The road to Kuala Lumpur is flooded with good intentions

Traveling is basically one large string of decisions. Some of them are bad, some of them are good. My travel style has always been loose. I don't like itineraries I can't break on a moment's notice. If I like a place, I want to be able to explore it. If I don't like a place, I want to get out of there as fast as I can so I don't feel like I'm wasting any time. Frank pointed out today that we made some poor decisions in our overall plan not to have a plan, and I have to agree.

Some good decisions so far this trip included 2 days in Cambodia seeing Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. Not that either of our blog posts about Cambodia really did it justice, but seeing such an ancient wonder of the world was really inspiring. I found it pretty amazing that the human race was able to construct construction projects of that magnitude without the modern conveniences of technology. Also awesome was the fact that Cambodia is filled with WILD MONKEYS.

Another good decision was packing a jacket and some long pants. You never know when tropical Thailand is going to get hit with temperatures in the 50's with lots of rain.

Some bad decisions on this trip include not checking the weather and assuming that you can roll into a beach side town and find it perfectly sunny and warm all year round. I generally think checking the weather isn't worth the 10 seconds it takes weather.com to load up and ask me my zip code because it never seems accurate and why worry about something completely out of my control? (Don't think I'm not aware of my propensity for irrational stress over meaningless things. I am perfectly away that I am high-strung, easily stressed, and very anxious. Weather and gas prices are the two exceptions to the Ariana mentality of worrying about everything.)

Another bad decision was catching another night bus to Phuket, just to be greeted with more rain and immediately shuttling to the airport to go to Kuala Lumpar. You'd think we would have learned the first time when we said, "Man! That night bus was terrible! Let's not do that again." We're not great at learning from our mistakes, I guess? We should have thought more about prices and distances before purchasing flights. It would have been much more economical for us to cruise back to Bangkok as opposed to taking a 10 hour bus ride to Phuket. The bigger the airport, the cheaper the flight. Oh, hindsight.

What we ARE good at is making the best of a hilariously bad situation. I know Frank blogged briefly about SuckSeed, the movie we decided to see in a Thai theater assuming that we would understand absolutely nothing about it and be forced to make up both the plot and the dialogue by ourselves. Instead, we got well-translated English subtitles and a movie that I will be attempting to purchase once it's out on DVD. Or VCD. Or whatever it is that they use over there. The point is, it was actually really great. For something completely random, it ended up being one of the most unique parts of the trip and I loved it. Sometimes you set out to accomplish one goal and you end up accomplishing another completely by accident.

So, all of that said. . .Kuala Lumpar. . .Not what I expected.

My quote to Frank upon hearing his interest in going to Kuala Lumpar was, "Man, if you've seen one giant Asian city, you've seen them all." I could not have been more wrong. Gone are the clouds of smog, as are the people throwing themselves at us with such catchy phrases as, "Hey lady, where you go?", "Hello sir! You want tuk-tuk?" and "You buy, ok?"

Kuala Lumpar is filled with Muslim influences, beautiful architecture, and the streets are clean and well-marked. It's well connected with an impressive public transit system and it has a million things to see and do. While I was really bummed out about the plans we had in Thailand falling apart, I felt better almost immediately when we got off the plane and I realized, "HEY. YOU ARE IN MALAYSIA. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?" Whatever grief I had experienced over Thailand was gone, replaced by an excitement to take photographs and document a beautiful city.

Since I know my traveling companion doesn't hear this often, I'll immortalize something in text so he can look back on this moment with triumph and taste the delicious fruits of his victory.

Frank, you were completely 100% right that Kuala Lumpar is awesome. I acknowledge that I, Ariana, was wrong in my assumption about this city and I bow to your superior knowledge concerning Southeast Asia.