For some reason it seems many of our posts include food, currently we seem to be eating our way through Malaysia but for us eating is part of the pleasure of travelling.
Take today for example, we were up early actually as it turns out too early but as I say better to be half and hour early than 5 minutes late.
We wandered around JL Central and found a chicken a rice stall so enjoyed breakfast there with a cup of tea..little did I know I needed to say no sugar as my black tea came and was very sweet.
From here we headed to the waiting area, and had not been there a few minutes when suddenly everyone was up and heading towards the platform so we followed, down a few sets of escalators and then of course our carriage was the furtherest away. We found our seats, I had asked the lady yesterday for seat facing the direction of the train so we could see and granted that is what we got but the window next to our seats had some sort of grunge across it so we could not see a thing. There was a seat opposite us so we moved over there but that was only for one stop as it was claimed from then on by 3 different sets of travellers.
We also passed the Eastern Oriental Express, it looked amazing all clean and clear windows. As we passed they were all eating breakfast tea served in silver teapots but at roughly $1500 a seat which is 15 days of our travel budget we definitely will not be gracing it’s seats.
The trip from Johor Baru to Kuala Lumpur costs only 33rm Roughly $19 Aus and it takes 7 hours so longer than the flight to Perth. I didn’t seem so bad as we had a couple of little kids who kept us entertained, one young boy was fascinated by my ereader and kept coming over and watching me read. The toilets were very average but at least they had a western style one which made it a bit easier. The only issue we had was some bright spark decided it might be nice to have some, durian as they went along, if you have never smelt this the odour is so strong that it is banned from hotels in Malaysia and Singapore it was disgusting. By the time we got off we it’s had very sore bottoms from sitting so long.
We then crossed to the local train and waited for our train, we only had to go one stops I it didn’t take long. The trains seem to have been upgraded since last time we were here and are all new and shinny. They even have women only carriages which were very popular.
Leaving the station we went up a flight of stairs to go down another rather walk along a platform to go back up and down , being pretty humid this was a killer. We then went in search of our Guest House we walked up the street then realised we had gone too far, we then walked back found the correct place to turn and walked to the end of that then realised we were wrong again and eventually high the help of free wifi outside Burger King we discovered it was next to KFC so back we went and around the corner and we had arrived.
We were shown to our room which has the typical Malaysian style of a clean blanket but no top sheet, I have been using my sarong and Ron decided he needed to get one too. This is nothing flash but it is clean, the showers are clean although in the female ones one of them doesn’t work and the other has no shower head so it is like being under a hose… the male ones have had a leak from above Oslo the roof looks like it is caving in a bit but for $18 a night we can’t complain. We have air conditioning and it includes breakfast so good value. We are right opposite the Central Markets our room actually looks out over them so really central too.
We cooled down a bit then headed down to Petaling St in search of dinner…much to my disappointment what I thought was heaps of feed markets turned out to be a huge night market selling everything from DVDs to fake watches and purses. We wandered through and then found a food street set up at the end, the hardest part was making our minds up clay pot chicken, noodles, beef soup or as we finally decided steamboat. We have often seem this but never know what to do, the kind young man told us 2 minutes for everything so Ron became to tow minute chef amd we dined like kings, the stall also had a BBQ section so we had sates, duck and octopus cooked on there too. It was probably a bit more expensive then normal street food but for $27 Aus we thought it was good value.
We then meandered back picking up. Sme Durian for Ron and Mangosteens for me, via the Central Markets, they have a wonderful array of goodies there but we walked away with a sarong for Ron .
Early night for me tonight as feeling a bit tired from my last few late nights and early starts.
