Trip 3 - KL

On my second trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL), I was able to start earlier in the day, since I arrived early in the morning. I started out at City Centre, but then quickly went to Petaling street.

Petaling street is in Chinatown and is where you can buy inexpensive items (read "knockoffs"). There were booths lining the street that sold everything - DVDs, purses, watches, you name it, and everything is negotiable. After I found something to buy, the quote was for 250 Ringgitts (about 75 dollars). I told him what I wanted to pay, and then held out for that. I'm pretty inexperienced with negotiating a price like that, so I probably didn't get a good price, but, hey, it was fun.

After I went through all the booths and then got a Starbucks (they're everywhere), I rode the monorail to the Bintang Walk shopping district. There are a lot of the high end stores there, Coach, Burberry, etc. and several malls all decked out for Christmas.

I ended up in a mid-priced mall where a singer was giving a Christmas concert. After shopping until about 5, I returned to the Cyberview where I met up with Mike for dinner.

Sunday ended up the only day that we didn't have a thunderstorm. Apparently it is the rainy season in Malaysia. The rain and lighting is pretty spectacular. You could see the thunderstorms rolling in from the straits southwest of KL.

One of the nights, they had set up for some sort of beauty pageant (I think) - they had the big movie lights, a camera boom, and lots of people to set things up. It took them 3 nights to set it up, and it was all gone within 24 hours. Another evening, the rains had finished, so they were carrying tables from the conference center already set with glasses and all. Then another storm came through, and they had to move everything back into the conference room. On the day that I left, there was another thunderstorm.