Different people have different reactions when faced with unexpected situations.

Some people take selfies after they survived a plane crash.

Some others go hysterical, or even come up with interesting theories surrounding a crisis.

For me, as long as the unexpected situations do not manifest themselves in the form of cockroaches, flying prawns (there really are such insects, I swear), lightning or someone tickling me from the back, I generally remain calm and composed.

Until the next day, when the reality of the situations start sinking in – I spent pretty much the whole day thinking of the events that happened over last weekend and playing every scene in my head. I think this is what psychologists would have analysed as a case of delayed shock (or in layman’s terms: v e r y   s  l  o  w  ).

Before you jump into conclusions, nothing disastrously bad happened to me nor someone I know personally. But one thing was for sure: it was a very bizarre weekend.

I wrote in my previous post that I was going to have a weekend trip to KL for Future Music Festival Asia 2014. It was meant to be straightforward – reach KL early in the afternoon, get changed, head to the festival and take a bus ride back to Singapore the next day.

But of course nothing in travelling is ever that straightforward.

We reached KL two hours later than expected due to the traffic, and the moment I had access to WiFi from our hostel, I was greeted by a text from a friend informing me that the festival had been cancelled.

Cancelled. The festival we took a 5-hour bus journey for. The festival where Pharrell Williams was supposed to play! Poof. No more.

In our disbelief, we searched the net for more news and found a few articles confirming our news and when the official website finally released some sort of confirmation, we knew that it was time for Plan B. Except that we did not have a plan B, so we had to come up with something on the spot.

So I think it is of utmost importance that I write a guide of what you can do, should you find yourself stranded in Kuala Lumpur for 23 hours because the festival you came all the way for was cancelled at the last minute:

1. Get some food. Seriously, I think food is the key to happiness. I’m not sure why so many people have not got this figured out yet. We ventured to Jalan Alor, where you can find many types of street food and restaurants along the way. We decided to go to the most crowded restaurant since everything looked the same anyway. Recommended dish from this place: chicken meat fish, just because.

   

   

2. Bring an umbrella. Because if your festival is cancelled, that is just a premonition for more surprises coming. After a prolonged period of drought that almost forced Malaysia to declare a state of national emergency, it had to rain on the very day we wished to venture outdoor for some street food. The same could happen to you.
   
3. Go to a sports bar and watch rugby. Especially when it was the final day of the Six Nations Rugby and England was playing against Italy in a bid to win the League. Which they did not win in the end because France was not doing their job to beat the Irish.

   

4. When one festival is cancelled, another one is just around the corner. There was a parade of Buddhist procession that passed through Jalan Alor, the street where we were having food. It started out rather normal, with lion dance and dragon dance and firecrackers. Then the sights got a bit more bizarre as we saw a few possessed people with bleeding tongue, painted faces, costumes and one was even sitting on spikes.

   

   

5. Party anyway. The few thousands of people who came for the festival would definitely be in the mood of party. So find out where they are going and create a festival on your own! A word of warning, clubs in Malaysia allow smoking, so only go if you don’t mind your hair to smell like cigarette butts the very next day.

   

6. Meet your best friend in KL. Don’t forget the waffle, with three scoops of ice cream. Fixed everything.
   
7. Take random picture at the mall. Like these.

   

   

So there you go, 23 hours in KL and you can still get a lot done and have an amazing time. Even if your bus breaks down in the middle of highway on your way back to Singapore and you have to wait for 3 hours until the replacement bus comes. Which obviously happened to us. But at the end of the day, it is who you are stuck with that will make all the difference in the world.

As for me, I was lucky enough to be stranded in this country with pretty awesome people.

So thank you KL for the great weekend!