Back in the Big City

I spent the whole of last week, or at least Monday to part of Friday, in Kuala Lumpur. Though I was actually sent to attend a conference on Development at University Putra Malaysia in Serdang, Selangor, I put up at the Coronade Hotel at Bukit Bintang area in the city.

The Accommodation
This hotel was formerly known as Fairlane and we have to stay there cos it was much more convenient for the people in Accounts Dept to handle billings. Though I would very much prefer to stay at Cititel at Midvalley, my request were rejected because the org. where I worked with do not have any account with the hotel and I was not prepared to fork out the hotel bill beforehand. Maybe the next time I am in the city for business, I will stay at Cititel – mainly because it is cheaper – just about RM110.00 or something


Mode of Transportation
From the hotel, I decided to take the Airport Coach to the city center. I had the alternative to use the KLIA Express train but I was in no hurry… also, the Express would have cost me RM35.00!!! per way.

The coach was ok…and it costs me only RM10.00 per way. Arriving at KLIA at 4.00pm, I conveniently reached KL Sentral by 5.00pm so that was in time to beat the after-hour rush.

Other modes of transportation available and which I took whenever I need to go some place were the monorail, commuter train and PUTRA LRT.

The monorail was convenient because from KL Sentral it stops directly at Bukit Bintang Monorail station which is just a hop, skip and jump away from Coronade. The monorail was my main mode of transportation whenever I need to go someplace within the city – and that means shopping centers like Sogo and such.

The commuter train I took once to get to Midvalley from KL Sentral. I remembered that I used to use this mode a whole lot when I was living in Sentul because my (then) apartment was just adjacent to its last stop. Furtehrmore the rail leads all the way to Port Klang, bypassing Subang Jaya which was my main hunt for stuffs Carrefour.

I took the PUTRA LRT once when I was there because I ended up at Sogo and wanted to make my way to Sentral to get to Midvalley. So I walked from Sogo at one end of Jln TAR to PUTRA LRT the other end.

Places I Wish I Had More Time to Visit... And Money

Some place I wish I had the time and money to go to are IKEA at Damansara Utama (?). Why not? This place is quite far off and only mode of transportation is private vehicle or taxi. As much as possible, I avoid taking taxies in KL and private vehicles are just not available to me nowadays in KL.

So How was the Visit After Nearly 3 Years?

Good... to see familiar buildings and places;

Bad... to be alone in such a wonderful, vibrant, exciting city;

Ugly... to see soo many people spending so much money on trivial materialistic things.