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Published: February 17th 2009
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We arrived in kuala lumpur at 5.20am and nothing seemed open except mcdonalds! we had to wait in the train station until the trains started running so we had some pancakes and coffee at McD's. When we got to our hostel we had booked online we discovered they had messed up our booking and had thought we were arriving the day before and when we hadn't turned up they gave our room away. After hassling the guy to sort it out, he was determined that he had until 1pm to do so but we weren't happy to wait until then not knowing if we had a room, he eventually said we could stay that night but maybe not the next two nights. He wasn't really being much help so we booked another hostel and paul convinced him to give us our deposit back plus money for a taxi to the other hostel. It ended up not causing too much hassle but it was a shame as it looked like a good hostel. The place we booked was actually a bit like a home stay. The family lived there and then had turned some of the rooms into dorms and some into
doubles and twins. They were really friendly and helpful and the hostel turned out to be nice too.
We couldn't go up the Petronas towers that day as they are closed on mondays but we went up to see them anyway and then walked to Central Market in china town where they had lots of local crafts and antiques. we bought a couple of little things from one shop and the woman was really nice explaining what all the symbolism meant and then she gave us some oranges which is something they do at Lunar New Year. We saw some dragon dances and then accidently wandered into Petaling Street which we thought was a continuation of the market but is where you go to buy fake stuff. We walked through being hassled from both sides to buy dvds where they keep walking along beside you while you keep saying no thank you! and fake handbags and tshirts and loads of other stuff most of which looked like really bad versions of the original item. it was super tacky and we couldn't wait to get out the other side at which point we realised we had to walk back through to
Skybridge
Us on the Petronas Skybridge get where we going. we saw a couple of english girls make the ultimate mistake of looking slightly interested and once they had said no to the price the woman chased after them waving a calculator for them to name their price. After an afternoon siesta, we had got up at 4.30 am to make sure we didn't miss our flight, we headed back out for some food and had some really tasty noodles, we went with the "no spicy spicy" option.
The next day we got up early again and went to the petronas towers, people start queuing at about 7.30am and only a set amount of people are allowed up per day so you have to go early. We were there at 7.50 and there was already quite a long queue we had to wait until almost 9 for the ticket office to open but its free and we managed to get a 9.30 ticket for our allotted ten minute visit. Its all very regimented, you have a guide for your group and first you watch a questionably 3D movie about petronas the oil company, its basically propaganda but I guess you have to pay for your free
Dragon dancing
In the streets of KL visit somehow, after this they took us up in the lift and we got 5 minutes at the start of the sky bridge and then 5 at the other side before we got shuffled back into the lift to go back down to ground. It was a pretty good view but the bridge isn't at the top its only about half way up but the public aren't allowed any higher. That afternoon we went to a malaysian cultural show at the tourism centre which began with a dodgy looking band and we weren't holding out high hopes for the rest of the show but it was great, they did dance performances from all the different regions and cultural influences in malaysia which is a very multi cultural place. That evening we went for dinner next to our hostel and then for a very expensive drink in what we later realised was the main tourist strip.
On our last day we went up to lake titiwangsa on the outskirts of the city with a great view of the skyline and spent the evening at the petronas towers before getting an early night before our very early flight to Vientiane in Laos.
We had booked tickets on the sky bus which takes you to the airport and so went out in the morning to get a taxi to the bus pick up spot. The taxi driver we got though was a bit of a scam artist and tried to lay on some story about the meter being broken, there are warning signs around KL saying make sure you use the meter as otherwise they will try charge crazy amounts, we told him to let us out if the meter was broken and we would get another taxi at which point he laughed a little and seemed to put his hands up to his lie, we knew how much the journey should cost so we told him we would pay that, he tried to guilt us into paying his original quote but we stood our ground and he accepted what we gave him. It seemed a little cruel argueing over what to us is a relativly small amount but all the tourist advice says not to pay it, I guess if we payed that then maybe he would charge the next people even more. We made it to the airport in plenty of
time ready for the next part of our trip...
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