Journey to KL - Day 3

Finally on Sunday we could start exploring Kuala Lumpur. After taking a bath and having breakfast, we split into 2 groups, the couple were tired, so they didn’t want to go too far, just exploring around our hotel. That morning it was raining, my friend bought an umbrella, because he stayed in different hotel and he had to walk to our hotel.

Lucky that the rain was stopped when we had finished the breakfast. Three of us started exploring Bukit Bintang area, entered some shopping mall such as Sungei Wang. Bukit Bintang, whilst apart of the Golden Triangle, is really more of a neighborhood than anything else. Bukit Bintang has always been popular and fashionable however in the last few years has undergone gentrification and come away as both historical and chic at the same time. Whether you fancy haute cuisine or hawker stalls, brand name fashion or quirky local boutiques it’s all available in Bukit Bintang. We took some pictures at the garden and also in front of some cafés along Bukit Bintang. The mall looked same as in Indonesia.
My friend wanted to buy some set of spoons in Ikea. The IKEA offer - a wide range of well designed, functional home furnishing products at low prices. The IKEA store has thousands of square metres of ideas, offers, solutions and suggestions. I like Ikea, so I preferred to go there than going around malls.

We took KL Monorail from Bukit Bintang station to KL Central continuing to Kelana Jaya using LRT (Light Rail Transit). Malaysia is more modern than Indonesia for the public transportation, they have monorail with aircon inside, it’s quite comfortable. The ticket price is quite competitive too and it’s much faster than car. Anyway it’s a little bit different from Singapore, most of the station are in open area, we were lucky, because it’s raining in the morning, the weather was not too hot. We had to go pass through a traditional market to different line of the LRT station, the station was not connected to the monorail. Kelana Jaya was the nearest LRT station to Ikea, then continuing by bus which’s free of charge. After waiting more than half an hour, we gave up, because it's very hot and we were starving, so we took a cab directly to the mall. The restaurant was our main destination in the mall right after arriving Ikea complex he..he... I took roti prata, one of my favourite food with kickapoo juice in cane. My choice was quite right, the juice was fresh and delicious, the roti prata was so so.


There was a bazar at the mall's area, so we split and promised to gather in the middle of the place after an hour, because we had different interest. There were so many things sell, but most of them were clothes. I bought a beautiful light blue stone bracelet and I wore it right away. The center of the fields were decorated with flowers and fountain, of course we didn't forget to take pictures.


Ikea was our next destination, it's very huge, and amazing. So many things we wanted to buy, unfortunately we were afraid that we had difficulty to bring it back to Indonesia. I bought set of spoons that my colleague recommended for my sisters' gift, because they'd just moved to a new apartment. It's quite heavy, but the quality is good, with a very reasonable price. I was also interested to a blue vase, I doubted to buy it, but it's very attempting, then I decided to buy it. It's easier broken, so I had to bring it with care. I had to be extra careful to bring it home. Actually I was also interested to buy some desk lamps, it's so elegant and simple, but I realized that it would be very difficult to bring, so I had to forget it :-( Anyway I got a chance to take some pictures in front of some beautiful lamps.With so many stuffs on our hands, we decided to go back to the hotel. Although our feet were sore, we didn't want to waste time by exploring more places.


We had dinner at Alor street, in front of our hotel, then we continued exploring China Town at Jl. Petaling. It's 22:00 o'clock when we arrived at Petaling, we spent around an hour there to shop Malaysia souvenirs for our friends and relatives in Indonesia. The price was very competitive in this place as long as you are expert in bargaining. It's very satisfying when we could bargain and get half price than the offer he..he.. that's woman nature I think :-)

My friend was naughty, he was upset because we spent more than an hour to shop although we'd complained that we were very tired. He asked us to walk returning to the hotel, he said that it's near, but it took around 45 minutes to walk. It's very far, and it made us terrible tired that night. When we arrived in the hotel, we could not do anything else but sleeping.

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Old city area in Jakarta - Fatahillah Museum

In our company some of people who love photography create a club. We invite some professional photographers to teach and share their knowledge, also we go together to some places to practice and share skills or even we volunteer to cover company's events/activities. I joined them to the old city area in Jakarta on Saturday morning. At 07:00 o'clock in the morning we went directly to "Museum Fatahillah"; An impressive, classical-style building, surrounded by several other museums also in classical style, the former City Hall is now a culturally protected historical treasure. The records show that it took three years to build; construction began on 25 January 1707 under Governor General Jan Van Hoorn and was completed on 10 July 1710 by Governor General Abraham Van Riebeeck.




I'm still amateur, I don't know how to use manual mode in camera. I use a pocket camera, Canon Powershot S50. At that time, I didn't dare to play with manual mode, just playing with angle and objects using auto mode. The sky was clean and blue, there was no cloud at all, so it's a good time to take pictures. Although the museum was closed, there were quite some people on the yard. We'd just known that there would be a parade to celebrate Jakarta's birthday.


Some "ondel-ondel", Jakarta's trademark were also prepared for making the parade merrier. Ondel-ondel is a big doll with ± 2,5 meter high and ± 80 centimeters diameter, made of bamboo which is enable people to carry from inside the doll. It's wearing very colorful clothes. Formerly it's only used to refuse danger or ghost, but now it's common for launching new office, welcoming guest or celebrating a traditional party.


One of our colleagues became a photo model, she had to take some poses under sunbeam, it's quite exhausting, hot and also wasted some energy. Thanks to her that she didn't complain and she enjoyed it. One of my friend bought her an ice cream to cool down, but you know what happened; he selected the colorful ice cream, so she should pose too during eating the ice to get a wonderful picture, poor her :-)

After taking pictures from different angle of the building, we continued walking to explore the old city area along the river. Quite surprising that the river was clean enough, although it's rather smelly. At least when we took pictures, people won't smell it through the picture ^_^


We were surprised that we met other photographers group. It seemed that most of them are very professional, they brought a large screen to manage the sun light, also some professional models with many costumes. A couple riding a bike in front of the building described a western man costume with a chinese woman costume. The other group had a beautiful woman with a cute boy around 4 years old. Also two girls which took each other pictures and took turns as the model for the other.

Although some buildings were not used anymore, but the scenery is still quite good to explore by whomever wanted to feel the history. A good cafe, called Batavia still operated in front of Fatahillah Museum. The ambience of the cafe is quite nice, if you go to the restroom, it's quite surprising. All the waiters are wearing traditional costume, so if you want to feel old Indonesian environment, you should visit this cafe.

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