Last night was the last formal night of the cruise and the Captain hosted a farewell party before dinner. At dinner we exchange address information with our table mates, you always do that, but never keep in touch. Maybe it will be different this time, we seem to have a very compatible group.
We have most of our packing complete and will finish up this evening.
The bus ride into KL took about one hour because we did not hit a "jam", as they refer to traffic jams here. Don and Myrna have been here before and decided not to go into KL. We had planned with a couple from Australia to share cabs in the city and tour together. The bus dropped us off at the KLCC, a large shopping mall next to the Patronas Towers. They were at one time the tallest building in the world, but have been surpassed by the Sear's Tower in Chicago and now by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Towers do remain the tallest twin (they are attached to each other by a sky bridge) towers in the world. You may remember a Sean Connery, Katherine Zeda Jones , movie Entrapment that highlighted the towers.
We went in the mall to exchange money and use the bathroom. Exchanging money was easier than the first bathroom I visited. I opened the door to the stall and all I saw was a white enamel fitted hole in the ground. I just didn't feel I had the necessary skills to use this facility, so I found another bathroom with more familiar hardware. Evelyn had routinely found then throughout our trip as an option to the more conventional western facilities.
After that Evelyn made her first purchase of the day, a Starbucks mug that said Malaysia. We want to get out of the mall for more local shopping and were advised to visit the City Market and Chinatown. Our taxi driver suggested we do City Market first because most of the stalls in Chinatown didn't open until noon.
We found a lot of souvenirs and everyone was willing to bargain. We spent a good deal of time here. We had heard stories concerning the conditions in KL, but we found a relatively clean city. There was some trash, but nothing like we saw in India. The area around the Patronas Towers is pristine and I understand since the towers were build there has been a lot of development in the area. You still see active cranes and large construction projects around the city.
We walked over to Chinatown and also had success in the stalls there. In most cases we payed half the starting price. In some stalls there was a sign that said fixed price, but then you found the price to be low. By now most of the overcast has burned off and the temperature is probably at least in the high 80's with the humidity above that. It is ok in the shade however in the full sun it's a bit daunting.
Let me explain. Had I wanted Gap, H&M, Chanel, Gucci, or any other recognizable designer or label or retailer any of the large malls have all of them and some have two of each. Marks and Spencer even has a number of locations and even a small Harrods if you need a British fix.
We were getting hungry, but I just didn't trust eating in any of the local street restaurants around Chinatown, so we stopped at McDonalds. It was full of school kids doing their homework, but we managed to get a table. We found the food to be just like home. Evelyn is still giving me a hard time saying the Bao Buns looked great.
We decided to return to the City Market to pickup a few more souvenirs. After that we took a taxi back to the KLCC mall to catch the bus back to the ship. We had a little time to kill so we sat at Starbucks and used their free Wifi. Evelyn was able to get another mug with the name Kuala Lumpur. We got back to the ship at about 5 pm.
Since I screwed up the first rule of shopping already ( I know you know this isn't Hal now) by passing up a Starbucks mug in Egypt because I thought the proprietor was not willing to price it correctly, and of course I never saw it again. The rule is " If you see it and you want it and the price is even remotely reasonable.. Get it because you will never see it again" Lesson learned again...
We needed to finish packing and missed cocktails with D/M and the last entertainment show. We did manage to buy a nice picture of us and then have a drink before dinner. The ship is taking pictures every time you get on or off, on formal nights, and had all kinds of opportunities. We hadn't taken a formal shot of the two of us in a couple of years and I didn't like most of the backgrounds so when there wad a plain background I nagged Hal into s taking one. Th photographer took 6 or 8 shots. You are under no obligation, so we actually liked one and did purchase it. For a small fee ($25.) you can have an 8 x10 glossy I can copy on my computer.
We had our last dinner on the ship and then put our bags out so they could be taken off the ship tomorrow in Singapore.
Sent from my iPad
Hal
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