4th January 2009

After an amazing 4 hour bus ride, which we had paid extra to travel "top class", with our own personal TV's and food provided, we arrived in amidst the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur!

As we had left Georgetown 2 days early, we had no accomodation booked, but luckily enough for us the bus dropped us off outside a rather nice looking hotel. We chanced our luck and enquired about their prices, but we were not at all surprised that this way outside of our meager budget. This didn't stop us, so we asked to use their toilets (they hadn't been the best of standards since hitting Malaysia.) Well, these were probably the finest toilets we'd seen since leaving England! Clare even said that she wouldn't mind staying in there for the night! Lucily, Adam had done a little research and we had an alternative to try in Chinatown which was close by to where we were. So we trundled off, leaving a trail of sweat and eventually found The Chinatown Inn.

Thankfully they had rooms available and at a reasonable rate for the area, but as us travellers have to look after our pennies we chose the scenic room with no windows. But wow, we had a TV with movie channels! So on our first night,we went out, got some chicken and rice from a street vendor and watched movies all night. Funny how you miss the simple things. Our hotel couldn't have been more in the thick of it, slap bang in the middle of Chinatown Market - with all the Gucci, Diesel and Tiffany that you could think of - all at very reasonable prices of course. We don't know how they do it so cheaply!!!

After our movie night we headed off to the KL tower to do the tourist thing and enjoyed the amazing views over Kuala Lumpur. We decided to walk back to our hotel, but oh my goodness, Kuala Lumpur seems to resemble some kind of sauna! We couldn't drink as much water as we were sweating out. But on a brighter note, it did mean we avoided the squat toilets! Come on now, what does it take to put some toilet paper in there! If we needed colonic irrigation we'd visit a health spa!That evening we caught the local train to Little India and after wandering around aimlessly, managed to find some very fine curry and naan bread. This all went down very well, until Clare spotted a fat rat running around the tables! Needless to say we made for a swift exit!

A bright and early start for us was needed for our last full day in Kuala Lumpur. We had to get to the Petronas Towers nice and early to get our free tickets to the viewing bridge. "Free" fits in very well with our stringent budget and even meant we may have been able to splash out on one beer that night! We arrived at the towers at 8.30am, to be greeted by a large queue, not a problem for us, as it was air-con all the way! We got our tickets for a 1pm viewing slot, so we had plenty of time to take numerous pictures of pretty much every conceivable angle of the towers and also check out the huge shopping mall underground. The towers are a pretty spectacular sight, the viewing was very good and gave us more impressive views over the city. You could even feel the sway of the towers in the centre of the viewing bridge - Crazy!!

The rest of the day we spent taking in the sights of the city and we dined out on fresh chicken and beef satays. For dessert we ate chocolate roti's, one of Clares favourites! We even had enough Ringit leftover to treat ourselves to one can of beer each, so obviously we bought the strongest possible. We think it was the local version of "Special Brew", but nevermind, it made us sleep well and for £2 a can, we hoped it would do something!

Enough of cities and expensive beer for us, we were up bright and early to catch a plane bound for Koh Samui for a little R&R. Hotel number 15 here we come, this travelling business is exhausting...