As I had written earlier in this post, I had been on a vacation to India recently, which also comprised of a trip to Malaysia and Singapore. To quote my IT friends, it was a meta-vacation (vacation within a vacation). One of the most satisfying vacation I ever had! Here is a travelogue of how wonderful those two places were – absolutely loved both of them.

Day 1: We boarded our flight from Chennai to Kuala Lumpur via Air India and landed in Kuala Lumpur early in the morning. It was blazingly hot – akin to burning coal on our skin.

PutraJaya was our first stop in Kuala Lumpur. PutraJaya is a single large area where all Govt. offices of Malaysia are put up. Former PM of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammed, who governed Malaysia for over 25 years planned and built Kuala Lumpur in a very structured manner and his idea of having all Govt. offices at one place for increased efficiency was commendable. Subsequentlly, we proceeded to Pearl International Hotel for lunch and some rest. We went around Kuala Lumpur enjoying the lovely evening, along with shopping some of the stuff unique to Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur at night is one of the most beautiful, happening and spectacular cities at night. After a hearty dinner at an Indian restaurant, Olive Tree, we crashed on our beds and slept in no time.

Day 2: We toured around Kuala Lumpur – 88 storage Petronas Twin tower, Lake Garden, National Monument, King’s Palace, National Mosque & Merdeka Square – were but some of the many other places we visited in KL. To be honest, nothing blew me away like the Petronas Twin Tower. The  architecture and magniloquence of the two towers connected via Skybridge was overwhelming. Our tour operator had gracefully  procured tickets to the Skybridge. Skybridge is a walkway connecting the two towers at the 41st floor and the view from it was stunning.  All other places were good to see, but nothing very special. One thing about KL that impressed me thoroughly though was its road infrastructure. It is brilliant. Spic-and-span, multiple lanes, structured traffic – lot many lessons to be learnt from such a small country.

Day 3: We proceeded to Genting Highland. Genting Highland is

about 2 hrs from KL and probably one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The tour bus took us to a point which was about 1500 ft above sea level. From there, we took a cable car to  the top of Genting Highland, which was at 8000 ft above sea level. I will, but only make a very feeble attempt to describe the view from the cable car as it proceeded towards its destination. We traversed through clouds, admiring the extremely thick rain forests directly below us,  with a lot more clouds above us, multiple hills around the cable car infrastructure. It was just all very surreal. We eventually reached our destination (initially, we couldn’t even recognize where our hotel was – it was covered with clouds ). Genting is actually famous for its casinos (it’s the place of Asia’s largest casino center) and derives most of its revenues from gambling. I never expected so many Chinese folks out there in Genting, but learnt a new fact that  the Chinese are addicted to gambling and hence the large number. The kind of money they blew in those casinos blew my mind.

Day 4: Genting is also famous for its Outdoor theme park. With multiple rides, for very

young people to the quite old, the infrastructure is massive.

Go-karting was something which I loved to do, one part of the race track actually overlooking the hills. There were some archery dugouts where I tried my hand at archery too. It was the first time I ever held a bow (tried to imagine Doordarshan’s Ramayan ), and it felt very exciting. We proceeded to return, again via the cable car to our base camp, which was 1500 ft above sea level. We returned to KL, via the Battu Cave temple (a huge temple comprising of a Murugan temple, Balaji temple, Hanuman temple, Ganesha temple, Sani temple and Siva temple). We went to the railway station and boarded a train to Singapore.

Day 5: Singapore was a city I always wanted to visit. But once I went around the place, I didn’t come away that impressed. Let’s say, I was not as impressed with Singapore as I was with KL. Probably, living in Singapore is drastically different from just visiting it. Otherwise, there is no reason why everyone should go ooh-aah about it. We visited all places, including City Hall, Parliament house, Raffle hotel, Little India, China Town, Mount Faber etc. We travelled back to our hotel, was bang opposite Mustafa, a huge shopping center. So, there, yes, we shopped that evening and night inspite of all the travel

Day 6: We proceeded to the Jurong Bird park, South East Asia’s largest bird park with over 8000 birds. The variety of birds, the feats they could perform and the entire tropical setting of the park was splendid and remarkable! We didn’t get to see everything in the park

other than the main shows and a train ride. It was already afternoon and we had to proceed to Sentosa Island. Sentosa Island is one of the 4 main islands (Singapore comprises of 60 islands, big and small) and we had to board a cable car again to get to the island. The ride  was for 15 minutes and again, was awesome, most of it over the sea. On the island, I did get a chance to visit the tropical oceanarium, 4-D show, sky ride, Luge (very exciting, more like go-kart, but without the engine and it’s a downhill race) and some of the dolphin shows. Very exciting and entertaining stuff. The highlight of Sentosa, without a doubt was definitely ‘Songs of the Sea’ – a scintillating laser show. I had never ever seen a laser show on such a scale – extremely grandiloquent. The audience were just stunned when the show ended and it took them about 2 min to realize the show was done before the infinite clapping started. Awesomely awesome!

Day 7: We travelled back to Chennai and subsequently travelled to Tirupati and from thereon to our hometown, Hyderabad on Day 10.

All in all, a very memorable and an extremely gratifying vacation trip for me. Months of planning came to fruition to a perfect T. It was just great!!

PS: I realize that I have not blogged regularly for the past one-and-half months. Regular blogging will continue from hereon, most probably twice a week (I have a ton of topics in my head that I need to put on the laptop). Watch this space!

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