Kuala Lumpur – Petite Paulina

I wasn’t supposed to go to Kuala Lumpur…

I was supposed to go to Hong Kong for a whole 72 hours and to say I was looking forward to it was an understatement.

It was my first ‘layover’ and I had planned how I was going to spend my days and what I was going to visit.

About 30 minutes before I was due to check-in, the lovely scheduling team called to inform me of a last minute change and I was now going to Kuala Lumpur.

Gutted!

Not because I didn’t want to go to KUL but just because I had prepared for a 3 day trip which then just turned into a 24 hour stopover…

Great!

Anyway, I checked-in for KUL and off I went.

The flight was very uneventful and 7 hours later, we arrived in Malaysia.

We landed around 9pm and then had an hour long journey to the hotel.

It was my first time on that side of the world. I was anxious and excited at the same time as I didn’t really know what to expect.

Arriving at night isn’t so bad, it means you can either go out partying all night and sleep all day until the wake up call for the return flight or you can get a good night’s sleep and wake up fresh for a day of exploring.

Which option do you think I choose?

Early night OBV!!

Except it didn’t really work out like that.

I suffer from joint pain and after this particular flight, my right knee was extremely sore. I thought I’d be fine, I hoped to fall asleep quickly and wake up and it would be gone. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and it just got progressively worse. Without any paracetamol or panadol, I was lying in bed in absolute agony. I called down to reception and asked if they had anything I could take. They didn’t. I then decided to get dressed and go down to the lobby to see if any of the other crew were around and had any painkillers. There wasn’t anyone around and I didn’t want to call their room and disturb them in the middle of the night. I asked reception if there were any shops nearby I could go and buy something but they said everything was closed. Where’s a 24 hour Tesco when you need it aha!!

So I spent the whole night in agony and fell asleep around 7am from complete exhaustion, only for my alarm to go off at 8am to meet the girls for breakfast. I felt absolutely terrible but I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some medication as I knew someone would have paracetamol. I threw on some clothes and headed down to breakfast and I was so relieved when one of the girls put me out my misery.

After breakfast, I felt it would be a bit of a waste to go straight back to bed. As exhausted as I was, I wanted to go out and make the most of my time as I may never return to this country. We headed into Bukit Bintang and had a walk around the shops. It was nice to get some fresh air but it was pretty humid. The girls wanted to go for a foot massage and having visited before, they knew exactly where they wanted to go. I don’t really like people touching my feet so I passed on that but I went along and ended up lying down on one of the beds and drifting off while they enjoyed the treatment.

Afterwards we had a scoot round the markets. As I wasn’t feeling great, I didn’t have the time or patience for all that bartering malarky and I left without buying anything. We headed back to the hotel to get some rest before the return flight. I crashed on the bed and woke up with just enough time to order room service before heading back to Dubai.