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On the evening of Wednesday 29th October we caught a short one hour flight from Singapore's Changi airport to Kuala Lumpur through a crazy thunder storm. We then got the most scary taxi ride of our lives 60km from the airport to the city centre; we were both convinced the taxi driver was an escaped Malaysian psychopath who wanted us for his supper; he drove at speeds of upto 140kph bullying people out of lanes by blinding them with his high beam or indicating continuously and driving very close to them until they moved over. Nobody here seems to have any lane discipline or realise that their cars indicators are for signalling change of direction...crazy fools! Anyway after an hour long gruelling 'are we gonna make it past day three alive' taxi ride we arrived at our accommodation for the night; Eclipse Guesthouse in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown. Our room was the equivalent of 7GBP per night and oh my days it looked like it was too. The guys that run the guesthouse were Indian so there was a 'no shoes allowed' rule. The room was only just big enough for the double bed squeezed into it. The shared bathroom consisted of three cubicles with a shower head and a toilet in each! Treating ourselves muchly! Anywho we were starving so we headed into Chinatown where we had some street food at a local eatery; Sam had cashew chicken, I had sweet and sour chicken and we shared an egg fried rice. The food was delicious; and unlike Chinese food you get in the UK we didn't instantly feel dehydrated from the copious amounts of salt and preservatives rammed in there! Sam had another Tiger beer and I had a freshly squeezed apple juice. China town was hustley and bustley, it was amazing, I bought some Aladdin style hippy trousers to help me fit in with the backpacker vibe! We browsed lots of knock off clothes, bags and perfumes, Thai ladies were trying to entice people in for cheap massages and there were cats everywhere! We then headed back to get our heads down for a few hours before a morning exploring Kuala Lumpur.
We woke up in our lovely boudoir on Thursday 30th October. The showers were cold water that pretty much dribbled out of the head, a smelly sweaty day ahead for us then! The guesthouse offered us a free breakfast so we went up to sample it but it was like one of the worst kitchens off of Gordon Ramseys kitchen nightmares! So we decided against it and headed back down to try and find some breakfast and in the process bumped into the biggest cockroach you've ever seen on the stairs. We left the guesthouse and went for the uncultural but trustworthy McDonald's breakfast which was so cheap...two breakfasts and two drinks for the equivalent of 2GBP!!! Once our breakfast had settled we set off to find the Menara (Kuala Lumpur) Tower to get a view of the city scape, it felt so much more humid here than in Singapore, we walked through Kuala Lumpurs little India and after about a 45 minute walk we found it. We got a free bottle of KL Tower shaped water each then went to the open air observation deck which had Kuala Lumpur's highest view of the city. It was so warm so we went down five levels to the air conditioned viewing gallery. The view of the city was amazing! After we had finished there we went to the National Mosque. We both donned our robes and had a guided tour off a very dedicated Muslim volunteer at the Mosque who was just loving telling us all about the Mosque, Islam and his life, how he is a science teacher who learned his science from the Quran and just volunteers at the Mosque in his spare time. We then walked back to Chinatown and explored the rest of it that we didn't manage to last night, I bought some fresh watermelon and pineapple from the street food sellers and we browsed lots of knock off clothes, bags and perfumes again. We then headed back to the airport for the next leg of our trip; Kuala Lumpur to Kota Bharu, a small non federal state of Malaysia set amongst the Malaysian jungle. It was so picturesque! We then made our way to Kuala Besut for a night at T'lodge before 4 days of chilling out on the Perhentian Islands. Our helpful taxi driver took us to a local guy selling tickets for the speedboats over to Perenthian so we were sorted for our early start the next day. We checked into T'lodge where there were tiny lizards on the ceiling of the corridor then got some food at the adjoined T'kafe: I had chicken and noodles and Sam had chicken and rice. We then had a wander through the small street food market where the locals were rustling up snacks for pence. Sam got asked if we were german by some cheeky little Malay kids and there were cats everywhere again! We then got our heads down before our island adventure began!
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