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Published: August 1st 2006
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Ack! So much to talk about! We've been so busy, it seems every night we just crash from exhaustion. The hotels we have been staying at have been nice. Hot water and pillows that aren't as hard as a rock like the ones we had at the hostel the first night in Singapore. Our tour group is pretty cool. All young people around our age. We are the only Americans in the group of eleven. The others are British and there are two Swiss girls. I understand the Swiss girls, whose English is not perfect and have cute accents, but the British people.... I get lost everytime they start talking. I never thought I would have difficulty understanding another Westerner like I do with this group. But they kinda drink a lot so we don't exactly fit in with them at night. That's a-okay with me though cause last night like six of them went out and had not the best quality liquor and were super hungover. Yuck. Not the way I want to spend my vacation.
But to back up a little, we left Sinapore and took a bus over to Malaka. Malaka was.... it will be our least
favorite place on this whole trip. I guess it has a bunch of old Dutch history but there's not much to do. For me, it even lacks a certain charm that could justify me staying there on my own. We did do a few things, trying more of the local foods and visited a Crocodile Farm. That was kind of lame. The taxi over there was pricey and even more pricey coming back and difficult to flag down. The crocodiles were just in cage after cage so it got old quickly. You can only see so many perfectly still animals for so long. In the evening we took a rickshaw
with our group. They took us around to some monuments and down the night market near our hotel. Our final destination with them was to a traditional Indian food returaunt. It was interesting. And spicey. None of us could taste anything about five minutes into eating. We ate with our hands off of banana leaves. We gre to like a bit in the evening and probably grew on us even more since we could justify going to sleep so early and not feel like we were missing anything. We were able to wake up early the next morning in order to eat a chinese breakfast before taking a bus over to Kuala Lumpur.
Which brings us sort of up to date to where we are. Kuala Lumpur is simply amazing. Its busy and kind of messy but the culture is rich and the people are nice . It's a mixture of old and new and the whole city is being built up. The highrise buildings are fairly new and there's a bijillion being built all at the same time.
We got to go shopping at KLCC which is right underneath the Petronas Towers. Those are the pair of towers that are the second tallest buildings in
the world. So massive. And the malls here are even cheaper than Sinapore. We went all around the 'Golden Triangle' which is this triangle of amazing shopping. Our feet were tired but we had to stick around the area so we could see the Petronas Towers at night. They are so amazing. We laid on our backs for awhile and just stared. We finished our night by stepping outside our hotel through the back and went shopping at the night market. The place is just jammed with vendors and loud and colorful. Anything you could think of an imitation for, they have it. Like, I don't think they make Louis Vuitton lighters. And then, another night of glorious sleep.
Today we have already done so much. We took a tour until 1:30 with our group. We went to: National Monument, the King's Palace, the Lake Gardens, Batu Caves, the Menara Kulala Lumpur Tower and finally ended up at the Islamic Musuem. We went to the top of the Menara KL which gave us a 360 degree view of the city. So amazing. The city is even beautiful in its chaos from above. Went to
a Bird Park, which is just this giant atrium at the Lake Gardens, a lush vegatation park in the city nearby our Chinatown hotel.
Ryan absolutely loves KL. I think if he could, he would stay here. He didn't want to come down from the Menara KL, he's just in love. KL is a bit much at first, at least for me, the pace and the way that there are no straight streets in the city, at least not anywhere we've been, which has made it a bit difficult to use the monorail and lightrail system, but we eventually figured it out. I do have to admit though, we broke down and ate Burger King the other day. It's hard having every meal be an adventure, especially for me since I am so conservative with my eating, we just wanted something familiar. But back to Malay food for now.
Tomorrow morning we take off for our homestay with a Muslim family. We won't have internet so it'll be a few days before we touch base with everything again. We're having an awesome time though. It's an adventure.
Love you!
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