Headed to our hotel which was in the heart of the city .. the name of the place was 'Serai Inn' .. regular bed and breakfast types place to cater to budget tourists .. the place was fully booked , luckily we had booked online. we checked in .. since there was 8 of us we had taken thr 8 bed dormintory which was damn cheap .. even by indian standards !
Then we headed for local sight seeing .. roamed around the city a bit .. most of the prominent landmarks were near from our hotel ... then headed to Batu caves
they are pretty old (4.5 million yrs acc to wikipedia) .. apparently the temple was built by a local businessman some 150 yrs back and its a famous shrine with a huge number of pilgrims visiting every year .. its got a pretty imposing Murugan statue about 150 feet tall!there is a steep climb up to temple which is in a cave , there are about 300 steps !
we wanted to watch the qualifiers of the Race - which btw was the main reason of Malaysia trip !
so headed back by bus to KL and reached KL sentral station and found buses for as less as Rm 10 (about Rs.120) for a trip to Sepang track which was near the Airport .. it was really far away about 50 Km .. but the roads were fantastic and on the way we saw townships of CyberJaya and Putrajaya (new administative capital) getting constructed .. they are superbly planned and executed on a mammoth scale and will come up in a few years
The atmosphere at Sepang international circuit was like tht of a carnival with people from different nationalities , supporting different teams decked up in diff colors , waving flags of their nations / teams .. the Ferrari flag was most prominent and red attire was the most common one ... there were stalls put up by the teams selling official merchandise
Lot of buying/reselling of tickets were also happening unofficially outside ticket counter and was being carried out by Europeans not locals !
There was a huge European crowd , but lot of support for the local team one which local company Petronas was sponsoring ... it was called Sauber Petronas earlier .. now its just BMW Sauber .. but after Ferrari the local team had maxmim fans .. then came McLaren ... with a huge number of people sporting Hamilton caps ... then finally a sizeable contigent was decked in blue cheering for Alonso and Renault team !
we had hillside stand and since it was qualifiers the place was not fully packed ... we settled down and eagerly waited for cars to begin practice laps before qualifiers start ... the pure joy from live action .. seeing the Formula one car coming roaring in and pass right infront of your eye is somethiign which has to be experienced and no words can do justice to the sheer delight in this experience ... from where we were sitting we could view a straight sectiona and 2 corners ... the whole atmosphere and the sound of the cars made it an unbelievable experience ... the feel of the track is something u never get while watching it on TVIn the evening we went to Petronas towers , the building was simply brilliant with lights at night ... same for KL tower .. but petronas towers was something else
Finally headed to Chinatown and after roaming around quite a bit managed to locate a shop which sold F1 T-shirts cheap ... since there were frequent raids the guy took us to backside of the shop and displayed the merchandise and packed it and asked us not to open it till we were out of the place ! we were getting it for 10% of the price of Original T-shirts and they looked the same !!!
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