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Published: March 12th 2008
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From Langkawi, we had an absolutely mammoth journey to Kuala Lumpar, including a taxi, ferry and 7 hours on a coach. We then had to find a guesthouse in the pouring rain....Malaysia hasn't been good to us with the weather! We ended up in a room 2m by 3m with bunks; anything to get out of the monsoon we were stuck in. We stayed in Chinatown, which is full of fake handbags, sunglasses, perfume....etc and people grabbing at you to try and entice you into their stall...very annoying!! It seems that everyone in Malaysia speaks perfect English, although Kate has been called Sir quite a few times (no jokes please).
We ventured out early the next morning to get ourselves tickets to go up the Petronas Towers. Whilst waiting for our turn to travel 250m above the street, we found the most amazing breakfast of Roti Canai...a flat bread like naan and curry! Much more exciting than cornflakes. Once up the towers we walked accross the skybridge that links them and saw amazing views of KL, it is a very impessive building. We also went up the KL tower, which has panoramic views of the city, very similar to the
Petronas Towers! At night, the KL tower is lit up in multi colours and covered in glitering lights, very pretty indeed. Surrounding the KL building is KL's very own rainforest. It's very bizarre to walk through, there were monkeys running around us and then sky scrapers in the backgroud.
We spent a lot of time in KL sitting on in the roof top garden of our hotel, watching the lightening all around us. When it rains in Malaysia, it really rains! A fork of lightening hit one of the buildings right next to us, we all thought a bomb had gone off!
A few days later, we made the trip north to Taman Negara National Park, a 130 million year old rainforest. Here, we experienced the worst insects we have ever encountered. We called them Devil bugs! They are massive, flying bugs which, when you go near them, they make a horrible screaming noise. They made an appearance every night when it got dark so we had to run to our room after we had dinner, screaming like little girls. I bet the locals thought it was hillarious. On our first full day there, we went wondering in
the forest, following the trails of many a tourist before us. We did a canopy walk, which was a 450m bridge 50m up in the trees. There were some amazing views and it was great to be so high up looking down into the forest. We ended up walking for 5 hours, on a never ending trail up a mountain!
The next day, we attempted to walk 2.6km to a bat cave. This was all well and good for about 500m, untill the leeches started to attach themsleves to out feet. Freaked out is an understatment, Kate was absolutely hysterical! We abrubtly turned back and booked a boat trip there instead. This turned out to be really good, we had a great guide who lead us through the very narrow and slippery tunnels in the cave and showed us all the creatures that live in there. We saw an enormous toad, which somehow climbed onto a ledge about 5m above our head, who knew toads could climb?! We also encountered huge Hunt spiders and hundreds of bats. Our guide woke them all up and got them into a flying frenzy above our heads, it was great! Although Kate did
slip and got covered in bat poo....mmm. On the way to and from the cave, we walked through an Orang Asli tribal village. We thought it was very bizarre that the men from the village wear baseball caps, t-shirts and trainers, while the women wear tribal wear, like sarongs, and are very traditional.
We are now back in KL, and although it didn't rain in Taman Negara, it's been stroming and raining here again. We are heading to Borneo tomorrow morning and are going to attempt to do some diving, although it all seems to be booked up! We were hoping to dive in Sipidan, a beautiful protected island, but only 120 people can dive it a day....bugger. We have also had to cancel a trip to stay in the jungle, as there is water up to just under the beds in the huts which are on stilts! Haha. We'll let you know how we get on....
PS. Diane and Jess, be warned, there are some photos you won't like!
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jess
non-member comment
GRRR
oh my god...i had to cover my eyes throughout the photos, until mum gave me the Ok. I did have a peek through my fingers though...i cant believe you got that close to it u freaks. The bats were really cool though...looked like something out of a film! xx