Having room for a ten-day stopover in South East Asia, I took MAS’s nice Boeing 747-400 back to Kuala Lumpur international airport. Malaysia Airlines is a highly coveted airline with incredibly friendly people, and their rates are usually really good on routes to Europe. This specific flight proved a bit difficult, unfortunately, as the entertainment system collapsed after the first fifteen minutes into the flight. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less, as I wasn’t particularly interested in it – I’d picked up The State of Africa in Perth previously, and really wanted to get it finished prior to entering Malaysia. So I tried turning on the reading light. Bummer. The reading light was in fact controlled through the entertainment system. Most of the five hour thirty minute flight was as such spent in pitch black.
Once in Malaysia, I checked into what is probably one of the nicest and friendliest hostels in the world – Red Palm. With only two days in the city of Kuala Lumpur, I spent most of them walking around the city, enjoying the KLCC park, and visiting the famous Batu caves (pictured above) together with Astrid, a Dutch girl staying there that was en-route to Australia.
On the second day, while sitting in the KLCC park, the weather started out more blue than you could ever imagine Kuala Lumpur, a city that seems to be based in eternal tropical storms. In the afternoon a storm and a lot of rain set in. Instead of walking back, I ended up taking a taxi.