Chalk it up to a sheltered upbringing, but I’ve always traveled with companions when going outside the country. Last year’s Singapore trip was the closest I’d ever gotten to traveling alone, and that was because I needed to fly back to the Philippines earlier than my travel buddy Julia.

Last February 14-18 I went to Kuala Lumpur to attend the Les Mills Ultimate Super Workshop at Sunway Resort Hotel. Anyone familiar with Kuala Lumpur knows that Sunway isn’t inside the city itself, so I booked a room at Sun Inns Hotel Lagoon for about P1,000/night. The Agoda.com listing said it was a 10-minute walk to Sunway Resort from there, so I figured it was convenient enough.

I would just commute into the city if I wanted to see the Petronas Towers or go shopping at the major malls there. I downloaded some apps to help me get around, like CityMaps2Go, TripAdvisor City Guides, the KL Trains app, and of course, Google Maps. These apps helped me get a general sense of where everything would be in relation to each other, but I knew things would be different once I was actually there.

(I take this little bear with me every far-flung place I go, in memory of my departed niece Brooke. She’s a piece of home.)

Before my flight from Manila took off, I discovered some of my co-workers and fellow Les Mills instructors on the same flight, so I wasn’t all alone anymore. The best part about this is when we landed in KLIA-LCCT (the low-cost carrier terminal), three of us who were booked around Sunway split the taxi fare, which is much cheaper than taking separate taxis.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/301926668585562112
https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/301927421702180865

I bought a TuneTalk simcard at the airport, expecting to have full BlackBerry service because it cost 30 ringgit or about 400 pesos. To my consternation, that 30 ringgit seemed to have been flushed down the drain because I didn’t get service AND there was zero value loaded onto the sim. Grrr!

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302025104043425793

Apparently, TuneTalk’s “unlimited” BB service only included BB Messenger and Twitter. Frustrated, I checked into my hotel and just used the free WiFi to research on what local carrier had better BB service. I’d forgotten that the last time I was in KL, I had purchased a DiGi simcard.

 

My hotel room was cozy enough; I’d gotten a two-bed superior room with a window, so I used the spare bed as a place to lay all my things out on since the room didn’t have a closet.

By then it was already around 8:30pm and I was starving! Since the Pyramid Mall was just around the corner, I walked over there to see where I could get something to eat.

I ended up at a McDonald’s.

 

I guess I didn’t want to go on any food adventures my first night alone in an unfamiliar city. Sure, I knew some of my co-worker friends were close by, but because they were afraid of roaming charges, none of them wanted to use their phones to text and meet up! If I had a bad food reaction, I had no one to call on. So, yeah, McDonald’s.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302042131902644224

Later that night I called my parents over FaceTime. I don’t normally feel homesick my first few days away, but it was good to see their faces and hear their voices.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302212991284310017

For breakfast the next morning, I walked past the Pyramid Mall with its distinctive lion Sphinx head looking for food. I could have eaten at the mamak stall on the ground floor of the hotel, but again I was scared of unfamiliar food. There was a 24-hour KFC branch open amid a cluster of other establishments, so I got myself a blueberry pancake set. (Pancakes at KFC? That’s new for me!)

 

After breakfast, the mall was already open, so I went in and did some window shopping. I didn’t manage to bring home any windows (ha ha), but I went to the Cold Storage supermarket and bought some fresh food: a sandwich for lunch and a bunch of bananas for the next few days. I also found a DiGi outlet and really attentive staff that helped me get a new simcard with full BlackBerry service.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302245251677040640

While wandering around the mall I inadvertently discovered how to get to the nearby water park which the area had become famous for. Sunway Lagoon is a destination for families and groups of friends; it looked like a bigger, more successful and outrageous Splash Island to me. Plaques on the viewing decks explained that the Sunway area had formerly been a tin mine which developers had rehabilitated into a resort destination.

By the afternoon I knew most of my fellow instructors and friends attending the weekend’s workshop were already in the area. Because I’d made my travel plans separately I didn’t know where exactly they were so I could meet up with them. Even though I was able to tweet them and track them on Foursquare, I ended up eating dinner by myself at The Chicken Rice Shop in the mall. (We have Chicken Rice Shop branches in the Philippines already so I found myself wondering if this was authentic cuisine. LOL)

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302376224687284227

I started to make plans for the next day’s excursion. I would be heading into KL city itself to shop and to meet up with some other friends who were there on a separate holiday trip. Instead of taking a taxi (expensive!), I took the U623 bus from Pyramid Mall to Kelana Jaya LRT station. Then, I took the train all the way to KLCC. I found out how to do this by googling and also by tweeting the bus line.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302282621201821696

Being a solo traveler has its perks. I don’t have to wait for anybody when I want to go somewhere, and I only need to be concerned about my own comfort. Sure the bus and train ride weren’t very plush (being chauffeured around is nice), but it was cheap so I could spend more on shopping and dining!

At some point during my bus ride I thought I missed my stop, so I approached the driver and asked him what I should do. He just told me to take a seat and wait. Apparently, the endpoint for the bus trip was at the Kelana Jaya station anyway, so I didn’t need to worry.

I left Sunway by 8:30am and took breakfast at Suria KLCC Mall when I arrived around 9am. The strong WiFi signal from a neighboring restaurant allowed me to browse Path, where I found that some of my instructor friends staying in the KLCC area were planning to take the train and bus to Sunway for their workshop sessions that day. I was able to meet up with them and give them directions before I headed off to do my own sightseeing.

I planned to take two trains from KLCC to get to Bukit Bintang where Sungei Wang Shopping Plaza is located. That’s what I had done on my past trip, but before they left for Sunway my friends told me about the free purple bus line which shuttled people around the main commercial centers, which included Bukit Bintang. Awesome!

Sungei Wang wasn’t what I remembered it to be; back in 2011 the place was filled with small shops and boutiques selling clothes and shoes at bargain prices. This time around there were fewer selections, many of which I’d already seen in Singapore last year. There was a Cotton On store there though that sold items for 15 ringgit apiece (just under 200 pesos), so I bought a bunch of fun tops. The VINCCI store was also on sale, so I bought a new pair of shoes.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302669236336205826

I then returned to Suria KLCC on the purple bus to meet up with my friend Judith, who had come to KL with a group of our mutual friends just on holiday. It just so happened our travel dates coincided. It was sooooo nice to spend an afternoon with people I know; I mean, after a day and a half being alone, I wanted to be anything but anti-social!

All that walking around left me thirsty, so I shelled out 4 ringgit for a bottled water at Dome before I computed in my head that it was a 60-peso bottle of water. Ouch!

The forecast for the weekend predicted cloudy weather and rains for KL, so I had a folding umbrella in my bag at all times. Good thing too, because it started raining on the bus ride from Kelana Jaya station to Pyramid Mall.

I finally met up with some instructor friends for dinner. We went to Old Town Coffee where I attempted spicy food for the first time since my arrival. (On second thought I shouldn’t have, because each glass of water I consumed was priced at 80 sen. I had two glasses!) I also had one of the best, creamiest teh tarek I’d ever tasted.

https://twitter.com/noelledeg/status/302923306598793216

Our workshop was the next day, and it was a tiring but fun-filled day of learning new routines for our group exercise classes and upskilling ourselves as instructors. You can read more about it in this blog entry. There we also reunited with instructors formerly from the Philippines who were now based in other countries in Asia.

It was with a lot of pleasure I received the news I would be flying home with a group of my fellow instructors. Yes, I’m a loner type, but I get kind of sick of talking to myself on Twitter especially when I know I’ve got friends around. Also, hooray for shared cab fare!

I still spent most of our departure day just packing my things and wandering around Pyramid Mall looking for interesting food to try out (I never got up the courage to try the mamak stall on the ground floor of my hotel).

It started raining pretty hard on our way to the airport; our taxi driver mistakenly took us to KLIA, which isn’t the same thing as the LCCT. We got back on the right track then, so it took only a bit longer to get to our airport, which was being buffeted by strong winds and rain coming in sideways. I was freezing by then so I hit up the MarryBrown (local version of McDonald’s) for a last cup of teh.

Every time I travel out of the country, I see things I wish we had, like a more organized public transportation system, or more extensive rail lines, or less pollution. But I also see the good things we have that we usually take for granted, simple conveniences like free iced water at restaurants or cheaper food, or even just the presence of friends and family who are one call or text away.

When I got home that night, I feasted on sinigang na bangus in the company of my family. There’s no place like home.