16. 5-12th Oct. Naked man running down the street!

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5/10/07
Chloe, Lee and myself were on the ferry at 7.45am to take us to the main land. We were on a mini bus by 10am and on our way to Taman Negara. As usual in any journey we had a stop off but this time it was to change mini bus and to have some lunch. We were in a little Chinese restaurant when i looked up and there was our 65 year old guide from the Cameron Highlands! What a coincendence! We talked to him briefly before we had to go. We shared our new bus with two blokes from England and that was it. We had space and we took andvantage it! It was hard to sleep though since the scenery was awesome. Palm trees as far as the eye can see. We arrived at 5pm and the three of us got a dorm room for 10r each (there is 7r to the pound). It only slept four people anyway and it had an inside toilet. A girl called Victoria from Argentina ended up sharing with us. We could have really done with the spare bed to put our stuff on but hay...the more the merrier. We met two Dutch blokes who were staying in the dorm next door called Merlijn and Yella...yes as in the wizard and the dog! As you can imagine we were all biting our lips trying not to laugh. It turned out that they are going to OZ the same time as i am so they gave me their e-mail addresses to get in contact with them when i am there. They are going to buy a car and travel that way. I think they want me to join them at some point. It gives me more options anyway. Now i am not to sure how we managed to do this but between Lee, Chloe and I we managed to turn up at the jungle with no mossy spray. Not the best planning! There was one shack of a shop which sold some mossy spray which had no deat in it but is was either that or nothing. We bought some not feeling that confident it would work as it was "all natural ingredients.". All the restaurants floated along the side of the river and we went to one to have a very English cup of tea. We booked some activities for the next day and had some dinner. There was a young boy running around the restaurant and once again Chloe was getting more broody by the second...Lee getting more worried by the second. The boy came running up to our table and placed this giant flying insect on our table and we all got bit of a fright by the thing as we were not expecting that at all. All the locals in the restaurant thought it was well funny. One of the local told us to eat it but there was no chance that was going to happen. I want to try new things but stuff that! We dared him back, he picked it up and shoved it in his mouth followed by a handful of rice. I think the three of us we almost sick for him! He started chewing, watched our gob smacked faces, started laughing then took the insect back out. He was only winding us up...and it worked. They were a good laugh at this restaurant so we managed to persuade them to take us fishing in two days time. When it came time to walking back to our guest house we realised a torch would have been very useful. Luckily there were a small group of people walking past using one so naturally we made friends with them and they walked us back. We were in bed by 11pm looking forward to the next day which was going to be action packed.

6/10/07
We were at the floating cafe by 8.30am where we got a boat to take us to the part of the jungle where we could do the canopy walks. We had to climb up a steep path in the jungle for a while to reach them but it was worth it. The highest canopy walk was 54m high and there were six in total at different heights. I dont know how but Lee had managed to get two leeches on him while we were up there. It was worth watching though since Lee was freaking out a little bit and Chloe was being the sympathetic girlfriend and just saying, "stop being gay Lee!". He managed to notice them beofre they started sucking away and flicked them off. There are normally about twelve canopy walks to do but half of them were shut for maintenance. Once we found that out we couldnt wait to jump on them and walk 50 odd meters over the jungle. After the canopy walks we trecked further up the mountain to where their was a great view over the vast jungle. We were all taking photos till we were interupted by the noise of someone freaking out...yep it was Chloe. To Lees delight Chloe had a leech on her ankle so for Lee it was pay back time. But this leech had been sucking away for some time and was ready to let go. Her sock was covered in blood and to be fair to Chloe she was chuffed with her jungle wound to the point she was bragging to us. On the way back down we saw a big family of wild boar and a huge spider on its web directly above the trail. The guide through a giant ant at the web and we all watched in amazement. It sounds cruel but who are we to define the food chain and it was awesome to watch. We were back by midday and i went to the internet cafe for an hour. This internet cafe looked like a big shed from the outside but as I entered there were about 3 big tvs, two computer consoles and on one of the tvs they were watching sky! A bit of a shock! Our next adventure for the day was at 3pm where we jumped on another boat. This one was taking us to the caves. I honestly believed that it would be a cave where we just walked in, took some photos and walked back out again...i was so wrong! After about a 20min walk from the river side we got to the cave entrance. Out of 5 of us (not including the guide) only three of us had torches. Lee and Chloe didnt have one and my torch was made for the smurfs! Lee and Chloe entered in after the guide who had a big old daddy torch, the two other blokes went in after that with their normal size torches which ment i was stuck at the back with my finger size torch. I also had the backpack!! All i could here was the guide saying "grab that," and "dont put your foot there!". The instructions were relaying back two the lads infront of me but thats where they stopped. Atleast my torch lit up the size of a penny so i could see any ants that might happen to crawl in my way!ha At one point we were in this opening which all of us could fit in and there were bats flying all around us. The exit point was small and when everyone had climbed through they had to wait as they had caught up with a small group in front. That left me alone in the pitch black cave with bats flying past my head and brushing past my arms. All i could hear was Chloe shouting out "wow, this is amazing," and "Barrie you should see this!" I was to busy feeling at one with the bats thinking I was going to emerge the new Batman!ha When i eventually got through Chloe was correct, it was amazing. Hundreds of bats everywhere...including bat poo. Leaving the cave was a challenge as there was a half a meter height gap over water which you had to hover over using a few stones and the side of the cave...we all got wet! When i met the others at the top Lee had ripped his t shirt, was sweating buckets and had mud all over him. Such a funny sight! We walked back and stopped off at a tribal village where we learnt about their ways and got to try the blow pipe. We had to aim at a stuffed duck. Everyone missed apart from this naturally gifted hunter who got the toy duck in the head...oh...that would be me!ha More luck than anything i think! On the boat journey back i noticed that I had a leech sucking away on my ankle. I now had my own jungle wound and was proud of it. We got back for 6pm and we bumped into Maud and Claudia at reception who were checking in. They were the two dutch girls we met on the ferry going to the islands. They joined us for dinner at our favouite friendly floating restaurant and since it was raining and windy about a thousand flying insects joined us for dinner as well. Watching the two Dutch girls jump every few seconds was entertaining and i think they were regretting coming to the jungle almost straight away. I suppose its not everyones cup of tea. It became obvious that the rain wasnt going to stop any time soon so we made a run for it. We heard that one hotel sold beer so thats where we headed. We got to half way when the dutch girls decided they wanted to go back. They had no idea where they were going and had no torch. I had no choice but to take them back and met up with Lee and Chloe a bit later on. Where there is beer you will find the English and we bumped into the two blokes from our mini bus. We watched football together and was back by 11.30pm all still soaking wet! A brilliant day though! They cant come much better than that!

7/10/07
We were down at the floating restaurant by 8.30am where we suppose to meet the Dutch girls as we had their camera which they needed for their trip in the morning. They didnt turn up so we spent the next 30mins searching for them. Luckily for them we spotted each other while they were on the boat heading off down stream. The boat turned round and they were very grateful. We were suppose to be going fishing today at 10am but we waited and waited until one of the blokes came up to us and said that fishing was cancelled due to the bad weather from last night. The fishing is poor for up to three days after a storm like we had the night before. We were gutted! There was no point in just sitting around so we booked Rapid Shooting for 3pm. Basically your in a small wooden boat going through some rapids getting soaking wet and you stop off at a clean section of the river where you can swim. There was us three, the two Dutch girls again and an English bloke called Will. This Will had a very interesting story from last night. Will and his friend went for a walk by them selvs in the jungle and didnt make it back in time before sun set. They walked around for hours using up the torch light, camera lights and mobile phone lights. There only option was to jump in the river, which they did, and swim back to civilisation. They got picked up by a boat and had leeches all over their body. Some were to close to certain areas if you know what i mean?! The rapids were fun and everyone got soaked aprt from me as i was at th very front of the boat. We stopped off where there was a small, cool river running into the main one and thats where we jumped in. The river was that clean and refreshing you wanted to drink it. Lee, Chloe, Will and I spent alot of time trying to work out if Mauds breasts were real or not as...well...lets just say they were very nice!ha On the way back I swapped seats with Will so I was at the back as I and the others wanted to see myself getting soaked. We ended up having a water fight with a boat full of people on the way back which was awesome and everyone got drenched! After a nice...cold shower we went for dinner. Will joined us and i have never seen so many giant flying ants before! There were thousands of them! We headed to the posh hotel that shows the football and serves beer. Chloe left us lads to it and went to the internet cafe. Us three lads had a massive wide screen tv to ourselves apart from all the flying ants accompanying us. I dont know how Will survived the night before as he was freaked out by all the insects?! He almost panicked when i went to pick up a big insect to show him! Lee and I were to focused on the game at hand since it was Liverpool vs Spurs. We had been talking about this game for weeks as its both of our teams. It finished 2-2 with Liverpool scoring in the last minute. I cant repeat what Lee was saying at that moment!ha We met up with Chloe and walked back to our dorm room. Not doing the fishing was a disapointment but it was a good day anyway. Some of the fish are suppose to be around 100lbs so showing my fisherman friends (you know who you are!) back home pictures of me landing some of them bad boys would have been great!ha

8/10/07
Today was a day of chilling out and nothing planned till the jungle 4x4 safari come night time. We lazed around in bed till 10.30am and had breakfast. Luckily we found a tiny internet cafe as the main one was shut down for the day and spent some time typing away. Next door we had a local bloke playing his guitar and singing away. He was good as well which made it easy to sit down and do my travelblog. We spent the afternoon in our room doing our own thing. Chloe was reading and i have to say i have never seen someone read so much and so fast in my hole life. Lee was playing om his psp which he loves and i was just listening to music doing some exercises. With a hole day doing nothing we still managed rushing down to the river front for dinner. We were to late as we had to jump on the jeep for our 4x4 adventure. Our guide told us that Lee had to sit in the passenger seat and I had to sit at the top with him as there were so many people on the jeep already. I was loving it as i had the best seat in the house! I did start to feel slightly uncomfortable though as I came to realise why the bloke asked me to sit on top with him! There was some touching going on and since we came back late he offered to take me somewhere where i could eat...I passed on the offer! We did see plenty of cool things though. Including monkeys, snakes, wild boar, birds, and some really impressive fire flies hovering over some trees. When we got back i asked Lee for my flip flops as i passed them to him for safe keeping at the beginning. With my record of loosing f;ip flops they would have definately have fallen off with my feet dangling of the side. Lee replied "mmm...i can pass you one!". Yep, at one point of Lee getting out one of them must have fallen out of the jeep. We walked back to our room...well i hopped and were in bed by 11pm. We had to be at the bus stop by 7am as we were going to Kuala Lumpur to meet up with Matt and Amy and now to do even more shopping than origionally planned!ha

9/10/07
The bus arrived on time but did not leave till 7.30am. We talked to some school kids before we left and they waved us off goodbye. We thought it would be funny to sit at the back and act like bad boys. Chloe was so impressed by our mature behaviour!ha The bus got busier and busier with people having to stand up. We were on the bus for a few hours and Lee slept the whole way with his mouth open which made all the kids at the back of the bus laugh! We changed bus at 10.30am after having some really wierd food from a cafe. We almost had the whole bus to ourselves and Lee and Chloe tried to take advantage of the space and sleep. I say tried because i got talking to a couple called Craig (New Zealand) and Cath (OZ) and apparently I kept them awake with my beautiful voice!ha We arrived at Kuala Lumpur at 1.30pm and jumped on the impressive sky train. When we approached our stop Chloe shouted out, "oh my god, Top Shop!!". With all the strange looks we were getting, I turned round and explained we had spent a long time in the jungle! We found accomodation in China Town called Anuja Backpackers Inn. It was another dorm room with four beds and it only cost 10r a night. We also had access to a tv room if we wanted it. We walked into the heart of Chine Town and had lunch at a food stall. After that we burnt of any calories we had just consumed by walking around in the heat, looking at the map getting completely lost. The locals though were very friendly when we asked for help and some even came up to us and offered help as we looked so lost. Even though i love Thailand if someone approaches you it normally means they want your money so we were all finding all this volunteered help rather strange. We finally found our destination which was the National History Museum which was educational. We did spend alot of time however admiring the lightning and thunder storm outside that had just bursted out from knowwhere! We got soaked walking back especially as we did not take the direct route...we got lost again. We met up with Matt and Amy at 7.30pm and had an Indian dinner followed up by a few non alcohol drinks. It wasnt long till we had to say goodbye to Matt and Amy again as they were leaving in the morning to go to Melaka. It was ok for me as i would be seeing them again in a few days in Singapore but for Chloe and Lee they would not be seeing them again till July next year. With a small chance of bumping into them in OZ around November time. Matt and Amy went back to their room to pack and the three of us deciding we were not ready yet to call it a night decided to go to the cinema. We got a taxi to Times Square and watched Resident Evil 3 which was not that great. The experience was fun though mixing in with all the Malaysian teenagers. Walking into the packed cinema we could feel everyones eyes fixed on us as we walked to our seats. We got a taxi back at 1.30am and we all enjoyed being back at the cinema. It felt a little like being back home.

10/10/07
We woke up to my alarm clock and headed down to the Petronas Twin Towers by 9.15am. We booked tickets for 10.30am and had some breakfast at a sandwich shop. Because we had breakfast in the Petronas Twin Towers the sandwich and fresh orange juice was probably one of my most expensive meals to date. The first part of the tour was a 3d film explaining the history behind the building. We were not to sure why they designed the 3d glasses on Elton Johns glasses but they made us laugh. We asked if we could keep them but we were not allowed! The super fast elevator took our group up to the bridge linking the two towers together and we got to walk around it for ten minutes enjoing the view. Only being midday we walked around the endless amount of shopping malls. I bought a new backpack and a book on Spanish. Its about time I started to learn another language. After lunch at a food stall I headed back and bought some flip flops on the way. Out of the hundreds of flip flops they had only one pair fitted me. I only have size ten feet and i walked away thinking i had flippers for feet!ha Lee insisted on giving me money towards them. I had a good nap till 7.30pm and the three of us went out for dinner after getting talked into going to the Regae Bar for a quick drink. With drinking being so expensive here we decided to go to the cinema again but this time we would try the local bus. This was well fun! We had a crazy man sat infront of us. The driver looked like he should of been driving a moped, not a bus and he was acting like a dj playing his cds as loud as he could! We jumped of at our stop not really wanting to get off! As it turned out we had to wait for an hour before the next showings so we put our feet up at the Starbucks next door. Had a huge cup of tea which lasted the whole hour. I would like to say we all enjoyed the film Bourne Ultimatum but Lee and Chloe fell asleep at the beginning and didnt really wake up to the end. The film was great though! We didnt get back till 2am. We are all not use to late nights anymore and we felt exhausted. I am sure we will get plent of practice in OZ though!

11/10/07
Was all stayed in bed till 10am knowing that today was going to be an easy paced day. We found an internet cafe a few doors down which had chairs that when you sat in them you didnt want to stand up. We had our usual lunch at our usual food stall. I know thats boring but its so good and so cheap! Since we had fallen in love with using local buses from last night we hopped on one to take us to Times Square shopping mall. This mall is the biggest in Asia so surely Chloe could fing a hoody and what ever else she needed for the rest of her travels. After walking around for all of 10mins we all came to the same decision that the layout of the place was annoyingly awful! It might be huge but that was its downfall. There were to many different ways to go on each floor and nothing made sense. After entering many clothes shops Chloe relised that unless you have a match stick figure you cant get anything to fit. We left the mall almost empty handed and Lee had the challenge of telling Chloe that she was not overwieght!ha I can imagine many girls leaving that mall anorexic! I bought myself a 2008 diary as a diary is the one thing i miss from not having a mobile phone. Later on we were having dinner at some random place...ok, exactly the same one as always and we bumped into Kathryn and Anna (the girls from the Cameron Highlands). We chatted for a while and then said our goodbyes again. We dicided to walk to the KL Tower which is the tallest building in Kuala Lumpur and gives you the highest view point over the city. This walk ended up being a very interesting one. We were strolling down a quite road with the KL tower in sight and out from nowhere a man went running down the road...naked! He ran into the distance running as if he hadn't a care in the world! Since we were the only ones around we just stopped, looked at each other and then a moment later police cars zoomed past us! We carried on with our journey laughing and coming up with stories about what could have happened. Having sex with someones wife and being caught and so on. Anyway a man pulled up next to us on his motorbike and asked us if we had seen a naked man running around! Once we pointed him in the right direction I asked him what was going on as it was driving us crazy but he only answered back saying that the police were looking for him and drove off. I guess we will never know! We finally got to the KL Tower by about 9pm, paid our money and then jumped in the elevator to take us to the top. At the top we were given head sets that would explain everything we would be looking at. The view was astonishing from every angle. Being night time the city really did look alive and The Petronas Twin Towers were in a league of their own. We decided to be hardcore and go for a non-acoholic drink in China Town before going to bed. We sat and people watched for an hour!

12/10/07
We booked our buses for the next day, bought some fruit and headed straight to the internet cafe. We had nothing planned today till night time. I manged to finally join Skype and took advantage of the time i had and phoned home. I spoke to my sister for the first time in four months which was great and my sisters crazy Austalian Aupair Sarah. I got to hear my little nease Isabel giggle when she heard my voice but after that she got shy. An hours conversation on Skype cost just over one pound. Not bad!! Later on we visited the Petronas Twin Towers at night to get a closer look at it all lit up. Being our last night together we went for a few drinks and Chloe had her glass of wine she had been dying for for ages. We decided to go bowling and on our way we passed a billboard that at the right angle gave the opportunity for a funny photo (well we thought so anyway). It looked like Lee and I were getting chased by some giant kids and the people driving past thought we were crazy!ha We had a really fun time bowling and the white cocks we had to wear due to us arriving in flip flops added to the occasion. We played the two games with them pulled up as high as they could go which caused a few stares!ha The bloke next to us thought he was gods gift and was even trying to tell his friends how to bowl. I think his ego was dented after I got 171 laughing around and he was only managing about 100 taking it so seriously. He was wearing a wrist band and everything! I guess you get them sort of people no matter what country your in. Anyway the three of us had a brilliant last night which brought plenty of laughs. Was going to have to say goodbye to Lee and Chloe early in the morning but I knew that i would see them again wether it would be in Australia or New Zealand. They are such a fun couple so seeing them again would be great!

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Photos

Came out on top against a leech and feeling proud!ha
My ankle did bleed for ages though!

At the top!
Just before Chloe found a leech sucking away on her ankle!ha

Lee after the caves!ha
This photo was taken at the tribal village we visited afterwards.

The kids practising their blowing darts technique on the dog?!
Not using darts though!

Trying to act like i am in deep thought.
We had bunk beds in our 4 person dorm.

The 4x4 night jungle safari.
Sat on top with the guide who was a bit to touchy feely for my liking!ha

The sky train.
The other couple are Craig and Cath who i spoke to on the bus for 4 hours which kept Lee and Chloe awake.

Wtching the 3d movie at the start of our tour of the Petronas Twin Towers.
We asked if we could keep the Elton John looking glasses but they said no!ha

On the disco sounding bus to the cinema.
Yes...the man in front was a bit crazy but harmless!

The view from the KL tower.
The highest view point in Kuala Lumpur.

Listening to the head sets we were giving thinking.
We thought we were DJs!

The Petronas Twin Towers at night.
Our last night in Kuala Lumpur.

Lee and I getting chased by some huge kids!
This was a billboard on the side of the road.

Lee streching before an important bowl.
The white socks giving him the extra sport look!ha