Day 06 - Kuala Lumpur

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Today we were up at 6! Nic, Atusa and I left the hotel at 6:30 and headed for the Petronas Twin Towers. (We had to leave at this time to get in the queue as they only let in the first 1200 people each day.) Leaving at 6:30 it was still dark and we started walking towards the towers. We had a map, but it was not to scale and missed out several road. Consequently we were lost after about 15 minutes and so we jumped in a cab. We arrived at the towers at 7:15. The towersare the 3rd tallest building in the world and the tallest twin towers in the world at 452 metres (263 x my height - so a machine told me). We had to queue unti8l around 9:00, so we amused ourselves with a few games of cards and a long games of eye spy. We got into the tower at 9:15, we could only go to the 42nd floor, but there was a bridge between the two towers here which we went out on and the views from here were pretty amazing.

After this we got the LRT (tube), which cost 1.60RM (32p), back to the hostel and gathered laundry and took it to the laundrette. This was my first time in a laundrette. For 1.3kg of clothes it cost around 7RM (1.40) - I presume this is cheap and they do all you washing/drying for you.

We then headed out to the central market, which had arts, crafts antiques and jewellery on sale.

Next was Dataran Merdeka (independence square) - here is one of the worlds tallest flag poles! It was very hot at this point, but the square was very pretty and faced the Sultan Abdul Samad building (a very attractive building).

From here we tried to flag down a taxi to take us to the planetarium - however the cab driver told us it wasn't far away, gave us directions and told us it wasn't worth getting a cab. We followed his directions which took us round in a circle (in the boiling heat)! We then walked for a very long time and up several large hills and eventually found the planetarium. Along the way we passed the National Mosque and saw a fair amount of KL. Within the ground of the planetarium we found a replica of Stonehenge! The planetarium itself was very unimpressive and after having an early start I fell asleep during the show. A bit of a let down afte4r all the hard work finding and getting to the planetarium.

As we were coming out of the planetarium (which was on the tope of a massive hill, and not very close to much else) there was thunder and lighting, but we decided to walk as there was no rain and we didn't want to wait at the planetarium. A few minutes later it started to rain, we kept going for a few more minutes - too far to turn back and it turned into torrential rain. We were very wet and so took shelter under a veranda. I stepped out for a few seconds to try and flag down a cab and was soaked right through, I looked like I had jumped in a pool. I have never seen rain like this! The water in the road was up to the curb and the water on the steps looked like a waterfall! After about 15 minutes of the rain only getting heavier and the thunder and lightening getting louder we ran to the police station/hut opposite. The water flowing down the hill created quite a strong current and it was quite hard to cross - Nic lost her flip flop!

The police were clearly laughing at us but were very kind and let us in and called us a cab. Our clothes could have been rung out we were SOOO wet. We were stranded with the police for about half an hour - with then trying to call us taxis. Eventually a cab turned up and one of the policemen flagged it down with his police whistle - all very funny.

After a good rest and a change of clothes we ventured out again and walked to the KL tower. We went up & got an audio tour explaining what we were seeing - we went up around 7 and it was still partially light, we saw the sun setting & then saw KL in the dark, with all the skyscrapers - views were amazing. From here we could see the twin towers lit up - these were spectaculor. The views from this tower definately come close to the views from the Empire State Building.

After the tower we got a cab back and ate in Chinatown. A very full day!

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