So after the trip to the Elephant sanctuary, we were ready to take on Kuala Lumpur.
The capital city is much like any other big city, lots of shops, banks, places to eat. It does have some unique highlights though, such as the famous Petronas Towers and the KL Tower; in fact there are quite a few skyscraper type buildings around.
We arrived in China town (doesn’t everywhere have one?) where we found a hostel to stay. China town again is like most other ones around the globe, lots of food places, markets stalls and drinking holes. The hostel was a strange beast, an old converted cinema, which as cinema’s do, lacked windows, making it very hard to get up in the morning.
We found a place to eat and drink, a Chinese place with super friendly staff, where we spent the evening taking in the passing sights of the local night life. Here we met with two lads from back home, Macclesfield to be exact. Chris and James had also come down from Thailand. One of the sights of the night was inspecting Chris’ snake bite marks on his leg that he got a few weeks earlier; they didn’t look too good. The night ended late, after a trip back to the hotel was accompanied with a bottle of Tequila or was it rum? Either way it did what it was supposed to do.
The next morning Paul decided that it was best he stay in bed for as long as possible, or at least till the room stopped spinning, so Vicki and I decided to head out for breakfast, which ended up taking us on a big tour round the city.
The plan after breakfast was to pick up a new phone for Vicki as her UK one wasn’t working in Malaysia, this accidentally brought us to a telecom museum. It actually turned out to be quite fun, telling the history of communication around Malaysia starting with simple hollowed out tree branches used between the tribes, through to the Morse Code and early systems introduced by the British, then to the dealings with the Japanese take over during the second world war. One story spoke of how the Malaysian troops sneakily used to rewire the system to listen to music rather than military broadcasts while the Japanese guards weren’t watching.
A highlight of the museum was the free internet offered at the end, I mean who can complain about free internet?! A ‘Lowlight’ of the museum was that Vicki unknowingly left her camera there, something we discovered later in the day.
After the museum we carried on walking, still with the aim of buying a new phone. We eventually arrived at one of the many shopping malls where she found a model she liked and made purchase. With the excitement of a new phone she obviously had to use it, despite it being just 6am back in the UK; luckily for her, her mother was awake at the time and they both conversed as we continued to wander through the streets. Before we knew it we’d ended up at the Petronas towers.
This photo was taken at a later date, as it was at this point where we realised that the camera was missing. So we decided to head on back to the room. Plus another reason was that I’d just realised that I had the key to the room, and we said that we were only popping out for breakfast, and that was about five hours earlier.
We got back to the museum, but sadly never found the camera. The staff there were all extremely helpful and did all they could; they even gave us some KL Tower shaped bottles of water and a note pad, but the camera had gone.
After a few days in China town, we thought it would be a good idea to move over to another area of KL and changed locations to the Golden Triangle. Very much the shopping district, but still with a few other attractions to add, mostly food-type ones. We stayed in the Bollywood hotel, which sat on top of an Indian restaurant, and for which we’d get a 20% discount in (Who could pass up on an offer like that?).
From here we visited the KL tower, where you can go up and see the city from upon high.
That night we took up the 20% offer and ate Indian, including naan bread, poppadoms. Well nice!
After a few days around the Golden Triangle, we decided to head on back to China town via the hop-on hop-off Tour Bus, the real touristy type things that you see driving round London, complete with headsets and audio tour guide.
After checking into a hostel in China town we got back on the bus and visited some of the cities sites, including the Royal Palace, National Museum and the Deer Park… Or at least it would have done if we hadn’t have fallen asleep before reaching the park. We woke up just before reaching China town again, good trip.
Determined to see at least some of the sites, the next day, Cherry, Vicki, Paul and myself got a bus out to the Batu Caves, a site of Hindu worship.
The main cave chamber is up a huge flight of 272 stairs, which might have been a boring climb if it weren’t for all the monkeys hanging round to see, in both awe and fear (They’re not exactly cuddly).
A few days previous Chris had been admitted to hospital as his snake bites weren’t getting any better. He was a bit down in the dumps sitting in his bed on a drip watching re-runs of Mythbusters all day, so we all decided to pay him a visit, bringing along Batman Begins on DVD and Domino’s Pizza; which we had delivered straight to his hotel bed. Actually it was so nice we ordered it twice. Not to be completely kind in our visit we also brought loads of Tiger Beers, which he couldn’t drink due to being on antibiotics… We didn’t say we were saints!
The next major thing to happen was to be possibly my second biggest slice of enjoyment of the year. It was actually the first until about twenty minutes afterwards… I’ll begin to make sense now, hopefully.
It was the night of the Champions League final, Manchester Utd. and Chelsea played one of the most tense and difficult to watch matches I’ve ever seen, out in Moscow. After nearly loosing my heart through my throat during the penalty finale, Chelsea missed, and I was no longer classed as being under cardiac arrest. It was however 6am, so I commiserated the Chelsea fan and left for bed.
One final thing to do before sleeping was to update my Facebook status to reflect my new found happiness. There was a new message waiting for me in my inbox, from my sister, it was too late to read it, but I just thought I’d check the headline:
“Dean, you’re going to be…”
Going to be what?
Happy about the football?
A millionaire?
Angry, cause I broke your Xbox?
No, I knew what it was straight away, I had to open the message to be sure. I’m going to be an Uncle again! Wow, not twenty minutes after watching the event of the year, it goes and gets trumped by something totally surprising and infinity bigger.
Ending with that, it was time to leave Kuala Lumpur and head on up the western side of Malaysia, where we’d decided it was time to work on our tans again.
