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In Singapore I caught the bus to Kuala Lumpur without event and even arrived at the bus station I was guessing I would be dropped off at. However, adventures began as soon as I made it to KL. Locating my hostel turned out to be an epic quest, replete with a number wrong turns, inaccurate maps, unlabeled streets, last minute research in not one but two internet cafes and a partridge in a pear tree. Though I am not known for innate navigational talents, I can say that Kuala Lumpur is worse than most towns in this regard. Eventually, my means of blazing my path bore an eery resemblence to my approach to math, namely utilizing the guess and check method. In my defense, look at a map of this city, and you will notice two items conspicuously absent, parallel streets and perpindicular streets. After quite some toil I did stumble upon my hostel, drenched in sweat and hungry. I immediately struck out to register for the KL marathon, and mercifully found the buiding (more by luck than anything) a whole 15 minutes before registration closed.

Navigating Kuala Lumpur and Marathon Number One

Peter Wyant
2007-02-05 19:16:59

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In Singapore I caught the bus to Kuala Lumpur without event and even arrived at the bus station I was guessing I would be dropped off at. However, adventures began as soon as I made it to KL. Locating my hostel turned out to be an epic quest, replete with a number wrong turns, inaccurate maps, unlabeled streets, last minute research in not one but two internet cafes and a partridge in a pear tree. Though I am not known for innate navigational talents, I can say that Kuala Lumpur is worse than most towns in this regard. Eventually, my means of blazing my path bore an eery resemblence to my approach to math, namely utilizing the guess and check method. In my defense, look at a map of this city, and you will notice two items conspicuously absent, parallel streets and perpindicular streets. After quite some toil I did stumble upon my hostel, drenched in sweat and hungry. I immediately struck out to register for the KL marathon, and mercifully found the buiding (more by luck than anything) a whole 15 minutes before registration closed.

The marathon had a scheduled start time of 5 am, with a mandatory check in time of 4:30 am. So after a quick dinner, I set my alarm set for 3:30 and headed to bed at about 8. However, I ended up getting an early start to the morning when the party under my window broke up with a burst at 3:10, beating my alarm. I pulled on my gear, and briefly joined an employee of the hostel watching an American Action movie (Vin Diesel's XXX) while I munched down breakfast of some granola bars and water. At 3:50 I headed to the start of the race, which turned out to be much more interesting than the race iteself . . .

First off, for being 3:50 am, the streets were packed with people of all ages. I received some odd looks, and eventually a polite young man inquired, "excuse me sir, what are you doing?" That's when the light bulb flashed, and I realized that everybody around me must have been sure I just escaped from a local insane ...