Escape from KL

Wednesday, December 9 - Despite a great day spent with Meei, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t happy to be leaving KL. There’s just soooo much traffic and it’s such a large, sprawling, and dirty city. Ipoh is more our speed. It’s little, but the food is good.

But despite our eagerness to leave, getting out really was an exercise in frustration. We tried following a map, but we weren’t sure which highway we needed to get to, so that was the first obstacle. But even if we had known, there are so many inconsistencies in the road signage that we probably would have gotten well and truly lost regardless.

As it was, we’d just nicely get onto a highway and find a sign directing us to Ipoh when there would be a split and the signage would encourage us to get off in the wrong direction. We hit one that literally told us to take a specific lane for Ipoh and (seriously) 300m later, there was a second sign telling us to be three lanes over! Obviously we missed that exit.

It took us about 90 minutes to finally get out of KL when it shouldn’t have taken more than about 50 or 60. And we only got out in the end because Junkii topped up his cell phone account (remember how expensive that was?) and used the iPhone’s GPS app to help us get out.

And if you think it’s just because we’re not local, Junkii’s parents said they fell for exactly the same signage tricks we did. And they’ve spent their whole lives in Malaysia!