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Hello again,
Hope everyone is well? We are still having problems uploading our photos onto here, but we have managed to get some onto facebook for those of you that have it. If you don't we'll try harder!
Let the catch up continue...
We left 'Shoppers Paradise' Singapore and headed North to Malaysia. We had a comfortable bus journey and a very easy border crossing (where we find out that we could cross with a sword but not chewing gum!). The only downside on our trip through the beautiful rolling hills of Malaysia was that Ali was sat underneath a drip/waterfall for the final hour of the journey! We made our way to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and the home of the famous PETRONAS Towers.
We eventually found our hostel, despite the taxi drivers best efforts to get us lost! And when we did pull up outside the hostel we were very tempted to carry on instead! The hostel was in a tower block of flats and the surrounding area was filthy and it stunk! However as we had seen the photos on the internet we decided to give it a go. The hostel was on the 4th floor and after a quick look at the lift we decided to climb the 8 flights of stairs with our heavy luggage instead! Once we had struggled up the stairs and fought our way through the metal cages, we finally got to the hostel, which turned out to be very nice and was run by a very friendly and helpful, young South African guy!
The following day we headed into the city centre and went up the KL tower which has 360o views of the city, and was well worth the trip. We then went to the PETRONAS Towers, which are the largest twin towers in the world. Feeling we hadn't had enough of heights for the day we went up to the sky bridge, which connects the two towers between the 41st and 42nd floors, again there were some great views. However we were made a bit uneasy when we were told that the bridge isn't actually attached to the towers but it is held in place by a couple of metal rods on the outside of the building, therefore allowing the bridge to move up to 10 inches in the event of a strong gust of wind! The towers also have a lovely big park behind them and a huge shopping mall on the first 6 floors, which Ali enjoyed!
We also went to Batu Caves on the outskirts of the city, home to caves, temples, and a huge gold Buddha statue. We had to climb 272 steps and run a gauntlet of thieving monkeys to reach the top and access the caves.
Another positive of KL was the transport; both the metro and the buses were really good, and the staff helpful. We were a bit wary of the buses to begin with as they pulled up looking terrible, with a local man hanging out the door shouting at the people on the street! Once we plucked up the courage to get on one, the guy turned out to be the conductor who issued you with your ticket once the bus was in motion, rather than at a standstill, very efficient! Thumbs up for the transport people of KL!
After 3 nights we headed to the island of Penang, in the very NorthWest of the country. To be perfectly honest we didn't like Penang as everything was closed, it was filthy, and it stank again! Luckily we were only there for 2 nights and outside of town we found a nice night market to keep us entertained. We couldn't wait to leave, however the journey to Thailand turned out to be the longest and most painful 15 hours of our lives to date...
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