Kuala Lumpur

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The flight to Kuala Lumpur was so different to our last flight! It lasted merely an hour and didn't even seem that long. Upon arriving in Malaysia we are now8 hours ahead. We got a bus from the airport into the city centre and then a taxi to the hostel which was included in the price. The taxi driver said our hostel was not in a great location and he would take us to another one, but as we had already paid a deposit we decided to take our chances (turns out it is fine, and apparently they do this as they work on commission with other hotels to take people to them!!) We got to our dorm, which is an 8 bedroom female dorm and there were 6 English girls in there. They were really nice and friendly and gave us lots of tips about the area, and places to go.

We caught the monorail which is very cheap to Chinatown for food tonight...which turned out to be quite the polava! I ordered "pineapple fried rice" and this was all it said on the menu. When it came it had shrimp in! I called the waitress over and said I didn't know it came with shrimp as it doesn't say and explained I am a vegetarian and asked to send it back, she said they would make me a new one with no shrimp. The second one came and I was about to start eating it when I saw it had chicken in it!! I called her over again and said no meat at all! She seemed to get very annoyed at me now, and said I didn't tell her I was a vegetarian, but I had and I also thought "no seafood, no meat" was straight forward enough! She took it away again and said they would make another. A male waitor came over then to check that egg was ok....which it is, and I finally ended up with something I could eat. The rice came inside an actual pineapple half, and was pretty amazing once they got it right!

On Sunday we went to KLs Times Square, it is a massive shopping centre with over 1000 shops! I bought a hair band to keep my hair out of my face in this heat, a small coin purse - as I will end up with coins from all different currencies and don't want to mix them up with the current one in my purse, and a hoop earring to put into my top ear piercing. This all came to less than 4 pounds (no pounds symbol on these computers!!!) so even on a budget I can go on a little shopping spree! Next we went to Bukit Bingtang - which is sort of like a smaller version of Leicester Square in London. It rained this evening, so took shelter in the malls and had the best noodles I have had so far all trip! When we got back to the dorm the English girls had left so just the two of us tonight!

A German girl arrived in the dorm about 4am Monday morning, she woke me a lot getting stuff out of her bag and going in and out of the room a lot, and was up really early too despite arriving so late. We took the monorail to Bukit Nanas today and attempted to go up the Patronas Towers. It turned out they are closed on Mondays (and only Mondays!! So typical) so we just ended up going round the shopping area at the base of the towers. The shops here were posh expensive shops so didn't buy a thing. The food was also expensive but I wasn't feeling very well so just had a drink and a scone. We walked to the KL Tower next after stopping at the Malaysian Tourist Centre. The walk there in the heat almsot killed me off, and I felt worse and worse as the day went on. We went up the tower and the view was spectacular!! It is the 4th tallest building in the world and can see all around Kuala Lumpur from it. Our ticket for the tower also gave us admitance to a small animal zoo. The zoo loads of snakes, including some MASSIVE pythons, tarantulas, lizards, tortoises, monkeys and even rabbits! The cages did seem a bit small for the monkeys though, and one of the tortoises was definitely trying to escape! Couldn't face any food tonight, so Anwen went out by herself and I stayed in the dorm. A new English girl stayed in the dorm tonight. She and the German girl were up really late and disturbed me all night, along with being ill it made for a really awful nights sleep!

Got a lot worse through the night and didn't feel up to doing anything by morning so spent Tuesday in bed majorly sick! Perked up a bit by the evening and was luckily feeling better enough to do something Wednesday. The only time I left the dorm was to nip to the seven eleven next door to buy some cereal - the only thing I ate all day!! 😞 Tonight we had a Japanese girl in the dorm, but she is leaving tomorrow. Nobody seems to be sticking around for long so maybe they are trying to tell us something! Ha ha!

Today we went on a hop on - hop off bus around the city. We got off at the Petronas Towers first and intended on going up them, but all the tickets were sold out, so we got back on the bus and went to central market. I attempted to eat pizza, but failed miserably, managing less than half! I was pretty annoyed as the thing took ages to come, I watched the guy make it from scratch and it was really tasty, but I just have no appetite! The market had small really interesting stalls, and I bought a glass pendant necklace in the shape of a starfish! It has a blue flower inside it and is really pretty. The guy impressed me showing how strong the glass is...he actually whacked it against a metal rod and it didn't even chip let alone smash to pieces like you might expect! Next we went to the National Museum, it had some interesting stuff about the history of Malaysia, including how it once had British ruling! The last stop we got off at was the Lake Gardens, to have a bit of nature after our history. On the way back to our stop we passed Indepence Square, which has some really nice buildings, which were built when Malaysia finally gained independence in the 1950s.

I still have no appetite so I just bought a mango off one of the market stalls tonight. I thought it might be amusing to attempt eating it when I had to cut it up myself, but luckily I found a sharp knife at the hostel and didn't make too much mess! I'm so sleepy tonight and have not really recovered yet, so hoping to get an early night before our flight tomorrow. At the moment it appears it will just be the two of us in the dorm tonight, but who knows, someone could arrive at any time here!

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