I spent a few hours working this morning while Julia was sleeping off the tough day at Camp 5 and 1 very potent cocktail from The Social in Bangsar.

We got up and out in time for lunch, which we had at Nandoo’s.  Sort of as chili training for Thailand I guess, so I made the most of it and had the Extra Hot Peri Peri chicken burger.  As usual, it disappointed, and as usual I added a healthy dollop of the Extra hot Peri Peri sauce on the table.  Alas, that seemed to have turned into extra sour Peri Peri sauce.  I wonder if they water it down with vinegar.  Anyway, lunch was to fuel me for working while Julia walked Bangsar flat after bargains and good deals.

The evening saw us yet again meeting up with Ian and Eve (where there’s food…), but also Julia’s brother Jon, and fellow reporter JJ and his girlfriend – making our entire group Sabahans and Sabahan-wannabes, or honorary Sabahans as Ian and myself like to be refer too

We revisited Lucky Gardens. Good food and cheap beer, it doesn’t get much better than this.

An evening of generally silly banter and otherwise good conversation were interspersed with great food. Ian and Eve retired early, but the rest of us walked back to our respective abodes via The School – I think it’s a club in Bangsar, but we sat outside so not sure if it’s a club or a bar.

The night was sealed with a jug of beer and fond farewells as Julia and I prepared ourselves for the Thai leg of Tour D’ Tom Yum.

Oh yes, there was this little video clip too….

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We started off early this morning. Well, relatively early anyway. Ian got us going by whipping up some great French toast and mushrooms that he produced from seemingly thin air. We devoured our breakfast, because apparently eating a lot makes you want to eat more.

Also, he told us we’re going rock climbing at 1 Utama’s Camp 5 this morning, so we had to stock-up on energy as it’s pretty much climb-as-long-as-you-like. And Ian likes to climb very long.

Camp 5 in 1 Utama - Where the mountain come to Mohamed

Anyway, Camp 5 is located at 1 Utama, a huge shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a climbing gym; a place where you go to climb on stuff. Walls, boulders, shapes, the roof, you name it. It tones, shapes and makes you strong for one day when, like in Mission: Impossible 2, you’re stuck on a sheer rock face and have to hoist yourself from a thin ledge using only your fingers.

It’s quite a large area and the walls consist of pre-fab slabs of rough-textured squares into which hand and footholds have been bolted. They’re multi-coloured, each colour representing a route that you can take from the floor to the top, graded in difficulty. Ian spends a lot of time here, because when he’s in Scotland he spends a lot of time against real life mountains.

The 4 of was was keen to play, but Julia’s red toes, acquired from the frisbee the day before, had turned nearly black, so she was in no shape to climb. Ian showed her how to belay though and I was the guinea pig. It all went well, but at one point both of them was focused on Julia’s technique, I got pinned to the wall and got myself a nasty little rope burn across the love-handle to show for it.

After that Ian, myself and Eve took turns to climb and after my first climb, which was very exhilarating, Ian showed me the ropes (chuckle) and taught me how to belay a climber, which I then did on his subsequent climb and for Eve later on. Ian continued some teaching with Julia, who then went on to gain her second injury on this Tour D’ Tom Yum when she belayed at 15kg sand bag and pulled a muscle or something.

We were at Camp 5 for a good 4 hours and when on my 4th climb I was unable to got further than 2m off the ground, I suddenly realised how long we had been at it. My arms and legs refused to co-operate in sending me scurrying up the walls any longer, so after the other two finished their last climbs, we packed it up and headed for a very late lunch.

The rest of the day was spent sleeping – partly because of our early start, but mostly because of our arduous day spent against the treacherous cliffs of the Camp 5 climbing walls.

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We’re Ultimate players and Ultimate players never travel without an Ultimate disc. When you’re traveling, it’s not just a disc, it’s a friend-making tool – friends of the disc.

Having said that, Ultimate players never travel without cleats either, but here we are in KL and neither Julia nor myself have cleats. Perhaps we’re not such hardcore Ultimate players yet. Or perhaps we’ve foregone the 2kg in cleats because Tour D’ Tom Yum is supposed to feature lost and lost of beach sand.

Our compromise was bringing trainers for the two Ultimate sessions we planned – the first one is here in KL and the second we’re aiming for is Soidawgs in Bangkok. Our Sabah Ultimate Guru, Ken Kassim, is now based here in KL, so he invited us out for a game over at KBU. The 3rd taxi we flagged agreed to use the meter and we set off.

We saw the discs flying long before we knew where we where, so it was an easy find. We proceeded to reacquaint ourselves with Ultimate players we previously met at the Malaysian Ultimate Open and also to meet new ones. Of course, their level of play is beyond anything we have in Sabah, so we really appreciated the opportunity.

Ken quickly dismissed Julia’s sneakers as unsuitable to play in and when I took mine out of the bag the gaping soles dismissed mine too. So barefoot we played, which turned out detrimental to Julia, as in one of the first point she managed to stub her foot against the heal of a cleated player, instantly rendering 3 of her toes swollen and red. She would hobble for the rest of the game.

Other than that incident it was a great game in very hot weather and we worked up a suitable appetite, which is just as well, because Ken then carted us off to his usually post-ultimate grazing grounds – banana leaf at Kana Curry House.

Where is Kana Curry House? I have no idea – the road there winded left and right and I don’t know KL that well, so I might well never find the place again. Section 14, says Julia, but what do I know.

Anyway, the size of the banana leaf they placed in front of me was a prelude to how much food was to come. And come it did. For the next 20 minutes people came past with all sorts of food items and if you do anything that looks like a nod you get a portion on your leaf. I appeared to be nodding quite a bit, so before I knew it my banana leaf was stacked. So ate. And ate and ate and ate until I could no more – then I ate some more to clear my leaf, because it’s rude to leave food on your leaf.

Kana Curry House became the second place on Tour D’ Tom Yum where I would pick up weight. This banana leaf was also hands the most expensive banana leaf I will ever have, but I believe it was the large, nearly-half-a-chicken piece that I had that pushed up the price. But good stuff. Burp!

Take me away to Out of Africa

Luckily this was very early on in the day and we had been quite active, because we had Out Of Africa, that fabulous South African restaurant in Petaling Jaya, lined up for dinner. And Ian and Eve were joining, so we knew lots of food and fun was to be had.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I think Julia went shopping, I can’t remember what I did – I might have been nursing my bloated stomach. Near the evening we met up with I and E and set off to Out of Africa. We repeated a class act similar to our previous time there (except less Vodka).

We started off with biltong and chicken liver pate – it would be rude not to. We followed it up with with pap-en-wors, venison pie and Ian had the ox-tail potjie – trust him to have something of an animal other than meat. For desert we shared a portion each of Cape Brandy pudding and Lemon Meringue pie between the four of us. As usual, everything was outstanding.

We were in time to catch the LRT home and because Ian wanted to take us for one of his action packed activities – which supposedly started quite early – for convenience sake we stayed over at theirs. Again there was some walking involved to get home, but it was all for the greater good as we were stuffed yet again.

Tour D’ Tom Yum is certainly looking like it’s going to leave a few fat people in its wake.

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You know how people say you should plan for the unexpected, because you never know what might happen? It’s good advice that.

Certain aspects of my life is so predictable, that when I planned to come to KL to see my son on the first leg of Tour D’ Tom Yum, I necessarily had to have a contingency plan.

You see, my x has become so predictable in using my son as a pawn in her bitterness, that even my sister in

Cape Town, some 7,000 miles away, knew that she would let me fly all the way to KL only to come up with some crock about why I couldn’t see him.

And that’s exactly what happened. The drama of it all *rollingeyes*.

Luckily there’s good people in KL too

With the predictable part of our visit to KL having run its course, related emotions boxed and tucked away, we forked our plans and met up with tree-hugger extraordinary, Ian and the lovely Eve.

Immediately they plunged Julia and myself into culinary abandon at some secret Baba-and-Nonya restaurant tucked away in the corner of a building, which was a much longer walk away than Ian claimed. It was worth it though as Ian demonstrated the barrel of laughs hidden in innocent looking cendol.

With our stomachs full a nap was in order and much desired (considering our 4am start this morning), but instead we headed to the SA High Comm to go and sort out some stuff and meet some interesting people and some not-so-interesting people. But it turned out well and Julia was treated to a good 10 minutes of Afrikaans banter as I sorted out my stuff.

We then indulged in a bit of window shopping over at KLCC and sampled some of the food from which we are deprived in Kota Kinabalu. Our day ended in the company of Ian and Eve again, them clearly being on a mission to fatten us up.

Their local food haunt in Lucky Garden was to be where we gained our first kilos on this Tour D’ Tom Yum, and to make sure we didn’t burn it off in the day immediately following, we chugged it down with beer.

Great day, and all things considered and some ignored, not a bad start to Tour D’ Tom Yum.

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The Eye on Malaysia, which I visited recently when I was in Kuala Lumpur, is essentially an over-sized ferris wheel, and, by comparison, the tiny cousin of the much better known and first ever over-sized ferris wheel, the London Eye. It’s also the tiny cousin of the upcoming Singapore Flyer.

Possibly the most interesting aspect of the Eye on Malaysia is the fact that there’s plenty of controversy surrounding it.

It’s considered tiny, because at a height of a mere 60m it really is little bigger than a fairground ferris wheel and it is severely overshadowed by its big cousin, the London Eye, which towers over the Themes at 135m. It will also be eclipsed by it’s Singaporean cousin, the Singapore Flyer, which partly constructed already towers above the island nation at at a whopping 165m!

In comparison, the capsules of Eye on Malaysia can accommodate up to 8 people, whilst the London Eye can launch an impressive 25 people per capsule. Once completed, the Singapore Flyer will be able to host 3 more at 28 people per capsule.

The London Eye and Singapore Flyer both make (or will) one rotation every 30 minutes, whilst their Malaysian cousin, the Eye on Malaysia, zips through a flight every 12 minutes.

The Eye on Malaysia does have some unique, albeit dubious, claims tough, like being the biggest portable wheel in the world, and (you can tell the marketing people were scraping the bottom of the barrel) the first to overhang a lake.

What started the controversy was the apparent last minute decision to establish the wheel. After two weeks of soil an suitability testing, it was decided the wheel would be erected - 11 days before it was due to be launched on the 6th of January, in time for Visit Malaysia Year celebrations.

There was quite an initial rush, although many reported nothing special about the ride, some outright saying that it was boring. At RM30 million the wheel came at no small expense, especially for a boring ride. The big ferris wheel is minus the fairground attractions.

The controversy continues with the fact that RM30 million could have done much more good than a temporary ferris wheel aimed at tourists located in an area where not that many tourists go. We did see a city hop-on-hop-off bus stop while we were there, but Lake Titiwangsa really doesn’t have much going for it at all. It’s also the last stop on the KL Monorail, but that apparently is a substantial walk from the park.

The Lake is also site of the National Art Gallery and the National Library, but not two of the most noteworthy tourist attractions in KL. Apart from that, Lake Titiwangsa is not exactly on the tourist trail and it really has nothing to offer to bring tourists from the trail to explore. I was surprised when I read an article by the NST, which said that in April they had already achieved their target for Visit Malaysia Year. Could have been a pretty low target.

Despite much hoo-ha and a fair amount of positive press, the Eye on Malaysia started to water when reports started to surface that the private company, which runs the Eye, was not doing that well. Apparently the Eye was looking through rose coloured glasses.

We were at the wheel quite early, but having been on the London Eye, I was not impressed by it at all. Julia and John, not having seen the London Eye, were no more impressed than I was. For a moment we considered waiting, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

I can also not help but wonder (conspiracy theory alert!) whether the Eye on Malaysia’s conception and last minute implementation had anything to do with the Singapore Flyer. A knee-jerk reaction to Malaysia’s islands neighbour erecting this structure, which before construction began was already a PR paradise for Singapore.

Is that the way the wheel turns? Luckily the Eye of Malaysia has a pre-determined life span, and all our troubles (and money) could be gone… in the blink of an eye.

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