Yesterday morning after a horrible breakfast, I found the information desk. I’m not sure why it was invisible the night before. I asked them how to get to the temple (Chin Swee) near the casinos. There’s a free shuttle from the hotel and it’s something to do in the real outdoors. The giant bus is terrifying on these steep roads. It’s still foggy, but it’s real pretty to see the fog rolling around the mountains. It was really moving fast at times. At the temple I got to see more Buddha statues. I also go to walk the journey to enlightenment. I’ve studied and worked so hard and here’s a simple path to walk. Who knew? Ok, it’s not that easy. The path was a series of dioramas showing the 10 different hells. What hell a person goes to depends on what horrible things they did here. They get tortured and then at some point they get to go to the last hall and they are given a drink to make them forget everything. Then they get to come back here in another life and try to do it right again. So, basically, this was a way to scare you into being a nice person. I doubt I will be turning into a Buddhist anytime soon. I prefer my world where hell is actually a creation in the mind, something we made up.
After the temple it was time for a pedicure. They told me to come back at 2:00. I came back at 2:30 and they were all booked up the rest of the day and evening. I went to 4 other spas and they were all booked too. Either there are only 2 nail ladies at Genting Highlands or I pissed someone off and have been blacklisted. Tell the curly haired girl no, she showed up a half hour late. I went back to the burger place and ordered the pesto gnocchi with greens. The greens were arugula. I love arugula and have missed it so much. This is the best food related thing to happen in forever! I went to a movie, Ben Hur. It’s the first movie in a theater I’ve seen since I left the US. Arugula and a movie – life is good! I still feel sick so I went to the clinic and got an antibiotic. This has to be a sinus infection, colds don’t last this long.
Today Omar, my taxi driver, is taking me down to Kuala Lumpur. I didn’t gamble at all and I thought maybe I’d want to work here. I’m not going to pursue that avenue.
The taxi pulls up to a forest of fake trees with lights in them. Omar, my taxi driver, pulls my suitcase out of the trunk and points to a series of sliding doors with lights and people everywhere. “Over there” he says as he bids me goodbye and I tell him I’ll call him in a day to arrange my pick up. There are signs everywhere and everything seems to be moving. I can’t read any of the signs even though they are in English. I can’t find a hotel check in desk. I’m not even sure where the hotel is. People keep bumping into me and I feel like I’m dragging the largest suitcase ever. I know it’s not the largest suitcase ever because I use to own that and left it in Thailand. Still….. I see 4 or 5 banks of electronic kiosks with 10 or more kiosks in each one. I walk up and see that it’s for hotel check in. So, I must be near the hotel. No matter what I do, it won’t let me check in. I try to get help. There are a bunch of people in uniforms standing around, but none of them will help me. Maybe I’m invisible. Maybe I’m not actually here. It does feel kind of disjointed like a dream. Finally a lady helps me. She points to a sign that says all pre-bookings need to register with a guest services clerk first. That sign wasn’t there a minute ago and what’s the point of point of self check in if you can’t do it yourself? She asks how many people – just me. Then a little later she asks if I need a second key. For who? It’s still just me. If I want a second key, I will need to give her a second passport. It’s still just me. What is going on? “Any special requests? Oh, too late, here’s your key”. Huh? I find tower 1 and go up to my floor. I step off the elevator and into a bad dream. Have you ever been so sick with a bad fever or woken up from too much anesthesia where your dreams are drug induced, creepy alternate realities where nothing is as it should be? I found the portal to this alternate reality. It’s at the First World Resort Hotel in Genting Highlands. In the air was soft electronic ambient music. There’s no real tune or beat, just horrible wandering sound that suggests that time no longer exists, you are the last human being on the planet and you no longer have arms or legs. The only windows are covered in purple film casting a creepy light everywhere. The striped carpet is covered in water stains as if the entire hotel was flooded last week. I could almost feel the water on my feet as I walked down the hall wondering what could have caused that much water damage. The halls go on forever and the music makes me feel like I’m in slow motion. Well, I no longer have arms or legs so maybe that’s why I’m moving in slow motion. Or maybe the halls are growing longer as I walk down them. Or maybe I’m actually underwater. Three years later I arrive at my room. It has twin beds, not a double and the tv doesn’t work. There’s no wifi. I might have walked backward through time to before there was wifi. That’s possible.
I make the three-year journey back to the hotel lobby or rain forest or whatever it is. They told me that it doesn’t matter what I booked ahead of time, the rooms are all first come first serve. I can come back later and see if a room with a queen bed became available, but there’s no wifi in tower one and for some reason unknown to me, there’s no chance in hell I will get a room in tower 2 or 3. There’s 4 hotels, 4 or 5 casinos, an indoor theme park, shops, restaurants and an arcade all interconnected so let’s go explore and hopefully find some food on the way. My experience so far had left me very disoriented and I notice that there are signs and some of the words are in English, but I can’t read them. All I see is trees with lights in them. I find an elevator and go up. When I exit I am “outdoors” in a market. A whale floats by above me. It reminds me of main street Disney with the overdone perfect shops, fake bakery smells, lights everywhere and people everywhere. This is the slightly lower budget Asian casino version mimicking an open air market. A reindeer sled with two kids in it flies by. The statue of liberty is riding a Harley. I see the casino entrance, but don’t go in. That might be too much. There are restaurants on the other side of the river, but I can’t get to them. Guess that’s not where I want to eat tonight. I find a movie theatre, a haunted house, tons of stores and Ripley’s believe it or not. It’s 4 or 5 stories of this fake outdoors. An escalator goes up, but there’s no escalator down. There are dead ends and a lot of “how do I get over there?”. I find an escalator that goes to the next hotel/casino. Maybe they will have food I want. It turns out to be 6 or 7 escalators some of them so steep that I had to hold onto the railing because I felt like I would fall over. It drops me off at an arcade. FUCK. It’s so loud, lights everywhere, and so many small humans. I have now lost all ability to function. I stood there like a deer in the headlights. I don’t even remember walking, but then I was at the other side of the arcade and looking at an Italian restaurant. I couldn’t read the menu, but by looking at the place, I figured I couldn’t afford it anyway. More walking, more dead ends, more casinos, more hotel, more Chinese people, more food consisting of something and rice. So hungry. So don’t want rice. And about 2 minutes before total melt down – burger and a ginger beer. Yay! Not sure how I found it, but I felt human again after I ate it. I think going from rural Thailand to this in one day, I might have overestimated my adaptation skills. I know people that get easily overwhelmed by too much stimulus. I think this might be how they feel. But, knowing that it’s just over stimulus, I never panicked or actually freaked out. I kind of enjoyed most of it even though it was frustrating when I got hungry.
After dinner, foot massage. Here that involves a steam tub for your feet and legs. At first it was nice, then it tried to peel my skin off. Not a fan. Then back through the arcade. Arcades are just casinos for kids, practice for later. I went into one of the casinos. I didn’t understand any of the table games and I don’t care for slot machines. I found some game rules and descriptions and took them to one of the river side bars I couldn’t get to before. I had a drink and read about the games. The drink did me in so I will play games tomorrow. I was able to get my room changed to one with a queen sized bed. Still no wifi. I think they named the hotel wrong. Instead of First World Resort, I think it should be called Better than Third World Resort. My new room is still in the time warp tower 1 so I still had to swim with no arms and legs to it.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Entrance to rain forestOutdoor market insidehuh?A whale with children in itFoot steam bathDon’t like foot steam bath
I stayed in this cool hotel in Chiang Mai. I booked it because it was right next to the airport, had a coffee shop and was made of shipping containers. I have a friend that owns a company that makes houses out of shipping containers so I was excited to see a hotel with this concept. It was a great concept. But in effort to make the place look cool, they kept the restaurant open to the hotel section. If I opened the door from my room, I was looking directly at tables in the restaurant. Even with the door closed, it sounded like I was sitting in the restaurant. It was a very popular restraint and every table was full all night long. So, going to sleep early so I could get up early and well rested for my flight was not happening. Then they didn’t have a shuttle and were not willing to call a taxi for me so I had to walk 3 blocks to the nearest road to get a taxi. The coffee shop wasn’t open in the morning. The hot water didn’t work. Great idea, poor execution. They should have just had a kick ass restaurant and skipped the hotel part.
The Chiang Mai airport is so easy. No lines. My bag was overweight and they didn’t say anything. Security did take my deodorant though. Getting there wasn’t easy. I was literally next to the airport (could see the runway) and had to walk 3 blocks in the other direction to get a taxi. Then the taxi went 15 minutes in the wrong direction to drop someone else off. I swear it took 25 minutes to get back to the airport.
Flying into Kuala Lumpur, the ocean was an unnatural green, not the pretty pale tropical green it should be. It looked like radioactive waste. In places it wasn’t green, it was brown like a Colorado river in flood. I had originally planned to scuba dive, but then scrapped that plan when I realized all the scuba places were a 4-8 hour drive away from Kuala Lumpur. Now I know why they are so far away. Still between the weird water and the acres and acres of palm farms, it was a beautiful strange new world to land in. The highway is big and clean and at first glance everything seems to be much cleaner than Thailand. I bought a SIM card in the airport so my phone will work here. It seemed to be working, but on further inspection (in the cab, not in the store) it’s not. Yay technology. We drove past the city on the way to Genting Highlands. It’s a huge city. Genting Highlands is a tacky looking ridiculous casino at the top of a mountain. I found it when I was looking for jobs in Asia. I thought it would be a hoot to check it out and if I like it, maybe I’ll try my hand at dealing cards again. The road to Genting Highlands is very steep, steeper than most places in Colorado. The entire top of the mountain is covered in casino, hotel complex, and mist. Just driving through it is a maze of tunnels, high rise buildings and construction. If I had been driving, I’d still be driving in circles lost.
Rraine Drops 