Kuala Lumpur

The international rail station to Malaysia in Singapore is owned by Malaysia, and subsequently, the local transport system doesn't interlink. We took an MRT to the closest stop to the Malaysia Railway Station, and got lost looking for a connecting bus. As time pressed on, closer to the trains departure, we were flagged down by a local in a car, who in English, explained where we had to go.

We managed to get to the station in time for walking into immigration queues. You could tell already that you were out of the jurisdiction of Singapore, as chaos reigned, people pushing trollies full of suitcases into you in desperate attempts to pass though barriers were too small for their trolley, thus, blocking an intire aisle for everyone else!

The sleeper train was fairly good. Clean sheets and just about Air-Con. Unfortunately with our rucksacks rammed in at our feet, the beds were a little short, but we did sleep.

We arrived and took the monorail to our hostel. At 8am we were too early to check in, so took a map and some ideas on sights and headed out into the city. We queued at the Patronas towers for about 45mins, and managed to be 2 of the 250 people allowed up the twin towers that day. Our aallocated time was not until 6pm, so we struck off again into the humidity and the now blinding sun overhead.

We took an audio tour with mini-tv guides around the top of the TV tower, giving us, not so great views of KL. The smog and dirt hung in the air from around the 10th floor up, and meant we couldn't see very far into the distance.

Ate our lunch in a Hawker Centre, which roughly equated to GBP2 for 2 cooked meals and 2 freshly squeezed fruit juices.Along the side of the filthy river, there are lots of beautiful Arabic and religious buildings. We wandered alongside and through the central market, before returnign to KLCC and the towers to browse the 5 storey shopping centre before heading up the towers to the Sky Bridge.

It was great to be up inside the 2nd tallest building in the world, it is of course difficult to take photos of the building you are inside!

The next day, the woman working at the hostel took us out to a locals food stall and we sampled Tea Tarek and Roti Canai before heading back to the train station and Singapore. The only disappointing thing about a little trip to Malaysia is, we never got a passport stamp to say we have ever been!

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