So here it is... our first blog entry, woohoo!

As most of you know, our journey began on the 2nd November 2009 where we travelled from London Stansted straight to Kuala Lumpur on an Air Asia flight. The flight was actually amazing... we timed it well travelling overnight and we were passed out for about 9 of the 12 hours of the flight... handy when you have no food to eat and the seats might as well have been planks of wood. I have to give Air Asia some credit, however, the service was fantastic and even though the seats were hard we were both able to stretch our legs with room to spare, bonus!!!

So we landed in Kuala Lumpur airport, and proceeded to the immigration counter... passing through a thermal imaging check to make sure we were not sick. Luckily, even though it was 30 degrees celcius outside, we were able to make it through without any problems and queue up to get our passports checked. We feared that this could take some time given we were the last people to leave the plane (the locals move at lightening speed when they have somewhere to be) but within 20 mins we were welcomed to Malaysia and waved through with a 3 month visa to West Malaysia and the Sabah province in Borneo.

We took out time in making our way to the baggage reclaim area as we were convinced that we would have a long wait, as it turns out we were once again proved wrong and as we arrived our bags had already been piled up on the floor waiting for us to collect them, if only it worked the same way at Heathrow!

Having collected our bags we made way straight for the tourist information counter where, dressed like travelling bums, we asked "Um, what's the cheapest way to get from here to the Ritz Carlton?". Having shaken off the surprise of the question the lady pointed us towards a stall which sold tickets to the Star Shuttle Bus where, for £3, you can travel straight to the entrance of your hotel in the Golden Triangle. Having purchased our tickets we were told to rush to the bus stop... the bus was supposedly about to leave... so we got our skates on and legged it. Fighting our way through the torrential downpour and crowds of people we made it with minutes to spare, or so we thought. It appears that Malaysian buses run on "manhana" time.

Soon enough we were on the bus making way to Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), the city looked beautiful from the distance with a plethora of lights shining through the raindrops... this image, however, was short lived as we passed through some serious dives on route to the posh quarter.

Arriving at the hotel, we were felt a little out of place as we entered the grand entrance of the Ritz. The Ritz folk must have been used to foreigners dressing as bums as there were no judging glances, thank god! Having checked in, a really nice chap showed us to our room... well I say room, it was more like a palace (thanks sis!), more of the room in a bit.

In thanking the guy as he was leaving (don't worry, I tipped... not as tight as all of you think), we asked him where a good place to eat would be. He started reeling off all these touristy places which a. were not what we were looking for and b. sounded way too expensive anyway. We decided to rephrase the question and asked him where we could get some local food, a place where he might go to eat... the shock on his face was priceless. So here we may have been judged a little bit :-) Once the shock had subsided he told us of a place nearby called Jalan Alor, which was just off the vibrant Bukit Bintang stretch. From his description of it being a collection of local food stalls and a really cheap place to get good food we were sold and we had a plan for dinner.

First, back to the room. As he left, we looked at our palace of a room a little closer. Off the corridor we had a computer room and built in wardrobe with fluffly robes and flip flops... to the right we had a palacial bathroom with a seperate drencher style shower, seperate loo and the mother of all bathtubs. To give you an idea, the bathtub had a menu on it... you could order in a bath, can you believe it! Straight ahead we had our room, the bed must have been about 3 metres wide, it was huge and in front of the bed we had a lounge with a big plasma tv, dvd player and a truly pimped out cabinet full of complimentary nuts, which Sumera can't eat hehe!

So, once we stopped jumping up and down from the euphoria of staying in such a stupidly luxurious place, we ventured out to find Jalan Alor and more importantly some munch. 15 mins later, and a KFC missed, we eventually found our turning and found exactly what we were looking for. A collection of maybe a hundred different food stalls serving everything you could imagine. With the hunger consuming us we did not venture far and one of the sales people won us over with his menu of chinese and malay dishes and as he sold it "ice cold local beer!", who are we to refuse that. We settled down to a cheap meal and an ice cold bottle of Jazz Beer, which was actually delicious and ventured back to the hotel for some much needed rest and relaxation.

In waking up the next day and having stuffed ourselves at breakfast we ventured out as we were due to meet with Sumera's mother who was still about. Getting around could not have been simpler... the monorail (I expect at least a few of you to start singing the Simpson's monorail song at this point "monorail, MONOrail, MONORAIL!) Each ticket cost 20p and got you pretty much as far as you needed to go, which was sweet!

To cut a long story short, having eventually met up with Sumera's mother we went on voyage of discovery to find a place to eat... another long story cut short, we ended up at this amazing Islamic Food Hut not far from Jalan Alor where all three of us proceeded to stuff ourselves, and wait out the monsoon shower, for £2... 2 POUNDS! Having had a lovely day we had to bid Sumera's mum goodbye as we still needed to sort out our accommodation for our final night's stay in Kuala Lumpur.

For our final day we checked in to an amazing hotel in China Town, The China Town Boutique Hotel. Having dumped our bags and wowed our room, we ran off to give Sumera's mum a send off as she was making her way back to the UK for a while. In returning to the Hotel, we used the last few hours we had to extensively trawl through the China Town market which is full of nothing but fake glasses and watches, horrible clothes and an abundance of food stalls. Having been harassed to buy crap for a few hours we settled down for some dinner and finalised our plans for our next trip... Kuching (The City of Cats) in Malaysian Borneo.