renewing my visa

After three lovely days in amed, I drove back to kuta…I needed a lot of time on the internet, and I needed a connection where I could have skype conversations…and I needed access to a scanner…as much as I love amed, it’s not the greatest when it comes to internet…I wasn’t thrilled to be back in kuta, especially after amed…kuta is obnoxious, it’s only redeeming factor is a giant beach…

Sometime very recently, Indonesia has changed it’s immigration laws so that visitors can extend a tourist visa without leaving the country…in the past they were pretty strict, and you pretty much had to leave the country and come back if you wanted to stay longer…the extension process takes a few days though, and I completely forgot about  it until I didn’t have time to do it anymore…so I booked a round trip to KL (kuala lumpur)…easy enough I suppose…my flight out was at 0600, which meant waking up at 0400 and walking out the door around 0415…yippee…I didn’t get much sleep the night before, only about 3 hours…and I woke up before my alarm, at 0340…I was a bit anxious about finding a cab at that hour, but it wasn’t difficult at all…the flight took off on time…

The awesome part of the flight was looking out the window on the other side of the plane as we took off…it was sunrise, and I could see the amazing colours of the sky behind the volcanoes I’d already visited on this trip…pretty cool to see a red, orange, purple, etc, sky, and the dark profile of the volcanoes in front…AWESOME…

Landing in KL was easy…I’ve been in that airport quite a few times…it’s the terminal they call LCCT (low cost carrier terminal…basically totally for the use of air asia) which is nowhere near the terminal for the “regular” airlines…the bus into the city is easy, and cheap, and I knew where I wanted to go…straight to Chinatown…I chose a hostel layna had stayed at when she went through KL, mainly because it had free wifi connection…I wasn’t in KL to see the sights, I’ve already done that…

I did leave the room, though not a whole lot…a trip to the supermarket got me oatmeal, two packets of looseleaf paper, (narrow ruled of course, that way I can fit more writing on each page) tea, and Tupperware…a random assortment, I know…I ended up eating dinner at a random street stall, it was awesome…eating with my hands, just like everyone else there, though they did give me silverware…and it was really cute to see the daughter of the lady tell her mom what the price was for me in English…the second day in KL I went to the post office…in addition to getting another visa to Indonesia, the post office in Malaysia was my other big goal…mail in Malaysia is sooooo much cheaper than bali…if I’m doing my math correctly, it’s about 17cents to mail a postcard in Malaysia…in bali it’s about $1.30…when you mail as many postcards as I do, that adds up, really fast!!

My second day in KL, I walked, just for the sake of walking…first I went to a temple I hadn’t seen before…a hindu temple, it was being renovated each time I went through KL a couple years ago…as with most hindu temples, it was really bright and colourful…I loved it…perhaps the best part of the visit was a guy telling me the story behind one of the pictures at which I was looking…it was really nice to talk to someone w/out wondering when I was going to be asked to sign up for a tour, or asked for a donation…I’m so used to that sort of conversation that I’ve realized I don’t talk to many locals like I should…I kept walking, through a market, and little india…

I headed toward the petronas towers, which were the tallest in the world (I think) when they were built…not so much anymore…the first time in KL I queued up really early one morning to get tickets to go up and see the view from the walkway connecting the two towers…it’s not that great, and I didn’t need to repeat that experience…though it is free, which is a rarity when it comes to going up big tall buildings for the views…I figured I could wander around the mall that takes up the bottom 5 floors of the towers…i recognized the streets I started out on, but for whateva reason, they didn’t connect the way I remembered, and somehow I ended up on a highway that runs through town…whoops!! Fortunately, there was a small sidewalk, so I wasn’t walking on the highway itself…close enough…I got quite a few honks from cars driving past, I’m sure they’re not used to seeing anyone walking in that area…the highway took me right past the towers, but there was an exit just after, and I knew that particular bunch of streets…so I did get to the towers, it just took a bit of a detour…lol…

Shopping was fun, though more for the people watching experience than the shopping itself…I find I’m not keen to buy things like clothes when I’m traveling…I don’t need them…and I don’t really have room for them…it’s hard to get excited about much of anything when you don’t even know when you’ll have a job again, or where…buying clothes, then shipping them back to IN isn’t much fun…the aircon in the mall was nice too…the weather is the same as bali, but because it’s a city, with no beach it doesn’t feel so great…walking back to the hostel I was on roads I knew, and got back easily…without any detours…

A quick bus to the airport the next morning…(there is little to no traffic at 0700 on a Sunday morning)…the flight back to bali was smooth, and I was thrilled to see a volcano poking it’s crater up through the clouds at one point…this time I did get a photo…