Hey everyone

Happy Valentines Day!

Today we spent the morning travelling to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia's capital. We left the hotel at half 8 and had a tiresome 15 minute trek (with our heavy bags) to the bus stop. We had a little wait before we the bus arrived, but disappointment struck when Alex found that ants had gotten to his cinammon roll (sigh). Fortunately there was a 7-11 close by (as always), so we got some random food from there to have for breakfast instead.

The coach companies were disorganised. We were on the first coach for about 20 minutes before we stopped at a huge bus station, where we spent at least half an hour waiting. We changed coach at one stage during the wait, and christina had another interesting toilet experience. As she walked in and out of the poorly parked buses random drivers just shouted "Get on bus! Get on bus!" at her, as if their coach would miraculously be going to the same place she wanted to go. We finally left the bus station after a painstaking wait, and made our way to KL. We stopped at a big cafe for lunch, where the girls got stared at a lot by everyone else at the cafe, and then we arrived in KL in the mid afternoon.

Our hotel was in Chinatown, and right in the middle of the market. Fake sunglasses, fake watches, fake handbags, fake shoes, fake ties, fake belts and quite a lot more. The hotel was 'ok' inside, though our room didn't have a window and the air con was permanently set to 'very cold' and 'always on'. We quickly settled into our room and then headed out into the market to do some shopping.

The group of us had decided to do a 'secret valentine', just like secret santa except... for valentine's day. We had 1O ringgits (£2) to spend and drawed names out of a hat on the previous morning (13th). Alex had Alison, Christina had Sam, and it wasn't long after drawing the names that we decided to help each other, as we didn't have much of an idea what to get our own secret valentines. For Alison, we went to a shopping mall and found some very pink and flowery flip flops. Christina thought Alison would love them, and Alex thought 'ok'. For Sam, we had already bought him some factor 130 sun cream (ooh yes, that's not a typo! Such thing exists!) the evening before, as he had gotten pretty red a few days ago so we thought it would be appropriate. But that was only 5 ringgits. We decided to spend the other 5 on a very very cheesy Malaysia t-shirt, complete with bright pictures and big writing.
We should add that the above description ignores the huge amounts of stress that were involved in finding a t-shirt for £1...

With a sigh of relief after getting our presents we went back to the hotel. Upon entering our room though, we saw a few cockroach/beetle-like things scurry across the floor and as you can imagine, Christina freaked out 'a little'. Next thing we knew we were at reception and getting a different room. Our new room was not quite as cold, though still no window. We then headed downstairs to meet the others to exchange presents (after some 'improvised' present wrapping using plastic bags). To keep things short (we keep to short descriptions in this blog, don't we...?) everyone got great and very funny presents. Alex got a blue rose (manly colour), some boyish cartoon stickers and a barbie doll from Jess, and Christina got a red rose, some girly cartoon stickers, a ken doll and a bar of cadburys from Kelly. After laughing about our presents, we went over to the massive shopping mall underneath the Petronas Towers (the 2nd tallest buildings in the world) and found a nice place to eat in. We ended up going to California Pizza House (or something like that) and enjoyed some really nice pizzas and unlimited ice tea and coke refills. Saying that, Christina couldn't finish her pizza... In fact she managed just 2 slices of it.

We stepped outside after the meal, turned around and were met by the amazing sight of the Petronas Towers by night. After lots of photos we went to look at the Sky Bar, located on the top floor of the Trader's Hotel nearby. Unfortunately we couldn't go in as most of us were in flip flops, but we still got to see the amazing views of the Petronas Towers and Kuala Lumpur. After that, it was time to go back to the hotel (we took the metro) and get some sleep before a long day of exploring Kuala Lumpur. Xxx