cameron Highlands, a mountain range with the same type of spectacular scenery I'd seem in Southern Thailand.

Eventually we got to KL, and the drop off point for the bus actually turned out, by luck, to be less than 5 minutes walk from the hotel. But when I got to the hotel, which I had booked because I was worried about availabity given it was 6pm when I was arriving, it turned out the internet company that I had booked with had never forwarded the details to the hotel. Luckily they had spare rooms so they booked me in, assuming that the confirmation would come within the next 24 hours.

That evening I decided not to go too far from the hotel. Anyway the hotel is in Chinatown, which is quite lively after dark. However no matter how I looked, I couldn't find a Sports bar (the Carling Cup final was on), or any real nightlife as such. The few Chinese restaurants around that also doubled as bars all closed about 11. So there wasn't much left to do at that stage but go back to the hotel, where I discovered that the Carling Cup wasn't on TV anyway, they think the Premiership is more important. I did get to see the goals though, and was happy enough with the result.

One mini rant coming up, brought about by the discovery that there is no need for a plug adapter here because, thanks to British Colonialism, they use the same plug as we do. The rant though is how come in this time of international standards, with us able to use our mobile phones all over the world (even in the US), we can't charge them all over the world without having to get adapters. Surely the world would be better off with a common electrical system (in order to ensure everyone bore the costs equally I guess a whole new one would have to be introduced rather than us all adapting the US one).