After a wait of just over two months I finally got the chance to visit Kyoto at the beginning of April. Although I’ve been loving the opportunity to live in such a big, vibrant, lively, modern city as Tokyo my preference is really for older towns so the chance to explore Kyoto was something I’d been waiting for since arriving in Japan.
I have neglected this a little for a couple of weeks as I’ve been a bit busy with work so now I feel like I have a million and one things to write about.
Last weekend I took the opportunity to visit Kuala Lumpur, or KL as anyone who’s anyone calls it. It is only an hour’s flight from SIngapore, well actually it’s 35 minutes in the air and about 25 minutes of taxying along the runway at either end. A lot of my colleagues in SIngapore were alarmed to hear that I intended to visit KL alone and I was given all sorts of warnings about not going out at night, keeping tight hold of my handbag at all times etc. I didn’t feel especially vulnerable while I was there, although I did stick to the main touristy areas.
I arrived quite late on the Friday night and took the KL Ekspres train into the city from the airport, there is also a bus service which is substantially cheaper (18MYR as opposed to 70MYR for a return) but that takes an hour whereas the train only takes 35 mins. The train and the bus both take you to the relatively new KL Sentral station and from there I took a taxi to my hotel. To try to prevent people getting ripped off by taxi touts there is a coupon system so you go and buy a coupon in advance at a counter in the station and then hand this to the driver.
After moving into my new apartment on Friday and finally unpacking I spent a lazy Saturday stocking up on food and other essentials for the next few months.
Today I was ready to go exploring and see some Singapore outside of the MRT stations and shopping malls I’ve seen so far. My new place is located in an area called Kampong Glam which is just south of Litle India and not too far from Chinatown so I decided to do a bit of wandering in these two areas. Armed with a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Singapore, my camera and several pints of water I set off for Raffles Place for a walk around Chinatown. The first few stops on the walk were Taoist Temples which share their streets with modern skyscrapers.
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