Travelling to KL on a whim was always going to run the risk of us getting worked up over little things like traffic jams, pollution, and wondering what’s so different about KL from Singapore that we had to spend most of the weekend trying to get there.
But when you’re prepared for the traffic jams, half the battle is almost won. I say almost because even after we thought we had gotten over the worst of it getting into the city proper from the highway, we go lost trying to locate the hotel I had picked, and I berated myself (for a short while only) for picking a hotel we had never stayed at, nor driven to.
Being prepared for KL to be a dangerous backwater as compared to cosmopolitan and uniquely unique Singapore, we were in for one of the better surprises.
One of the first stops we made was to that giant mall, Suria KLCC, on the fourth floor of which was the bookstore Kinokuniya. Even though you’d think that nowadays, all malls around the world and their contents are the same, let us now tell you that Kino KL is way, way better than Kino Singapore in terms of the number of titles they carry in-store.
We bought a lot of books. So many that I am embarrassed to tell you exactly how many we bought. Actually, no. So many that I forget, and I can’t be arsed to go to the bookshelf to count how many. The only time we paused from piling books in our arms was to laugh for a long while when an announcement was heard on the store’s P.A. system that went something like:
“Paging for Mister Adam, your girlfriend Kan Cheong is waiting for you at the entrance”.
I don’t know why we GEMS and other manner of rubbish to improve customer service, when our experience in KL was wonderful without, as far as I know, similar campaigns by the Malaysians. We were seriously impressed by the very helpful security guard on a scooter who led our car all the way through the cavernous KLCC car park to the right exit which linked up to the hotel we were trying to get to, and with a smile.
Then again, it could have been that the security guard was seriously concerned that I was being a menace in the car park, going in circles and at one point, blocking the exit because I had forgotten to pay for the parking ticket, being so used to the ERP style car park fee deductions that we conveniently have here.
Naomi and I are now so enthused by KL that we’re quite keen on making regular trips there. If not for Kinokuniya, then for Nando’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and every other bastion of a civilised society that we don’t have the same of here.
iTunes is playing an illegal copy of When I Write The Book from the album “Labour Of Love – The Music of Nick Lowe” by Andrea Re of which I have the original CD.
Technorati Tags: Kinokuniya, KL, Malaysia, Singapore
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