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We arrived in KL around lunch time and went for a quick walk to get our bearings and had lunch at China Town market. My new favourite is noodle soup, I've convinced myself it's healthy so I had spring rolls to even things out. Lots of the buildings here have identical twins, its a bit of a feature here apparently.
In the afternoon we had a tour round a few local places with a guide called Stevie, he was very nice but always referred to himself as the third person. 'Stevie is going to give you information and stories you'll remember for the rest of your life'. The only thing I remember though is not to touch the railings because of the monkey sh&t, The historical facts must have escaped me.
We visited a mosque, war memorial, the kings palace, pewter factory and then a massive cave. When we arrived at the factory I couldn't believe that I was walking round a metal museum?! But it was actually not that bad (and thankfully short). We saw them hand making everything and got to have a little go, obviously I was rubbish. They showed us how make little money trees used as ancient currency, you would break off the little pieces of metal to use as money. That's where the saying 'money doesn't grow on trees' comes from. Well I believed his little story and the coin made a nice necklace so I bought one.
The cave was enormous with about 300 steps up to it, when we got up there it wasn't really worth the effort. Obviously a lot of people visit for religious reasons but I just thought it was another pretty place ruined by people. There was a temple there - fair enough, but gift shops and litter everywhere didn't add to the character at all....not to mention the odd dirty monkey and chicken running around.
We got dropped off at Petronas Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world, the girls all had a few minutes to try and make themselves look respectable and like we hadn't been sweating all day. We walked over to the Sky Bar which was on floor 36 or there abouts of a 5 star hotel. After worrying that we wouldn't be well dressed enough and they wouldn't let us in...we ended up having to leave because most of the group were under 21 and had no ID. Our whole evening had been planned around the Sky Bar because it was ladies night, free cocktails, people had even bought nicer clothes....so we were annoyed to say the least that we didn't stay, that could have been planned a little better. We headed over to Reggae Mansion, a hostel with a cool rooftop bar. I had a huge lovely pizza all to myself with lots of beer and Malibu. Got talking to a nice guy, Rich from Leeds, not sure what he'd look like in real life he was very hairy - standard traveller look. It was nice to have a conversation with someone who isn't in our group. All in all it turned out to be a pretty good first day/night in Kuala Lumpur.
The next morning, some of us (the rest were too hungover) took a walk for a few hours to see some other sights. Then caught a taxi to the shopping district, it was shoppers heaven. I only wanted something slightly smart for Singapore, but whatever you wanted you'd find it here. Designer shops, brilliant transport and technology weren't something I was expecting to see (should have done more research on my route maybe). I had a manicure/pedicure to stop me spending too much money, I ended up staying for ages after they'd finished to watch the rest of the movie the staff were watching. We got caught in a massive rain shower, watching boys trying to sell umbrellas to tourists while being chased by security guards was pretty funny. We had to cross 4 lanes of traffic to get to the station, the water in the road was way above my ankles...and my new shoes I'd had to put on after my pampering. After some dinner it was back to the hotel to pack...again.
- comments
Sal You sound fed up, and you're disillusioned with the monkeys that you were so looking forward to seeing. Give yourself some time alone and tell yourself that you are probably never going to see these things again xxxx