Kuala Lumpur

Trip Start Sep 11, 2008
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Trip End Jun 05, 2009


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Flag of Malaysia  , Wilayah Persekutuan,
Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Once the 3 hour bus journey, which turned into a 6 hour bus journey arrived in Kuala Lumpur, or KL as it's known, we trekked about 20 mins to the Golden Triangle area which is basically the business district and found the hotel which we had hastily booked. KL was fully booked apart from our "homestay", according to the internet, so we had to pay a bit above the odds for a very average hotel. (I liked it ....Lucy). It did have a TV area though where we watched live footie, I even got to watch Histon, a small town near my Mums near Cambridge beat Leeds. First night we went to watch Bond at the nearby cinema in the impressive Pavillions shopping centre. We had to sit in the front row but it only cost 2 quid and we love Bond films. When we came out we expected to be in the UK as going to the cinema is something you associate with being in the UK and we forgot where we were during the film. Malaysia! The shopping mall was all done up with Xmas decorations too which we hadn't really seen yet, wierd to us with it being 30 degrees still at night. (There was a massive cool Christmas tree).

We trekked right across the city next day seeing the Merdeka square where independence was declared from Britain in 1957, the mosque, and the Post Office (always Lucy's favourite). We walked right round the park area but couldn't get in as it looked closed, but walking under the shade of trees was nice on a rare sunny day. We sneaked into the grounds of the Planetarium to see a model of "Stone Hence" as they called it. Stumbled across the national museum as we were searching for a toilet. They toilets in SE Asia have a small showerlike attachment as they don't use toilet paper, and having just a scrap left I decided to be nice and save it for Lucy and use the shower thing. I had used them before in hotel rooms and knew what to expect. Except the bloody thing nearly blew me out of the cubicle and down the road, it came out with the pressure of a firehose. I still consider myself lucky I didn't get a serious injury as I wouldn't have enjoyed going to hospital and having to explain or phoning the insurance company. (The National Museum was good I learnt alot about the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1941...Lucy). That evening we went to the cinema again to see Madagascar 2 which was great! Also we had lovely chinese food at a big food stall in Chinatown.
Next day we went to the Petronas Towers, we had to arrive early to queue for the free tickets but not early enough as we got a ticket for 12.45pm and had 3 hours to kill. We went for a pot of tea at the beautiful Mandarin Oriental nearby which was very posh. Lucy went to the toilet and not heeding my warning of my close shave yesterday decided to play with some strange looking buttons by the toilet. She had already finished her business and was standing, just curious. The front button produced a little arm from the front of the toilet with a gentle trickle coming out the top. The back button though produced a large arm from the back of the toilet bowl which once fully extended, blasted an oscillating jet of water all over the cubicle, the side of the cubicle, over Lucy and over the door. Another travel tip - when in KL never use the toilet functions as you will almost certainly get hurt, always carry toilet paper.
We went to the aquarium which was great, saw scuba divers in the huge tank with the tunnel going through feeding all the small sharks and rays. Then we finally got to go up to the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers, or Twin Towers as they are known in KL. We watched a crap promotion video then got about 5 minutes up there before we had to go down again. Its only halfway up them, I'd have liked to got to the top but you can't. It was good though, if we'd paid for it I wouldn't have been happy. (That night a monkey tied to a lampost pinched me ...Lucy)
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