Day 332 – Monday March 17, 2008 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The goal of Monday was simple. We wanted to get to the Sunway Lagoon Theme Park as easily as possible to enjoy a day of amusement park fun! The theme park opened at 11am, so this gave us time to sleep in before taking the monorail to the main train station in town where we would change to the commuter train for a ride out to the suburbs. From there, it was a ten minute bus ride to the park. While it sounds complicated, we had it all planned out and were ready to go.
Getting around Kuala Lumpur has been relatively easy for us since the monorail station is only a block away from the hotel. Our ride on the monorail to the train station took around twenty minutes. Along the way we passed the Times Square Mall which is home to another theme park that houses a really cool coaster. In seeing how easy it would be to visit the mall on our journey back to the hotel, I began working on Jasmine to let us stop their after our visit to Sunway Lagoon.
Once at the train station we bought our tickets and were delighted to see that the next train was set to depart in ten minutes. After ten minutes, the time on the station sign changed to the next scheduled train which was twenty minutes later. Once again the time passed and a train still hadn’t come. Finally after 45 minutes of waiting, a very small train came and after forcing our way in with the other thousand people waiting, we were taken for a very uncomfortable ride. When our train arrived at the station, a bus was already waiting 
and we hopped right on and were at the theme park within ten minutes.
The Sunway Lagoon Theme Park was built on the location of an old tin mine. The tin mine redevelopment project also includes several hotels, a hospital, a very large shopping mall and the theme park. While we were looking to arrive at opening, the bus dropped us off at 11:30am. In lieu of going straight into the park, we decided to walk through the mall to get something to eat first. The Sunway Pyramid Mall proved to be a beautiful upmarket shopping center catered towards westerners. How do we know this? Inside we saw such western staples as Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King & KFC. While these places are also seen elsewhere in Malaysia, the addition of Subway, Carl’s Junior and Wendy’s was a first for us in Southeast Asia. Of course they also had upmarket restaurants such as Tony Roma’s!
Without wanting to waste much time, we settled on a quick lunch at one of those horrible places mentioned above and entered the theme park around noon. Sunway Lagoon is actually four parks in one. Near the entrance lies the theme park portion, while down below in the old mine is a full water park. They also have a mini zoo area and an extreme park where one can ride ATVs and shoot paint balls. We opted for a two park ticket which enabled us access to the theme and water parks.
The plan was to spend a couple of hours in the theme park before heading down to the water park for the rest of the day. This is exactly what we did. Sunway Lagoon only has two coasters, so we headed for those first before taking in the raft ride and a couple of flat rides. The Lost City of Gold coaster proved to be better than it looked and the looping starship ride was phenomenal. After ninety minutes or so we felt satisfied and decided to do one last thing before heading down to the water park.
Sunway Lagoon is home to the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world. The bridge stretches completely across the park, hanging over much of the water park below. While this bridge was quite a novelty and a lot of fun, going over a rickety bridge high above a raging river in New Zealand was still much more exciting. After arriving at the water 
park portion around 2pm, we spent the next three hours riding on water slides and going through the slowest lazy river ever made! (We literally had to paddle ourselves to move!)
At around 5pm we decided it was time to go and soon found ourselves with another forty five minute wait for the next train at the station. This time it was rush hour though and the train was absolutely packed for the entire twenty minute trip. After being pried from the sardine can back in the city, we boarded the monorail and I convinced Jasmine to let us stop at the mall where Cosmo’s World, the other theme park is located.
Once inside the mall I quickly located the theme park and headed towards the ticket booth. I was hoping that Cosmo’s World had a pay per ride model, but that wasn’t the case and I had to purchase a ticket for around 30MR (~$10USD) to get into the park. Jasmine and Shawn Reece opted to go eat dinner while I indulged myself in the awesomeness that is Supersonic Odyssey! Unlike the relatively tame coasters at Sunway Lagoon, Supersonic Odyssey was very very good and I was able to ride it five times. In the end, I felt guilty about the extra expenditure, but had no regrets because the coaster was so good!
Tomorrow we are leaving Kuala Lumpur to head up to the Genting Highlands which is a resort area set in the mountains about an hour away. The weather up in the mountains averages 5-10 degrees Celsius below the lowland,s so it should be a great break from the heat. Oh and did I mention that we will be staying in the largest hotel in the world while there? Yup!
We want to thank everyone for the comments and emails. Your support is truly appreciated and keeps us going.
The Coomer Family
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