The flight was only a couple of hours long, so we were out of the airport by 9am. We jumped on a bus and arrived into the centre of Kuala Lumpur an hour later. Our first impression of Malaysia was that it seemed a little less chaotic than Indonesia. From the central bus station, we used the monorail (reminding me of the Monorail song in the Simpsons) to take us closer to our hotel which we had already booked. Our previous experience of large cities in Asia was that it was worth paying a little extra money for a better room after spending the entire day walking around a grubby city. The hotel was good and we had a great view of the city from our 14th floor room.
The bed was the most comfortable we'd had in months and so we spent the afternoon catching up on some sleep. I woke up at about 6pm and decided I needed to find some food. Jenna was still enjoying the comfort of the bed and decided to sleep on through. I ventured out on my own without Jenna in tow which was a bit strange as we have done everything together! So I decided to take advantage of this rarity. I decided to go for dinner in one place that Jenna would always refuse to go, an India buffet cafe. The type of place which is only visited by local Indian men who mop up their curry and rice with their hands. Jenna and her alcohol gel would have stuck out like a sore thumb! The place looked like it hadn't been decorated since the 70's and I had a few odd looks, but the food was decent (although I did eat with a fork) and I didn't end up with Delhi-belly.
Feeling slightly more refreshed, the next day we got up early and walked across the city to KL Tower. The tower is one of those concrete telecommunication towers that you see in most big cities like Berlin, Auckland and Sydney. The viewing platform was actually higher than the viewing platform on the Petronas Towers (the 2nd tallest building in the world). We took the lift up to the top and spent an hour taking in the 360 degree views of the city.
For some reason the ground floor of the tower had a small collection of animals. We took a look, but it wasn't the best and we didn't think much of how the animals were kept. The tortoises were caged into a small area by a one foot high fence. While we were there, one tortoise decided to make a break for it by climbing on the back of his friends and slowly try to climb over the fence. He was really struggling and we could see it was going to end in tears.
We held our breath as his body started showing signs of weakening and then he fell spectacularly backwards, almost knocking himself out on one of the fence posts. It was one of those scenes that would have been funny if it wasn't so sad! I could tell Jenna wanted to help the tortoise, especially after releasing Henry the turtle into the sea only a couple of days previously, so not wanting to give her any ideas about smuggling out this little man, we moved on swiftly!
We then walked back across the city to the Petronas Towers - Kuala Lumpur's most recognisable building. Although it wasn't possible to go the top, we had a good look around and visited the gigantic shopping centre at its base. Around the corner from the Petronas Towers was the Convention Centre which was home to a large aquarium. We spent a couple of hours there and saw an impressive display of sharks, turtles, stingrays and tropical fish.
Our hotel room had a television with a number of sports channels and so for the first time in about 3 months we were able to watch a full 90 minutes of live English football - we watched Newcastle vs Sunderland. Whilst it brought back some of the excitement of watching a live match which I'd missed, it also brought back the even stronger emotions of how annoying co-commentator David Pleat is and how patronising ex Scummer manager Alan Pardew is! When Pleat suggested that Alan Pardew had to be considered as a contender for the vacant England managers job I think I woke up the rest of the hotel with my opposition to his suggestion!
The next day we used the monorail again and took a look around the Central Market area.
This was next door to Chinatown, which we briefly walked through, but once you've seen one Chinatown, they all tend to look the same. This area was also busy with Indians. We've found in Indonesia and Malaysia that Indian men like a good stare at Western girls and they do it in the most unembarrassed, obvious ways! It was a hot day so Jenna had a pair of shorts on and the Indian men were in full on staring - mode. The first few we caught staring were quite comical, but the next couple had a little more menace. So I made eye contact myself and politely enquired as to what they were looking at. They just looked marginally embarassed and continued walking!
We visited the Planitarium in the afternoon which showcased Malaysia's 'contributions' to the space programme and also had some interesting astronomy bits and bobs. The main road outside the planetarium had wild monkeys roaming around so we stopped there for a bit to take some photos.
On the morning of our final day in Kuala Lumpur we managed to find a post office where we could box up a few souvenirs to send home. While we were boxing the items up, an Indian man who we assume was a postman but we are not entirely sure, came over and started to chat. He was a very enthusiastic man and very proud of Malaysia. He was friendly, but I think both Jenna and I had slightly pretend, slightly nervous smiles for the entire conversation. When he'd finished chatting, he shook my hand and then full on bear hugged Jenna who was sat down at this point and planted a very forceful kiss on her neck! Our forced smiles continued until he was safely out the door!
We decided to head North to the Cameron Highlands so we made our way to the central bus station to catch our coach. The coach station was some sort of underground bunker with no ventilation and dozens of stinking buses which would never be allowed on our roads. We had no choice but to breathe all of the fumes in, particularly as nobody seemed able to work out which bus was ours! Both of us felt like our insides had again aged about 10 years!
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