travel diary — day 295

In buddhism, photography stuff, travel on 25 December 2009 tagged airport, beer, beggar, boardwalk, book, breafkast, buddhism, buddhist, burmese, bus, canada, chatting, chess, christina, coffee, dinner, drunk, email, event, flea market, flight, foreigners, fourfourtwo, guesthouse, hangover, internet, junk, kl central, korea, kota kinabalu, kuala lumpur, lonely planet, long bar, long island ice tea, lunch, magazines, malaysia, margarita, market, mcdonalds, muffin, photography, photography book store, photos, portrait, post, raffle's hotel, razamataz, sabah, singapore, sreet market, starbucks, steve mccurry, street cafe, temple, ticket, tourist, train, travel, travel agents, waiter, wifi with no comments

day 291 — i got another early start and headed to kl cent­ral sta­tion. i bought a flight to kota kin­abalu and a return train ticket to singa­pore. it was a busy morn­ing, so i raced back to my hotel and checked out. i stored my bag and returned to the train sta­tion to make my 1pm train to singapore.

when i got back to kl cent­ral i had lunch and checked the ticket. the ticket said 9pm depar­ture, not 1pm (which i’d asked for). dam­nit! i returned to the tick­et­ing counter and asked for a 1pm train. the train was sold out and the staff were unwill­ing, and unable, to help. hav­ing no other choice, i sat at star­bucks to wait it out. i plugged in my com­puter, used the free wifi and chat­ted for seven hours.

i finally got the train to singa­pore. i bought some magazines (442 and national geo­graphic) which actu­ally came in handy for the trip.

day 292 — we arrived at singa­pore immig­ra­tion early, fin­ished quickly and con­tin­ued on to singapore’s main sta­tion. i had break­fast nearby and walked into town. on the way across town i found a nice buddhist temple, which is fairly new, and took some pho­tos. i had a cof­fee at mcdon­alds and while at the depart­ment store i found a cool little pho­to­graphy book shop … that’s all they sell — pho­to­graphy books. he had an awe­some steve mccurry por­trait book which i bought.

i walked across to the hotel to check in and went to a mar­ket for lunch. i then mailed the book to christina.

i walked around a mar­ket and took some pho­tos. i had a lot of fun. wan­der­ing around near my hotel i also found a flea mar­ket. it was mostly junk placed on blankets. i walked around the stalls, look­ing at their wares. i con­sidered buy­ing a buddhist statue but it was too expens­ive and i didn’t want to haggle.

i had din­ner and a few beers at the hotel then went to bed.

day 293 — i checked out early and star­ted the walk back across town to meet my train. i stopped by the fam­ous raffle’s hotel and had a beer at the long bar. nearby was a sub­way sta­tion so i decided to exper­i­ence singa­pore trains. i got off near the inter­na­tional ter­minal, had lunch and boarded the train back to kuala lumpur.

the trip was unevent­ful and i returned late. i checked in and had din­ner at the same street café (with the burmese waiters) as before.

day 294 — i went to kl cent­ral, had a quick mcdon­alds coffee/muffin break­fast, and got the bus to the air­port. the girl at the checkin counter wanted to charge me extra because my bag was 2kg over the 15kg limit. i took out my com­puter and lonely planet guide. the bag was now 15kg and she let me check it in. i men­tioned that my total gear weight was the same, i was just car­ry­ing the extra 2kg on with me. she didn’t appre­ci­ate the point (or the irony) and just grumbled at me.

i checked email while i waited for the plane then flew to kota kinabalu.

i waited ages for the bus, which didn’t come, when i dis­covered that there was no bus. i had to walk out­side and down the street to find the bus which, when it arrived, took me to town.

i found a nice gues­t­house, checked in, checked email and walked into town for din­ner. i stumbled onto an envir­on­ment­al­ist event which was rais­ing money for sabah’s envir­on­mental groups. i had din­ner, a few beers, and took a few pho­tos. i got talk­ing to another tour­ist from canada. her name was chantelle and, coin­cid­ent­ally, was work­ing in korea. she’d just flown in and was begin­ning her hol­i­day. we drank mar­gar­itas and long island ice tea. we got very drunk and danced a lot.

we met up with a bunch of other for­eign­ers who were going to a club called ‘razamataz’. we joined up with them (i spent most of the time talk­ing to a cute black girl called sharon) and drank some more there. i returned home and abso­lutely crashed.

day 295 — i had a hangover and slept in, then spent the morn­ing at the hostel play­ing chess. at lunch time i walked around the street mar­ket and took a great photo of an old beg­gar woman. i went to the board­walk, walked around, and checked some travel agents (which were all closed).

i returned to the hotel and played chess and chat­ted for most of the evening.

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