Of LRT and KL... A Weekend Away

This is another weekend away... the furthest down south we've ventured this year.

It's KL this time; Putrajaya to be more exact, at the Marriot. Huge place but nice! Some people liken it to Saddam Hussein's palace. LOL! They have a nice golf course... not that I play. Nice pool area too. Lil One had a whale of a time there. But the bro has grown 'old' before his time. He preferred to sit beside the pool and read his papers.

The hotel was okay. But being 5-star doesn't mean they provide all the toiletries now; no toothbrush (means no toothpaste also) or comb. And no Earl Grey or other more fanciful brands of brews supposedly befitting of a 5-star. Anyway, this is our first time putting up a night in our country's administrative center. But we took the opportunity to go into the city; to Low Yat and Berjaya Times Square. Low Yat was more packed than Berjaya, gadgets' galores.

We took the 'trains' (as how my Lil One calls them) into the city. For my Lil One, nothing beats the train rides. So we did all the 3 lines (Kelana Jaya , KL Monorail and Ampang). Kelana Jaya and Ampang are new names. Confusing... we have a penchant for changing names. At her age, getting on the 'trains' is very fun. But it will pass soon. Kids! They make us do things very often we will not do on our own. Would have been more comfortable to just drive there actually.

It's been quite a while since I went on the LRT. And I must say I feel it didn't feel quite somewhat like before. Maybe I am starting to swing towards being a creature of comfort.... The stations seem run down. I saw cobwebs hanging above on the ceilings and the stations felt kinda dreary. Some of the trains were also rather warm. And I wonder why the 3 lines are not integrated. You actually have to walk out from one station to another to continue your ride on another line. One actually gets really sticky in this sweltering heat of ours.

And try walking to KL Sentral... the air is horrendous. The buses wait outside with their engines idling. It's DEFINITELY unhealthy. Definitely not an incentive to use this form of public transportation. It's so different than Singapore's MRT. The stations are clean, cheery and comfortable. Connecting rides are basically quite without much fuss. And somehow the city air even felt cleaner.

This time around, somehow this part of KL struck to us as being run down too, like the rapid transit system. From the LRT lines, we saw rubbish everywhere. Pavements were uneven, tiles missing, it's like we built massive structures but forgot to maintain them properly. Add that to all the roadside vendors we see, this part of KL seems to feel like the slums.

Anyway, I had the opportunity of going back to SS2, my haunting place during my uni days. Roads still felt the same. Buildings too. We went back to one of our favourite makan shops.... that's when I noticed that most of the stalls there now are operated by migrant workers.

But I still had my 'yin-yong' cooked the way it is cooked here, with the crispy beehoon. I miss this quite a lot in Alor Setar. Anyway, it was nice to go drive around this familiar place. We even managed to get some books and walked around a bit despite the heavy downpour. 8)

And btw, Celcom Broadband was bad at the Marriot in the early part of the evening, congestion really shows. Line kept dropping and even at HSDPA, pages took an awfully long time to load. It only got better as the night progressed.