Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, S. Korea? Week 3

Monday was a free day in KL, Andrew had to head to the US Embassy to get additional pages added to his passport and i had to try to find the Laos Embassy to get my visa (one is available if you arrive by plane, but i was arriving via Bangkok and that wasn't gonna work). While at the US embassy Andrew did notice that everyone who came in and applied for a visa from Malaysia was approved, the guard even told him to have Brenda move their if she wanted an expedited visa..HMMM.

I had checked the local phone book for the locations of the embassies, and wrote down the address for the Laos embassy, I had no idea where it was, and neither did the front desk person at the hotel, so i decided to look online, their i found a physical address and thought i was good to go. Before setting out i decided to check with the travel agent located inside the hotel, this person had a different address, ok, this is going to be interesting. I asked her where the embassy was located and she said near the KLCC (Kuala Lumpur Convention Center), well thats not far i can walk it. I set out on my walk heading towards the Petronas towers, as that is the heart of the KLCC. I walked for about an hour and ended up making a complete circle back to the hotel. Screw it, I'm taking a taxi, the taxi driver wanted 30 ringitt for the ride, i told him to piss off and walked a little further down the road where i found one for 20 MYR. The thing with KL is that you have to ask to the drivers to use the meter, the thing they don't tell you is that none of the taxi's have meters that work so your getting screwed regardless of what you want to pay to take a taxi. The driver and I set out to find the Laos embassy and go to the orginal address i had received from the hotel travel agent, nothing is there at that address, so i hand him the physical address i found online, we head their and its a furniture store....well Laos is a small country they might be in the back, no such luck, but the shop owner knows that the embassy used to be located their and knows where they moved to. She graciously gives us the address and we head further on down the same road. We find the embassy, if we were not looking I would have thought it was someones house, the sign that identified it as an embassy was overgrown with vines, and their was not guard or guard station. I just walked right in, the lady working the visa counter was actually shocked to see me, I don't think she was expecting anyone to come in. The fee for the visa to recieve it same day was 65 USD, the fee if you wanted to wait was 35 USD, as we were leaving back to singapore the next day, i didn't have time to wait. The next hurdle with this visa was that the embassy could not break a 100 USD bill. So i ended up paying for my visa with 100 MYR and 35 USD, if she would have accepted indonesian rupiah i probably would have paid her in that!

Now that i have my visa, its time to set out back to the hotel, i'm not real sure which way to head, but i can see the petrona's towers and the sky needle and head towards them, as the sky needle is closest to the hotel. As i am walking a guy passing me on the other side of the street tells me that the women down the road is calling for me, i looked at him like he was crazy and turned around, the lady from the embassy was calling me back, i thought o shit, something is wrong with my visa....and sure enough their was. As i got back to the embassy the women had written the wrong visa number on the application, i had to fill out two, one for the embassy and one to carry with me. the visa number eneded wtih 45, what i didn't know was that she had screwed up the first visa sticker and wrote that number on the application forms. Good thing i went back, or i may not be able to get into Laos.

After all this excitement i only walked about half way back and cought a taxi the rest of the way, the driver actually wanted to tell me that he didn't go to the area our hotel was at because of "traffic". I kept thinking to myself, their are 1.5 million people in KL and you don't want to drive in traffic, i think he picked the wrong profession or only wants to work in the middle of the night, negotiated the driver down to 20 MYR and made my way back to the hotel. Nothing exciting, just getting packed to head back to singapore, and play a couple hands of UNO with andrew and Brenda, which by the way she always seems to win.