Sunday 20 May 2007

Quandary in Kuala Lumpur


Borneo was finished, and it was time to leave the leafy jungle behind for the concrete one - Kuala Lumpur. We had a few days to kill before my Mum and Dad were arriving in town. They decided to take their holidays this year somewhere on our route and Malaysia, it was decided would be the place. But first, Nic and I had to find a place to stay, and having been well served by Chinese hotels before now, we decided to head to Chinatown.

The routine for finding a hotel is roughly as follows:

1 - consult our next to useless 'rough guide to south east Asia' book (we have scored out the word rough on it's cover and replaced it with our own description). And look for where the majority of accommodation is.

2 - either book ahead, or decide there is plenty of options and exercise increased bargaining power upon arrival.

3 - if not booking ahead, plan a route through our pre-chosen area and set off to hotel no. 1.

4 - upon arrival ask if they have a suitable room, what the rate is and if we can see it.

5 - after inspection, the hotel will be categorised into one of three groups: a; No Chance! - b; Let's move on but we'll maybe come back. - c; yes please, (varying in degrees of enthusiasm through to reluctant resignation).

6 - If a positive rating is given, bargaining is usually engaged in, which can sometimes be very worthwhile.

We chose to wait till we got there. Only Singapore has come close to being as tough a mission as KL was. The difference with Singapore though, was that everywhere was booked up already. Kl had plenty of vacancies though, and upon inspection it became apparent why. We spent somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half, laden like pack donkeys, meandering through the streets and back roads looking for somewhere half decent.

In retrospect, we could have made things easier on ourselves though. For example the hotel with the locked iron gate across it's door, offered a big clue, but out of politeness we felt bound to inspect it after the prostitute/door-girl unlocked it for us. Also, the hotel where we climbed the long stairs into the dingy reception, climbed over the semi-permanent pile of stuff blocking the top of the stairs and then waited for the Chinese man in his underpants to finish shouting at the cigarette smoking receptionist while waving a toilet roll around, was also an unnecessary politeness.

Exhausted, and becoming increasingly unable to operate we decided we would park ourselves in McDonald's, buy a token purchase for the privilege, regain our composure and send one of us forth with executive decision making rights while the other sat with the bags, a finished small coke and an increasing sense of obtrusion. McDonald's lay across the six lane road of traffic, which seemed to be competing with Indonesia for the down-right-terrifying award. Slowly loosing the will to live, unable to find a gap in the traffic, we spied another McDonald's on our side of the road a few hundred metres away and headed for that instead, stopping only for one last desperate check of the hotel next door to it. After all our efforts, this one came up trumps and we happily took the lift to the seventh floor (though it was really only the 6th due to no 4th floor - a very unlucky number in China) and crashed upon our two single beds that would offer us sanctuary from the world until the roadworks started in the middle of the night.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Pfffffft. 4 is a lucky number. You know if there were more 4th floors in China you'd find tremendous accommdation with a snap of the fingers.

*nods head*

OH! ARE YOU GETTING FREE STUFF 'cos everyone thinks Nikki is a porn star? I know the down-lo on blondes.

*nods head again*