The Long Way to Kansas: Malaysia

In an earlier post I described that, in order to meet Thai immigration requirements, we had to have some sort of transportation arrangements in place to leave Thailand before we could go in. So, we were booked on a flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia on the day our first 30 day tourist visa expired, which just happened to be Sunday of the day Labor Day weekend. We went from Chiang Mai to spend the night in Bangkok on Saturday, as I had booked another early morning flight (will I ever learn?). Of course, that meant no sleep the night before in the Bangkok hotel and up and about before anyone with any sense would consider on Sunday morning.

We were greatly impressed with Malaysia. Our flight landed around lunch time, so we were able to see the countryside for the first time in the daylight hours. Up to this point, we always arrived after dark when it’s hard to tell what anything looked like. Our taxi driver spoke excellent English and was very informative about what we were seeing. Jack always asks dozens of questions, and he finally had someone who understood and could talk about our new surroundings without a lot of shrugging and saying I don’t know. The highway was very modern, and except for driving on the left side of the road, reminded me of the new toll roads back home. Also, like our new toll roads, a private company had constructed the Malaysian roads and charged tolls to use them. It was a very comfortable ride, especially after Bangkok traffic.

North-South Expressway in Maylasia - Looks like it could be a new highway back home or on the way to Kerrville.

The countryside was really beautiful on the way into Kuala Lumpur and everything looked very neat and clean, with palm tree plantations everywhere. The native rainforests have been replaced with palm trees because palm oil is very profitable and is a main Malaysian export. Palm trees literally cover almost all available open space, with very little rainforest remaining.

View of a palm tree plantation. They are all over the place.

There are many electronic companies with manufacturing plants located around Kuala Lumpur. We felt right at home when we went past the Dell manufacturing plant. We also drove past the new city being built to replace KL as the administrative capitol of Malaysia. Our taxi driver explained that KL is too crowded, with too much traffic, so they are moving the administrative functions of the capitol to a new administrative capitol city called Putrajaya. Maybe we could do that with Austin, move the state agencies to La Grange or something. There are also a lot of new houses and apartments under construction for the government workers to live in Patrajaya, along with the other goods and services that will be necessary, like grocery stores and shopping malls. All are very modern, and, needless to say, we liked what we saw.

Upon arriving at our hotel, the Impiana, we were even more impressed. I had booked online and you never know what you’re going to get, no matter how many guest reviews you read on Trip Advisor. It was truly a five-star hotel for a three-star price. The hotel service was excellent, the restaurant was excellent, and the whole feeling at the hotel was very welcoming and upscale. If we ever get back to Kuala Lumpur, we are staying at the Impiana.

Lobby of the Hotel Impiana. Really big.

Flower arrangements in front of the elevators.

Picture of the lobby from their website. That's me in my good clothes.

After we got settled in our room, we wanted to see a little bit of the city that afternoon, so we took a sightseeing tour. The tour guide, however, thought we would be more interested in the stuff at his friend’s factories, and took us around to see them instead. This is a common tourist trap just about everywhere we’ve been in Southeast Asia. The taxi drivers or tour guides get a little commission on whatever the tourists buy at the factories, so they want to take as many people to them as they can. Whenever a guide or driver asks if we want to see some nice factories, we know to say no. That’s because we have been on a few factory tours when we accidently said yes. The best factory tours have a good overview of how the products are made before they encourage you to purchase anything. For instance, we learned how silk was made from a good factory tour in Chiang Mai.

The silk worm chrysalis is put in boiling water. A very skillful worker then pulls the silk strand and it is unwound and spun into a fiber, which eventually is woven into fabric. Unfortunately, the worms don't survive the ordeal.

Weaving the silk strands into fabric.

However, sometimes the guide doesn’t ask if we want to see his friend's factories and hijacks the tour so you wind up at the factories anyway. Which is what happened to us.

First, we went to a batik factory and store. We wondered if this was on the itinerary and just didn’t remember reading it. The demonstration on batik was good, so we were pretty cool about it, even though the prices were too high to buy anything. We realized we had been hijacked, however, when next we went to two chocolate factories. We never would have signed up for a tour with so many factory stops. Each factory had different chocolate varieties to sample, but no demo, just retail shops. Next was the leather factory where our demo consisted of showing us some leather pelts on a ring, then ushering us to the showroom to make our purchases. Needless to say, we were pretty aggravated about the way the afternoon was going and we were not going to buy anything after being hijacked.

It was obvious that the other folks with us, an Indian couple and a single lady from the Philippines, were also unhappy with the factory tours. The guide finally realized that no one was buying and started taking us to the places listed on the itinerary, where he would drop us off someplace and wait in the parked van for our return. The usual process is to go as a group through the destination with the tour guide telling about what we’re seeing. At one stop, he dropped us off at the very ornate gates in front of the Governor's Mansion and drove off. When the guards saw us standing around, they locked the gates and wouldn't let us in. Then it started raining. So, there we were, no van, can't get in, standing in the rain. Upon his return, the single lady from the Philippines got after him for doing a bad job, and he finally came with us into the market place so we wouldn’t get lost. We did get some good pictures from the Chinese Buddhist Temple, so the afternoon was not a total waste of time.