Asia Holiday 2013, August 24 (All These Things That I've Done)

My primary plan for the day was to head out to Resorts World Genting by bus. It's some combination of casino, indoor and outdoor theme park, shopping and other activities all put together in some cheap, expansive location a long way from the city - probably like they have done on the Gold Coast. I was planning to go today, on August 24, and on August 21 this happened.

This Genting place is too far from the city to be served by train, so you have to get a "Go Genting" bus, that have fixed services running every half hour from KL Sentral bus station (and a few other places not close to me). The first bus leaves at 8:00am, and I think I arrived at 8:15, with plenty of time to get a ticket for the 8:30. Wrong. When I got to the desk it said the next available bus was 12:00. While standing in line stupid taxi drivers kept coming up to me and pointing out "the next bus isn't until 12:00", which really started to annoy me because YES I CAN READ A F*CKING SIGN. I've reached the stage where I don't even acknowledge these idiots anymore. I asked the attendant if I could book a ticket to leave at 12:00 (travel time is about 45 minutes I think) and then get a bus back at 4:00 or 4:30. For a change she spoke good English and seemed quite intelligent, and pointed out that it wouldn't allow enough time to do ANYTHING when I got there. I asked her if she could explain what that was about, and she said once you arrive on bus you ALSO have to get in line for the cable car to take you to the top of the hill, and that can take between 30-60 minutes on a busy weekend - probably much longer if it's a windy day...

So, I could spend four hours to take a bus and cable car, see nothing, then turn around and do the same thing, or go to my backup plan which I luckily had planned today as I thought there was a chance of some such thing happening.

I started out back at the Lake Gardens, as I did not get to see some things that last time I was there. There was a small waterfall construction that was not running, and a deer and mousedeer park! That park was also closed for construction... So that wasn't a good start, and it means I STILL don't know the difference between the two animals. The Orchid Garden was open, it probably had orchids in it, all I saw was coloured flowers, but it was probably the highest point in the park so you can see down into the city, mostly unobstructed.

Back at Lake Gardens.

Some of these might be orchids.

Back down to KL Sentral I jumped on a train to Petaling, three stops from the city and one stop before the place I went hiking the day before. For somewhere that is only three stops away it was a pretty crummy place to arrive at, seemed more like the place you would find at the end of the line. I walked over to Pearl Point Shopping Mall as I'd seen lots of signs around about having a REAL sports outlet store, and if the surrounding area was anything to go by, they probably did. The walk from the station to the mall was about as fun as yesterday's journey to go hiking, the best thing I can say about it is at least they have always have a footpath available.

Another good walk.

The sports store at the mall did exist and wasn't under construction, so that was a good result. The stock was a little bit old in some cases, but the discounts were reasonable, a lot more Adidas stuff than Nike though. I found a few good shirts, a Barcelona jersey for under $40 and even some Adidas shoes in size 12.5 for under $70. I think I bought them ironically, as I'd been walking around in serious blister pain for the entire two weeks, it just made perfect sense that I would find shoes on the last day of my holiday.

Bargain!

The backup plan included time for a movie, really my first opportunity to relax for a couple of hours for the trip. That's not to say there aren't other things to do in and around KL, but many of them might require a full day or well organised transporation. There really wasn't any great movie options, the best I had to choose from was The Purge (sounded slightly better) and The Conjuring (started sooner). I made it back to Berjaya Times Square just before the movie was due to start. Waiting in line to buy a ticket was one of the worst experiences of my life. There was probably only about 5-6 groups ahead of me, but only one staff selling tickets - two others were standing around doing nothing, and all three were trainees. That wasn't the main problem though, it was that every group that went to buy tickets had like a five minute conversation, some of them seemed to have not decided what movie they wanted to see yet, another I overheard having some discussion about how the rating system (like R18) worked and how it applied to them, and everyone had to pick their seats from a touch screen monitor once they'd decided. This must have taken at least 15 minutes until it was my turn, so my transaction went a bit more hurried like this:

• Me: The Conjuring started 10 minutes ago, can I still get a ticket?
• Staff: Yeah. Oh no wait it's already started
• Me: Yeah I know, probably still have ads and stuff yeah...?
• Me: ...I'll take one ticket
• Staff: OK. Now you can select your seat, how about this one in the middle?
• (Shows me this huge seating chart with tiny little seat icons to choose from)
• (Has this CRAZY suggestion to recommend a single empty seat in the middle of a row near the back, surrounded by occupied seats)

This suggestion was only going to lead to one of two things:

1. Try to climb through a row of people in the dark, annoy everyone along the way, and find a seat
2. Try to climb through a row of people in the dark, annoy everyone along the way, and find out people use the seat number as a "rough guide" only, and don't find a seat

The second scenario was definitely the most likely. Resuming the conversation:

• Me: Don't care, just give me the middle seat in one of those empty rows in the front
• Staff: OK

I had to race up the top floor of the mall, only about fifteen minutes late, but the movie was already well underway! Where's the half hour of ads and previews? I missed most of the intro, but made it right before the movie title and credits came through. The intro provided nothing really important it turns out, the movie was strong for the first hour but then really died. I was a little surprised at the end not by the way the movie finished, but that it was directed by James Wan (one of the Australian guys from the original Saw). I even heard someone else say exactly what I was thinking "Ahhhh. James Wan".

Since I had done approximately one hour of real exercise (in the hotel gym in Bangkok) in two weeks, I dropped off my stuff back at the hotel and walked over to KL City Park to run 4 laps (a little over 5km). It's pretty handy that they have a walkway running the whole way from the Pavilion shopping centre to the KL convention centre. It's a 10-15 walk that avoids all of the streets below, but sadly they didn't bother to put in any moving walkways (those bouncy Dunlop walkways are still the best). After the run I stopped in at a place called Spice Of India (maybe) at Pavilion for some dinner, where I ordered:

• Punjabi Chole
• Gulab Jamun
• Butter Naan

They left and then came back with:

• Punjabi Chole - run out
• Gulab Jamun - run out
• Butter Naan - we have bread!

What kind of Indian restaurant has run out of Gulab Jamun by 7pm? And the main meal I ordered was just chick peas and vegetables basically. Pretty sad. After dinner I took the monorail to Titiwangsa at the end of the line. I was planning to walk over to Titiwangsa Park except:

• I got dark very quickly on the ride over
• There was no directions to the park - walking alongside the expressway without clear directions once again

Cool monorail tokens.

Backup dinner for a backup day.

KL and Petronas Twin Towers from nowhere specific.

Since that wasn't really the way I wanted to finish my holiday, I got back to the monorail and back to KL City Park again, took in a cool view of the lake and the Petronas Twin Towers, and then back to the hotel.

Petronas Twin Towers from KL City Park.

Summary

• 7/10

Good

• Slurpees at 7-Eleven are back
• The monorail
• The return of the one dollar note!
• Weather was fine, but could have been a bit hotter

Bad

• Chocolate milk has poor taste, they don't sell ANY other flavours, and lassi yoghurt isn't really the same
• Directions to tourist spots not great, the street signs otherwise were usually good
• Lots of construction work in the Bintang area
• No logic to pedestrian crossings sometimes, barely better than Bangkok
• Not as many things to do in city centre area
• The trains (other than the monorail) don't run often

Missed Out (Planned)

• Genting
• Hiking spots that were temporarily closed
• Watching a good movie...

STEP-O-METER: 43988 steps

Asia Holiday 2013, August 23 (Apes-A-Poppin')

The KL train system is a little bit disjointed, so I had to take a monorail to KL Sentral, walk down the street to the bus and train station of the same name, and then get on one of the two possible train lines out to Batu Caves at the end of the line. It's always a relief when your destination is the end of the line, saves you having to think.

I asked for my ticket to Batu Caves, which cost a surprisingly low RM 1 (about 30 cents). After I got on the train I noticed the train ticket had the words "KL Sentral" and "Sentul" printed on it. Sentul is a station about halfway to Batu Caves, but sounds nothing like it so I can't have been a mistake... So now I'm questioning if I have the wrong ticket (probably) and wondering what's going to happen if I go all the way to Batu Caves. I was contemplating getting off at Sentul and sorting it out, only I noticed that the trains only run every thirty minutes. New plan, go to Batu Caves and go into angry tourist mode if someone questions my ticket. When I got to Batu Caves it turned out to be a non-event, all the ticket machines were broken and everybody was able to just walk on through! Disorganised countries can occasionally be good...

The entrance to the caves is pretty unique, a big gold statue and a big staircase. As you walk up the staircase there are crazy monkeys everywhere, waiting to snatch your food, your bags, anything that isn't tied down. Some guy walking up next to me was feeding them twisties, which SURELY cannot be good for them. I just wanted to reach the top without losing my backpack, which already had holes in it and was starting to fall apart. Once you get inside the caves there isn't much else to see, just a large cavernous space (and more steps).

Entrance to Batu Caves.

The steps into Batu Caves.

Feeding time.

Inside Batu Caves.

More steps inside Batu Caves.

I caught the train all the way back to KL Sentral and beyond, a few more stops south to Jalan Templer. When I got out I was looking for Bukit Gasing Forest Reserve, but there were no signs (no surprise there). All I had to go on was a Google Map photo I had saved to my camera. The walk to the reserve was sketchy, to put it nicely. It began walking along under an expressway, then up some stairs and across a bridge alongside oncoming traffic, then more walking beside the road on a busy street. Finally I found the first street I was looking for, and turned off into a suburban area that felt like a rural country town. I took a few more turns until I thought I would be at the reserve, only there was still no signs. The only clue I got was someone with a sign outside their house across the street asking people not to park there. After reaching a couple of dead end streets I saw what might be a path in between two houses, and ventured in. After trekking through the jungle for a couple of minutes I found a signboard with a map and confirmed I was (somehow) in the right place!

Walking to Bukit Gasing Forest Reserve.

More walking to Bukit Gasing Forest Reserve.

Still walking to Bukit Gasing Forest Reserve.

The "entrance" to Bukit Gasing Forest Reserve.

Besides this map there were no other directions along the path, so I had to memorise the order or left and right turns in case I got lost, as I had not brought any breadcrumbs. I went down one direction which was just leading to a stream, but there was starting to be too many twists and turns, so I came back to the main trail. I continued along the main trail, passing a faded sign in Malaysian language with a sketch of three big spiders on it - that can't be good. I passed one person the entire way to the end of the trail (about half an hour), where I came across the suspension bridge. It was made out of some ropes, with planks of wood to walk across, and some offcuts of rubber tyres attached to them - in summary, not the world's safest bridge. It was probably a good ten metres of the ground, so you might not die if it collapsed but probably would suffer some fun injuries. I took a walk out onto the bridge, and it seemed stable enough, so I made it across the other side and back, and then all the way back to where I started the hike, even passed one more person on the way back.

A view of sorts.

Might be best to just turn back when you reach this.

The "suspension bridge".

Bits of spare tyres.

Made it out alive.

Walking back to the train station.

I took the train back to KL Sentral and had a look around Brickfields (Little India) before changing across to the monorail line. From some photos it looked like the Brickfields had some really cool colours on the houses and streets, possibly a bit of art deco, but I must have been in the wrong places because all I saw was restaurants and convenience stores.

I got a sort-of self-serve yoghurt for lunch, from a place called Crumbs. They only have plain yoghurt, but the quality is much better, and you get to choose your own two toppings. I went with oreos as the middle layer, and marshmallows on top, brilliant! I also got some snacks from Lavender, which is another one of these self-serve bakery places. My new three favourites places:

• Self-serve bakery
• Self-serve frozen yoghurt
• Self-serve shoe stores (that have sizes for EVERYONE)

The only reason I mentioned Lavender is I decided to take a risk and grab a few things I had never heard of. This is often a big risk, because if it tastes horrible you either go without food or drink, or have to leave your hotel and go find a suitable replacement. I lucked into this awesome bread called Luo Song (Philippines bread apparently) which was super soft and buttery. Sadly I haven't been able to find much information about it at all on Google, so maybe they spelt it incorrectly.

Lunch!

Luo Song bread, must find more of this.

After a quick rest at the hotel I walked over to Berjaya Times Square, another massive shopping centre that had at least 10 floors of stuff. Inside the front door they had the World's Biggest Captule Vending Machine, as part of a 10 year anniversary, although I didn't actually get to see it in operation. The shopping centre even has it's own permanent indoor theme park on some of the upper floors! The idea of an indoor roller coaster sounded interesting, or perhaps frightening, but it seemed to be designed for kids other than that one attraction - maybe it's a dumping ground for kids while the adults do their shopping.

The world's largest capsule vending machine.

The indoor roller coaster.

I walked down Jalan Alor (jalan or just "jln" means road or street by the way) which has all of these local Malaysian and/or Chinese restaurants with tables and chairs set up out on the streets. The wait staff were particularly keen to get you in, they'd even start walking down the street a little bit with you (similar to South Beach in Miami). My best strategy so far, which works most of the time, is to avoid any eye contact, and do not walk with any hesitation. That's when they get you! They have the menus up on big board above the restaurants so you easily get an idea of what they had on offer without the need to stop, and I didn't really fancy anything.

Jalan Alor.

The next couple of streets over were a bit classier, with actual restaurants and pubs. I had marked down two that I was interested in, an Indian and Mexican restaurant, and settled on the Mexican simply because they were the ones selling margaritas! I can never choose between a burrito and nachos, but ended up with nachos once again, as well as a large (bad idea) margarita mixed with blue curacao. It looked pretty innocent when it arrived, but this drink was a KILLER. The alcohol was as strong as anything I can remember, although to be honest I don't drink a lot of alcohol. For whatever reason, and I think a combination of being dehydrated and having lost about ten kilograms this year, just one drink knocked me out (not literally). I had to hang around for something like 30 minutes after I'd finished my meal before I was confident of walking back to the hotel without incident.

Nachos!

STEP-O-METER: 37170 steps

Asia Holiday 2013, August 22 (The Dark Tower)

I walked from my hotel, which I guess is in the shopping and entertainment district, down to the city centre or business district. This area has the large Masjid Jamek Mosque which looked interesting from the outside, but it was closed to visitors due to maintenance. I was still able to see some of it from the outside, across the other side of the river. Next was Merdeka Square, which was really unimpressive, it's just a patch of grass! I don't know why it's supposed to be a landmark of interest, the only other thing around was an old flag pole. The building with the octopus on the roof was more exciting.

KL Tower from the street.

Masjid Jamek Mosque.

Merdeka Square, now with more grass.

I visited the Central Market building next which has a terrific entrance, an old art deco style light blue. Once inside I soon found out that there were magnets everywhere, any kind you could want! So I'm not sure why Singapore and Malaysia had plenty of magnets and the other places had next to none. The market was close to Petaling Street, which is the China Town area. This was one of the better China Town's I have visited, a few good food places, and lots of fake Nike shoes and soccer shirts. There was also ANOTHER one of those Sri Mariamman temples which I didn't bother with, but also a Sin Sze Si Ya temple which looked cool so I stopped in there for a look around. At a bakery I finally decided to end my curiosity with the durian, with they call the "king of the fruits" around here. I got some durian puffs from a bakery, which had durian cream filling. At first it didn't seem too bad, didn't really have any remarkable taste good or bad really - maybe I didn't choose the right form of durian. After I'd finished eating them they had a slightly odd aftertaste, and it just stuck around for hours. I've concluded that durians are not actually the king of the fruits, and not really worth your time, I'll stick to apples, bananas, blueberries, strawberries and so on.

Central Market entrance.

The street alongside Central Market.

Outside Sin Sze Si Ya temple (maybe).

Inside Sin Sze Si Ya temple (maybe).

Petaling Street.

To the west of the city is the Lake Gardens, which has a number of attractions. Similar to Bangkok (a bit of a recurring theme, and not necessarily a good one) it was quite difficult to get from the city centre to the gardens on foot due to the odd layout of the roads and bridges. I ended up having to go a bit out of the way, passing by the old KL Station and KTMB HQ (the company that runs the train system I think), both of which have some historic architecture. There was also the National Mosque, which was huge, but it was closed to non-muslims, at this time of the day at least. I wondered if I could try to just walk in anyway, how would they know the difference, is there a special password?

National Mosque.

Also National Mosque.

I went down to the lake first, it was quite empty for a Thursday lunch time, probably a bit too far from the business district for any workers to be able to make use of it during the week, which is a bit of a pity. Besides the lake they had some Japanese gardens and lots of slopes with trees, felt more like a forest park than what you would expect near the city. There was a running track around the lake, and since I wanted to log an activity on my Garmin in each city I decided to jog around for one lap. It was quite a warm day, so it wasn't the best idea while carrying a backpack, and wearing a hat and sunglasses didn't help either.

Lake Gardens, the least imaginative name ever.

Back outside the lake, to the road that travels through the gardens, I passed a few of the attractions but didn't stop at any:

• Orchid & Hibiscus Garden
• Bird Park - they had a massive canopy to stop the birds flying away, which stretches across the whole park
• Butterfly Park

At the end of the road there was a sign for the National Monument. It didn't sound like anything good, and it wasn't on my list, but I invested a few minutes just to see what it was about. Surprisingly it was really good, just a monument surrounded by a water feature, but really well done and in good condition.

National Monument.

Other side of National Monument, seems like it should be facing the other way.

KL and Petronas Twin Towers from outside the city.

That was all I wanted to do in this part of the city, so I walked back to Masjid Jamek where I began the day, and hopped on the monorail to KLCC (convention centre). The station comes out at the KL Suria shopping centre which is massive, but like Pavilion shopping centre before it, surprisingly easy to navigate. Good job KL! I was dying of thirst from all the walking and running, so went through a Gatorade in under 60 seconds, followed by a self-serve frozen yoghurt! Yogen Fruz didn't have any good flavours, so I went to Tutti Frutti instead (I think they may have stores in Melbourne now) for a green apple flavour. I STILL desperately needed fluid, so I also went through a large blueberry smoothie.

The exit from Suria leads right into KL City Park. There is a small lake and fountain directly outside, and then if you turn around and look towards the sky you have a perfect view of the Petronas Twin Towers. They have marked out places around the park where you get the best view of the towers, and they also had a running track! The track was only 1.4km so I figured I would jog a lap of it too, but it was not a good idea since I'd just had so much to eat and drink, I was dying within the first five hundred metres.

KL City Park.

Suria shopping centre.

More of KL City Park.

Petronas Twin Towers.

After a short rest break I walked down to KL Tower. It's pretty easy to see because of it's height, but because of the confusing overhead walkways it was still difficult to get to. At the street entrance to the tower they have a shuttle bus up to the base of the tower, which I figured was just for lazy people. The walk turned out to be pretty hard going, because the path up is such a slow gradual incline to suit the buses most likely. The cost for the observation deck was RM 49 or you could spend RM 99 to go somewhere higher, I figured that one wasn't worth it. In fact I usually think these observations tower are a bit of a waste of time unless the skyline is particuarly impressive, but I had nothing else on for the afternoon. When you go to pay for your ticket they conveniently only permit credit card transactions for RM 50 and above, what a rip off. The view down was just alright, but I did get to see a lot of the places I had just been walking around earlier in the day. It was a bit foggy, or more likely polluted, which prevented a view of anywhere further in the distance, like Batu Caves.

Walking under KL Tower.

Observation deck at KL Tower.

I walked back to the hotel and discovered a place for dinner on the way:

• BETTER INGREDIENTS
• BETTER PIZZA
• PAPA JOHN'S !!!

The guy at the counter somehow did not know how to accept a credit card payment, how is that possible? I ordered a much more suitable size this time, actually the largest size was now appropriate for one person (with a good appetite). I walked around a bit more after dinner to work off some cheesy energy, checking out a few more shopping centres, since I was staying in the shopping district and all:

• Sungei Wang Plaza - Lot of small shops, almost like a market, but no directory!
• Imbi Plaza - Looked cheap and old, didn't bother
• Low Yat Plaza - Another IT mega mall, but again it didn't have any good accessories or collectibles

STEP-O-METER: 45313 steps

Asia Holiday 2013, August 21 (Metalaysia)

Sadly, I had to give in and get a taxi out to the airport, since the airport bus doesn't start until 9am (they do realise that flights leave before that right?) and I had to be there by about 8am. I got the hotel to sort out a taxi, and as he's pulling out of the driveway he's trying to turn right into two lanes of oncoming traffic. I couldn't work out what was happening because there is a large median strip separating the two directions of traffic, but sure enough he got into the outside lane and starts driving down the street the wrong way, with cars coming the other way. Even weirder, the outside lane he was driving in was mostly empty, and whenever we approached an oncoming car in the same lane they'd slow down, apologise and try to squeeze into a single lane to get out of the way. It's as if there is some rule at peak time they change the direction of traffic.

After we got through the city traffic I started to see signs not for the old airport but for the new. Despite saying the name of the airport many times due to issues in the past, I had a bad feeling we were still going to the wrong airport. So I asked him which airport he's going to, without mentioning either name, to make sure I didn't confuse the question, and thankfully he said the correct one. There must be some common road to get you on your way to both airports, and the disaster was averted.

The plane trip went without a problem, one good thing about flying out of the old abandoned airport is there is no congestion and no waiting in line! Landing in KL wasn't as much fun, there was a huge queue in the immigration line for foreign passports that took about 45 minutes to get through. How come every time I fly to another country the line for foreign passports is huge, and every time I return to Australia the line for local passports is huge. I know for the latter it's probably because I'm flying home on an Australian airline a lot of the time, but flying Air Asia from Thailand to Malaysia I would have hoped at least some of the passengers were locals, but apparently not. When I finally reached the front I wanted to say "Customs? Isn't this the line for Metallica?". At the currency exchange place and finally remembered to change all my old currency, by this stage it was random amounts of:

• Canadian
• English
• Thai
• US

It took forever as they had to process each amount separately, I don't think they people in line behind me were too happy, but I didn't care by this stage.

Another problem with Air Asia in KL is they land in the LCCT (low cost carrier terminal - what an impressive sounding name) instead of the main KLIA terminal (which has the express train to KL city centre of course). Even though the two are "nearby", the time it takes to get a transfer bus over to the main terminal (20 minutes) plus the time for the train (30 minutes) ends up being the same as just taking a city bus (50-60 minutes) for a third of the price!

I got out at the bus terminal at KL Sentral and surprise, crap directions to the monorail, just like Bangkok all over again. There was initially a few signs every 50 metres, then we reach a main street and there's suddenly no signs anymore. Now where the hell am I supposed to go? I wasn't sure if I'd missed a sign or not, and I really hate it when the directions are so poor you have to rely on guesswork and instinct in place of information. I turned down the street to what looked like an walkway under construction, which I guessed was eventually going to be the way to transfer from the bus and train terminal to the monorail, and by luck I was correct. The monorail fare was RM 2.10 so I started digging around for coins, only the Malaysian notes are so lightweight, and the monorail station was so windy, all of the money blew out of my wallet and scattered on the floor. I managed to grab most of it, I had missed one RM 50 (about $15) but some guy picked it up and gave it back, so that was good.

MONORAIL.

My hotel was nicely located in Bukit Bintang just one street away from the monorail station, I couldn't even remember much about the hotels I picked since it was so long ago, it seems my priorities may have been:

1. Easy access from public transport
2. Free breakfast (only in HK and BK sadly)
3. Coin laundry

I dropped off my luggage and then had to hurry back out to walk down to Stadium Merdeka to pick up my ticket for Metallica playing in the evening. There was a whole bunch of construction going on around Bukit Bintang walk which made it a bit difficult to get around, some of the footpaths were closed off, but I made it there in the end. It wasn't 5pm yet, and Metallica weren't due to start until 9pm, but there was already people starting to line up at the various gates, and many more doing the music equivalent of tailgating, or maybe it's still called tailgating... I got my ticket and a souvenir shirt for RM 90, that's a bargain compared to Australian prices.

Metal merchandise.

On the way back to the hotel I found a 7-Eleven and slurpees were back! I got the fun sounding "Tutti Frutti" and a Mountain Dew "Pitch Black with a PUNCH of Grape Citrus flavour", why don't they sell that stuff here? I had a look at some of the fast food restaurants for some quick options before getting ready for the concert, but all of the favourites like Burger King, Carls Jr, McDonalds and KFC had no vegetarian options. With the higher muslim population in Malaysia I figured I might have a bit more luck, but apparently not. Instead I visited the Pavilion shopping centre and found a Nando's! Similar to Bangkok, they have some pretty decent food prices (clothes yet to be determined) in KL, the price of a vegetable burger and chips (not many of them) was only about RM 15. I also found more Bread Talk (not the Australian chain Bread Top if I have not qualified this yet, but it seems like this is what they have copied from) and Boost Juice seems to be expanding a lot into KL in particular.

Slurpees!

Pavilion Mall.

The Big Ticket.

Back to the hotel to drop off all of my non-essentials for the evening to go back to Metallica. There was a lot of signs saying that no digital cameras were allowed inside (despite the ever increasing quality of mobile phone cameras), but I figured I would risk it and see what happens - if I got turned around there was a good chance I'd miss the start if I had to do yet ANOTHER trip to the hotel and back again. I stashed my camera in a jacket pocket before the security checkpoint and hoped the guy would miss it, I think he glanced over it as he was checking my pockets, but then just waved me through, success!

I just bought tickets in the seated section, as the standing area was super expensive, like $150 and above. All of the good seats were already taken by 8pm, so I could either take a seat further away or stand along the rail at the back of the seated section. I opted for the railing because you can also sit and lean on it, and once the music starts everyone just stands up anyway. I think I made the right choice as I had a good view of the band on stage when they started early around 8:45pm. Since this was the first time they had played in KL in their 31 years of touring they stuck to the classics just about:

1. Hit the Lights
2. Master of Puppets
3. Fuel
4. Harvester of Sorrow
5. Fade to Black
6. Ride the Lightning
7. Cyanide
8. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
9. Sad But True
10. Orion
11. One
12. For Whom the Bell Tolls
13. Blackened
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman
16. (ENCORE) Creeping Death
17. (ENCORE) Battery
18. (ENCORE) Seek & Destroy

They played for about two hours in total, which was great. I ran back to the monorail station afterwards and avoided the crush.

The Ripper.

Robert.

James.

20x zoom came in good for something.

See above.

My spot in the crowd.

The end of the night.

Some thoughts on the hotel:

• Good location
• Hallways are really dated but the rooms are fresh and new
• No free breakfast
• There's a restaurant out front, which is a bit of a red flag (see Miami 2010)
• TV options are pretty limited

STEP-O-METER: 24283 steps