Grand Prix goodness in KL

11/4/2011
Sitting on the Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu. Feeling quite shabby today! Canada & I have had a very full on five days in KL. We left Jogja on Wednesday. Arriving into KL was like being on another planet in comparison to Jogja. It took a little bit of time to re adjust to so many foreigners (caucasians), cars, bars, bright lights & busy streets. The night time hum of KL was very differernt to listen to rather than the call to prayer. I could almost say I miss it..I do miss the Jogja life but this has been great so far. We spent Wednesday evening/night wandering around KL, from Jalan Petaling in China Town & down through to Little India. Of course all of the friendly taxi drivers that we asked for directions told us it would be too far away to walk, it was fine. It was amazing to eat Indian food! Dahl & garlic naan.. Though we accidently did order about seven dishes by mistake! It is a pretty pricey city after Jogja. The twin towers looked amazing when lit up night. After dinner we were completely bloated and over full, so perused the markets to try and find some formula one t-shirts or hats. It didn't seem like there was anything to buy, that was disappointing. So I decided to ask a man in his stall. He hurriedly & somewhat secretly went and got a McLaren shirt. The stall owners said that the police were cracking down on them selling fake formula one parafenalia. We managed to barter down the prices of our shirts, from 160 for one down to 90. We may have gone lower I'm sure if we persisted but we would have spent at least an hour or more bartering & searching for different shirts. Thursday we went out to Batu Caves (which has been upgraded since I was there in 2005) where we watched the hungry monkeys clambering for food/scraps/taking bottles out of people's hands. We then ventured up to the top of the KL tower where we watched the sky line light up from day into night. It was a great time to go. At 930pm we went to eat in an Arabic restauarant where I ate beans!! A big bowl of green beans in a tomato sauce. Amazing. I have missed beans. I have enjoyed being spoilt for choice of cuisine and being in such a mulitculural city. We decided to walk through Bukit Bintang & stumbled across a bar where a very interesting man was getting his groove on to middle eastern music. I have never seen such amazing hair flicking or pelvic tilts. Teamed with mohjitos & apple sheesha, this was a great setting!
Friday we headed to our first day at the grand prix in Sepang. We decided to buy the cheaper tickets for transport to get to Sepang, since Sepang is really far from the city. We opted to take the train to avoid road traffic but we got the communter train instead. Little did we realise the trip would take up twp hours in total from the moment we left Bukit Bintang via monorail to KL Sentral, then via train to Nilai, then a 'shuttle' from Nilai to Sepang. Ahh it was exhausting to do twice a day! Friday was a pretty mellow day at the GP. Not too many people there. The stands are open to everyone so it was possible to have a really great view of the practice laps. They were so loud & we both forgot earplugs! If only we had read more about the program we could have done a pit lane walk on Friday evening. That would have been amazing. I need to stop skimming over things and actually read them. Friday night... what did we do? I can't remember.. Maybe that was the Mohjito & sheesha night. Saturday was a fun day at the track, Canada & I decked out in our Redbull & McLaren shirts & began our rivalry. There were a lot more people there but Sunday was another atmosphere altogether. We left the hostel at 9am as we were expecting lots of road traffic for the bus shuttle & we wanted to get there in time to get autographs at midday. We made it in time & joined a massively long line to get autographs. Two hours later we were closer to the end of the line but just as the last group of drivers ended their autograph session!. It was so hot there was sweat dripping down my back. We started on the beers earlier in the day & continued at a steady pace until 3am! Well I reached my fill of beer probably closer to 10pm but sipped slowly I assure you. The atmosphere of everyone's anticipation & groups of people dresses to represent their driver's country or team was great. Of course there was a reasonable sized group of Finnish men getting drunk & being rowdy. We joined them for a beer. They were impressed to learn of my Finnish blood. The englishmen, not so much so. But I did bag most of the englishmen there since they were all going for McLaren. We finally pulled ourselves away from taking random photos with anyone who looked interesting to watch the start of the race. We managed to get up higher to watch a lot of the race and watched from the grandstand that cost 500 dollars. It was hard to get a clear view of the race because there were so many people up there standing to watch. I missed the start of the race! It was disappointing. Canada (who knows nothing about the GP) thought that the practice lap was the start, so she was snapping away photos & was confused why there were swerving all over the track. The race went so much faster in comparison to how it feels when I watch it on TV. As in the time of the race. Did not feel like 120 minutes! The pits were really good to watch and we got a good view of the end, where Redbull prevailed.
The after concert was a laugh. The artist Rain is a korean r&b singer who has 7 albums out and is also an actor. Of course ummm it wasn't the best. We spent most of the time drinking beer & playing beer wars with a Queenslander & an Englishman. We were the only rowdy people there really. We got yelled at 'Show some respect' by some people but we were too tipsy to stop! I think I bought one round of beers, it was nice not to pay. Met some Irish lads & the six of us headed back to KL & kept drinking until 3am & Canada & I didn't spend a cent.
Severely hungover when I woke up from five hours sleep this morning. Made our way to LCCT to fly to Kota Kinabalu with five minutes to spare.. something I don't enjoy!
Now we're here, in northern Malaysia. Plenty of tourists around but the people are much nicer to strangers here than they were in KL.More random smiles & greetings. I like that. Wandered around a marketplace and ate CHICKPEAS!!!! Ohh so good to eat them again. For the next couple of days I'm not sure what we'll do but I am keen for some beachside hanging out as Chiang Mai is landlocked & April is a 40 degree month.