Day 3
Nothing much was special today because we spent about 7 hours
on the train to Kuala Lumpur. We started the day by taking a cab
to the train station. Unfortunately, we met an annoying driver.
Oops.... it is solely my own interpretation to that driver. I
found it was fine he was a talkative person. But, I don\rquote t
really agree with what he said about the cabs in KL. He said
Malaysia cabs don't have meter so that they can charge whatever.
In comparing to Singapore, everything is strictly regulated. In
some taxis, passengers can request receipt. Also, drivers need to
obtain a license before becoming qualified. What I was thinking
was that Singapore was not particularly strict. In the States,
Canada or Hong Kong, such rules and services are popular. When I
got to KL, I did not find taxi was no worse than mentioned.
Perhaps, the Singapore driver had bad experience in KL.
The Malaysian immigration is in the train station. However,
the Singapore's is in the Sin-Mal broader. In other words, we
first entered Malaysia. Then, we left Singapore. Also, the
Malaysian immigration is only a small counter. The officer did
not even stamp on my passport to specify the maximum days I can
stay in Malaysia. The train was a long journey. Why we took a
train instead of a bus or plane? 
The
answer is simple . A return plane ride is too expensive (almost
340 CAD for a 50 minutes flight). And, we thought train is a
safer and more reliable land transport than bus. Of course, train
is the most time consuming among the three. Those 7 hours were
extremely borin g. Therefore, every small thing became special:
some German tourist hung their wet clothes, we said they made the
train like a refugee camp; I failed to kill a crock coach, Derek
screamed loudly; egg sandwich in the train's catering cabin was
like made of stone.
It was 5pm when we
arrived in the KL Sentral station. The station is very new and
nice. It is also accessed by bus, subway and taxi. We headed
straight to the hotel. As it was already late, we did not go for
any sightseeing. Instead, we went for dinner and shopping. We had
a Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki in the food court of a nearby
shopping center. The term "Okonomiyaki" means your
favorite grill. It is a Japanese style pancake like thing that
you can beef, chicken, pork or seafood as the stuffing. The owner
of the stall was a Japanese lady. So, I was kind of confident the
food that we ate was true Japanese food. After dinner, we walked
along the Bukit Bintang Street. BB Street is famous for its
concentrated shopping malls like St. Catherine Street of
Montreal, Nathan Road of Hong Kong or Orchard Road of Singapore.
We went to Sungei Wang center and met a Yam Tat Wah (a Hong Kong
actor.) Yam was a special guest of a fashion show held in that
mall. We did not buy anything because we d id not want to spend
all of the cash in the first day. Later, we dropped by an
Internet cafe for about 30 minutes. We went back to the hotel
early to prepare tomorrow's thing. However, we did have some
problems in reading the map. This definitely h as no relationship
to our map reading skills. It was because our map was written in
Japanese! I asked the hotel for an English or Chinese tourist
map. Unfortunately, they were all gone. So, I had a big chance to
apply my freshly learnt Japanese in the real world.
Day 4
Journals
The
answer is simple . A return plane ride is too expensive (almost
340 CAD for a 50 minutes flight). And, we thought train is a
safer and more reliable land transport than bus. Of course, train
is the most time consuming among the three. Those 7 hours were
extremely borin g. Therefore, every small thing became special:
some German tourist hung their wet clothes, we said they made the
train like a refugee camp; I failed to kill a crock coach, Derek
screamed loudly; egg sandwich in the train's catering cabin was
like made of stone.