KL

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My last day in Taman Negara was cool. I shared a boat with 4 guys I met who were from Madrid and we shot the rapids around the jungle. It was pretty harmless fun, nothing too adreline 'junkieish'. We all decided to jump out of the boat and swam in the river once we had it on good authority from the guide that there were absolutely no crocs in the river. There were snakes and leeches however, which I became well acquainted with. I had become 'attached' to a few leeches by the end of our day out, the first one I decided to name Larry, but I knew from what people had told me that I should expect that to happen. It was quite funny really...I never thought I would ever be peeling leeches off my body, but it's all part of the experience right? At the end of our boat ride, the wind started picking up and thunder and lightning came as if from nowhere. We saw another boat tip over and smash against the rocks so we docked our boat on the side and swam in to help the guy out. Once the rain stopped, we were picking parts of his boat out of the water trying to salvage as much as we could...the poor boatman was absolutely distraught.

I left Taman Negara on Tuesday and was in Kuala Lumpur by 4pm. I dumped my bags in the room and headed straight out to the Petronas towers and City Centre. It started pissing it down on my way so I sought shelter in the nearest place I could find which turned out to be Starbucks. After an hour, the rain hadn't let up, so I just made a mad dash for it. 20 minutes later, I arrived at the towers and was soaked to the bone, but my spirits were still high. I explored the Shopping centre for a couple of hours and bought a few essentials. It was a nice place, but just reminded me of Bluewater, designer stores and Nandos included.

After dinner, it was still raining hard outside so I killed some time in the cinema and watched Eagle Eye. By 11pm the rain had stopped so I took my chance to take some photos of the towers and then went back to the hostel where I ended up playing cards with a couple from Canada.

Yesterday I caught an evening flight to Singapore where I'm staying with a friend. My first inpressions of Singapore is that everything is so efficient. At passport control in the airport they had a bowl of sweets on the desk like at the cash register in a restaurant. I'm so used to being bogged out and quizzed at immigration in all the other countries I've been to, that I was totally bowled over when the gent behind the desk asked if I was having a nice day with a big smile on his face and asked if I would like a sweet pointing over at the bowl. What a nice change.

J, x

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