Brandon O'Brien

Tuesday, December 2, 2014 @ 5:31 AM in 2014 Asia

We slept in pretty late this morning since we didn't really have much on the schedule for the day. The hotel doesn't have free breakfast so I went out and got some boboa tea and a pastry. After hanging out for a while we went out and explored the area near us. It's a small "Little India" with a bunch of cool food markets.

Mike and I saw KFC had some crazy stuff we'd never heard of before so we tried some if it. I got a Double Down Maxx (two pieces of chicken with a hashbrown in the middle with cheese and sauce) and they gave me some curry/mayo fries with it. Mike tried some jalapeno fries and potato cakes.

We lounged around by the pool for a while before having some beers and heading out to explore the city at night. We went up to the Central Market / Chinatown area and walked around through those markets. It's mostly a bunch of fake wallets and watches with some miscellaneous nicknacks thrown in. We found a food stand that had a huge variety of skewered meats to choose from. Each skewer had a color on the end that each represented a certain price. Once you pick everything out that you want they fry the meat that needs frying and if you get some stuff that needs boiling you can do that at the table. Once you finish they count up all your skewers and give you a price. For enough to fill both of us up plus a beer it only ended up costing us about $8USD.

After dinner we walked around and made it up to Bukit Butang to see all of those food markets and the giant mall. It was getting late so we came back to the hotel to call it a night.

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Tags: malaysia, kuala lumpur, travels

Posted from: Malaysia

Monday, December 2, 2013 @ 8:26 PM in 2013 Europe

Day 159

I got up this morning, ate, made a sandwich and then headed to the bus station to catch my 10am bus to Ronda, Spain. Ronda is most known for its Puente Nuevo (new bridge) built in the late 1700's which spans a 100m+ gorge splitting the old city from the new city.

The bus ride was really nice and I got to see some nice small villages and some great views along the way. Ronda is near a big mountain range and the views of the mountains were also amazing. When I got to the city I walked toward the city center then saw some really nice overlooks that looked out at the mountain range on the edge of a giant cliff face.

There was an information desk nearby so I went in and got a map of the city and set out for the bridge. There were all kinds of Gran Turismo (the video game) 15th Anniversary spots all over town. They had some fancy cars and video game booths where people could play the latest version of the game. It was then that I noticed that the front part of the bridge had these incredibly massive Gran Turismo banners hanging down it. The banners completely destroyed what would have been some great photos.

I hiked down to get a better vantage point and enjoyed lunch there. There are some really nice waterfalls under the bridge. If I had more time and it was a little warmer I would have liked to do some hiking around there as well. It looked like there were several trails in the area and some of them would have had some great views of the bridge as well.

From there, I hiked back up and went through the old city and walked over and saw the two older bridges. There were some gardens on the other side of the river so I walked through those and found a really nice viewpoint of the back side of the bridge, which fortunately wasn't spammed with banners.

I walked around a little bit more then found a quiet spot to read with a view of the bridge then about a half hour later a group of 30 school kids came up and started making all kinds of noise. I ended up leaving after a few minutes and found another nice spot overlooking all the mountains to read.

It started to cool down a bit so I started searching for a place where I could get a beer. I found one little bar that had several people in it and got a beer for 1 euro. I hung out in there for a while then walked around some more and found a McDonalds where I went in and used their wifi for a bit. Outside the McDonalds was another bar that had 1 euro beer so I had another one there before heading back to the bus station.

After being outside all day and walking around, plus the beers, I was pretty tired on the ride home. It was dark so I couldn't really see any of the nice scenery but we made it back to Seville pretty quick. I hurried back to the hostel and signed up for dinner. Apparently they're making some kind of paprika chicken which sounds pretty good.

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Tags: daily journal, spain, seville, ronda

Posted from: Spain