Tuesday, April 26, 2011

In My Pants

I can't believe the semester is almost over... Finals are upon us and there are less than two weeks before I leave for home! And once again, I've fallen behind on updating my blog =( So first things first, I'll tell all about our trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the Petronas Formula 1 race.

The races were Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but not much was going on for the first two days, so we used Friday to do all of our sightseeing in KL (there isn't much to see, so one day was enough). We started off very early at the Petronas twin towers, which used to be the tallest towers in the world until they were surpassed by Taipei 101. The only problem was that ticket sales start at 8:30am, and it's first come first served. So we got there at 6:15....

None of us were really fully awake either, so we were all lying on the ground in line until the security guards told us we had to stand up. We then proceeded to play those hand games that all little kids in elementary school played, and even got the Mexicans to teach us some of their games that Evan and I didn't know. Once ticket sales started at 8:30, we were almost the first to get tickets. We wanted to go all the way up to the top, but the first visit to the top wasn't until 11:00 which we weren't going to sit around and wait for, so we chose to go up to the sky bridge at 9:20.

From up there on the 41st floor, you could get a pretty good view of the surrounding city.


After our visit to the Petronas towers, we headed out to the Batu Caves, which has the world's tallest Murugan statue.

After climbing 272 steps, you finally reach the caves. Which are home to many monkeys that may look really cute, but are actually evil. Ricky told us that if we brought Cheetos, we could feed the monkeys. However, this mean old monkey came up to us and snatched the bag right out of our hands before we could even open it and offer it to them.

The other monkeys weren't really much better either. There was one monkey who stole a water bottle from a girl and proceeded to drink from it. And there were times where it seemed like they were circling us and we're going to attack! Evan thoroughly enjoyed it, but Montse, Adriana, and I were more than ready to leave. We had had our fair share of monkeys.

After the Batu Caves, we were originally going to go to the KL Tower which is another really tall tower in the city, but we were exhausted so we just went back to our hostel to shower up and do some studying.

On Saturday, we went to the race track but nothing exciting really happened since it was just preliminary stuff going on. But when we went on Sunday, it was super fun. In order to get there, we first had to take a train to the airport, and then take a bus from the airport to the race track.


Once you get to the track though, you have to take another bus which circles the track and takes you to the stands where you're seated, which proved to be a little bit of a problem when we were trying to leave. We had covered hillstand seats (which means that bugs crawl all over you when you're sitting), and they were PACKED on Sunday.

The race was so cool to watch too. The cars were going so fast! And they were so loud it was a good thing we had all bought ear plugs.

The only problem we ran into that day was when we were trying to leave. We needed to take the free shuttle bus back to the parking lot so we could catch the bus to the airport, but everyone else was taking the bus too. Every bus that drove by was either full, or it didn't stop at the bus stop (which we were waiting at) because people just stood in the middle of the road and blocked its way. So we had to resort to hitch-hiking, which actually worked surprisingly well and left us with a good story to tell. The first truck we got in was the kind of truck that, in Asia at least, is made for workers to sit in the bed as they drive around. So we fit all eight of us in there, and then stuck in about four or five other random people. We thought it was great... until the guy told us he couldn't go any further because he had to drive home. So we had to get out and start walking again. The other three people who were with us had no problem picking up a ride in a little car, but we had a little more trouble finding a vehicle that would fit all eight of us in it. Luckily for us, a pickup truck stopped to pick us up. There were already three people in the bed, and we weren't sure we would fit, but they managed to squeeze us all in. All of us except for one of Austin's legs. So we had to hold on to him a little bit to keep him in the truck. Eventually, though, we did make it back to the parking lot. We had to wait about 45 minutes just to get on the bus, and then the ride back to the airport took about an hour and a half (because some genius didn't realize that a rotary would slow down traffic, not speed it up). But we eventually made it back with some great stories to tell of our times in Malaysia.

Love,
Reb

1 comment:

KC said...

Did you take that picture in the last post with the cliffs and the boat?!? It seriously looks like national geographic, so pretty! Also I like the monkey with Doritos or whatever snack that was. Also Phi Phi is like Pi Phi. :) I'm glad you're still having a blast but I'm also happy you'll be home soon! Miss you mucho!