Kuala Lumpur

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Hello!

Since I last wrote Yasmin and I made a relatively comfortable 9 hour bus journey from Kuala Besut to Kulala Lumpur, arriving here at 6am yesterday morning somewhat bleary eyed! After finding our hotel, waking up the man on reception and dumping our bags we made our first foray into the city!

We made it to the iconic Petronus towers for sunrise and took some great pictures of the worlds largest twin towers. After half an hour or so taking in the sheer scale of the buildings we made our way to the radio tower (the 4th highest telecommunications tower in the world!). We had been advised by a freind we'd met in Laos to go up this tower rather than the Petronus towers themselves to get a view of the city and also be able to see and take picture of the Petronus towers whilst up there. He didn't let us down as the views were incredible! We were also handed an audio guide as we arrived at the top which spoke you through what you were looking at which was very helpful! So by 9.30AM we had done Kuala Lumpur's two biggest towers and made our way to the shopping area of the city known as the "Golden Triangle". Never before have I seen so many designer shops in one place split between ten or so different huge department stores...Mulberry, Harrods, Calvin Klein, Jimmy Choo's, Tiffany's (excuse my spelling of said shops as Yasmin only introduced them to me yesterday!) all lined up next to each other. After a good look around we went back to check in at our hotel and for a two hour power nap as we were still tired from the nights journey!

Around 5pm we took a taxi to Chinatown which mas made up primarily of market stalls before hopping on the LRT (tube system) to Little India which was like arriving in Delhi with bustling food stalls serving every imaginable Indian food to clothes shops selling the "finest Indian silk"! Yasmin and I eventually settled on a less than satisfying restaurant serving food made up of questionable meat! However, after food we got the LRT back to the Petronus towers which looked even more impressive by night before a drink at a nice bar and an early night!

This morning, after some toast and a nice mango (bought yesterday from Chinatown) we got a taxi to the Batu Caves, a collection of sacred Hindu temples in a cave some 270 steps high! The entrance is guarded by a 50 meter high golden Buddha and the steps and cave itself are inhabited by literally hundreds of very cheeky monkeys who were on the look out for tourists food and drink! The cave itself was vast and really impressive bu the temples within looked fairly shabby and small in contrast. Definitely worth a visit though! On the way back, one monkey stole a plastic bag from a woman and was in seconds unscrewing the top to a bottle of milk!

We got the taxi man to drop us off at the lake gardens on the way back which is Kuala Lumpur's equivalent to Hyde park or Central Park...after an hour or so walking around the beautifully kept gardens we caught the LRT to the Golden Triangle for a Nando's for lunch! We then had another look around some shops and stopped for a drink so I could catch the Champions league draw from last night! As I write, Yasmin has gone for a run at a local park. We're then off to take some pictures of the Petronus towers by night as we didn't have cameras last night and having food at a restaurant we spotted earlier!

Tomorrow we're off to an elephant sanctuary for the day which I'm sure will be amazing! Will update you all soon as poss!

Love Jamie and Yasmin xxx

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