17 Mar '07 - + 16 - 17 The Joys and Pains of a Package Tour
We are now into our second day in Kuala Lumpur, our second city we have visited in Malaysia using a package tour from
Malaysia.com. This is far enough into the trip that we are able to draw some conclusions about using a package tour for the first time. While we are overall glad that we used the tour, there are some definite downsides.
On the positive side, our guide/driver, Balan, is great. He's very
nice, mostly knowledgable, and is patient for us when we need to stop
to take care of the needs of a 6-month-old. Also, it was great to have
a driver to take us to the
Batu Caves, the
Orang Asli Museum, and the
Royal Selangor
Pewter Factory today - both are quite a ways from the center of Kuala
Lumpur, so it would have been much more difficult to have figured out
how to get to them without a driver. All three were very interesting an well worth a visit that would have been much more difficult to arrange.
In general, it has been a great
way to get from city to city, as well, without having to worry about
figuring out bus and/or train connections on our own. While such
logistics are a fun part of our travel in Europe, it would have been
too much this time with Douglas.
Also, the tour takes us to some great places we wouldn't otherwise have
known about. For example, we wouldn't have known about the Pewter
Factory that we visited today, and we wouldn't have thought of eating
the wonderful brunch with great views at the top of
KL's telecom tower
that we enjoyed yesterday.
On the flip side, we also wouldn't have gone to the touristy and cheesy
restaurant at which we had lunch today - the meal was very similar to
yesterday's (in the tower), but without the view. There have also been
a couple of times when we've wished that we could just explore on our
own, or take care of Douglas's schedule on our own without the tour
schedule.
So, we are very glad that we modified the original schedules proposed by the company. We added some free time to ourselves to explore the cities in addition to the original plan. This allows us to get the city overview from a Malaysian tourguide and to get transportation between cities and to the outlying sights, but still allows us time to explore on our own and to find restaurants on our own. I think it'll be a long time before we're ready to join the motorcoach tours, but this compromise is working really well for us.
Also, the pictures from this trip are available at
http://finneytravel.shutterfly.com.
No comments yet:
