Day 7 & 8 - Kuala Lumpur, China Town and a million handbags

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Day Seven was handbag heaven! And not just handbags, pretty much everything I could ever wish for... I was on the biggest shopping high ever...

We left the house at about 10am and caught a taxi into the city centre. We started off at Kota Raya - a small shopping complex near China Town. As it was still only 10.30, hardly any of the shops were open, so we wandered around the surrounding streets and found a Maccas!
Since most of the other breakfasts we had seen involved curry, rice and mixed veggies, we decided it would be nice to have something a little bit familiar for breakfast. It was pretty much the same as it is over here, except they don't have bacon or sausage, they have chicken that looks like bacon and sausage. In fact, it looks so much like sausage that Danny didn't even realise until he bit into his muffin that it was actually chicken. Despite the surprise, he said it was pretty good!

We went back into Kota Raya and spent about two hours in there, buying a lot of clothes and a few electronics. We could see why there weren't any other tourists, it was a lot more run down than the big malls, and most of the store owners were smoking inside. This means all the clothes we bought there smell like cigarette smoke, but it will wash out! The upside of shopping in a non-touristy spot is the prices - everything was much cheaper than the Sunway Lagoon we visited at the start of the week.
By the time we left we already had a lot of bags, so we headed over to another Maccas to have a sit down and get something to drink. By this stage it was about 1pm and we headed into the China Town markets.
I have to say... this was the coolest place I have ever shopped in my life! We spent about two and a half hours in there the first time around, and bought a lot of purses, a few watches, jewelry, handbags and lots more! We also found this little massage place which has these fish that nibble on the dead skin on your feet and leave them nice and soft. I had been told about it by Mark from work before we left and thought it would be a funny experience, so we went in and had a foot massage and fish therapy. It was so freaky! They actually bite you! They were quite a bit bigger than I expected, and there were some who were bigger than the others. I'm pretty sure they actually had teeth, because I could feel those ones biting me. It was the strangest feeling!

By 3pm we had bought a lot of stuff and were starting to get hungry when it started pouring down rain very suddenly. By this stage we were only half way down the second street (and had only done one side of the other street) and everyone started rushing to cover over anything that wasn't under the roof of their stall, and since we were in the middle of haggling for a piece of jewelry or a purse or something (it is all kind of a blur!) we used the rain to get him down a bit more, and then headed off for some lunch.

We had the most delicious food I have tasted since we have been here - Nandos! It was so yummy. I had spicy chicken sausages, and Danny had a very spicy burger. He looked like his head was going to explode by the end of it.
Very satisfied (although Danny looked like he was in a bit of pain, I'm not sure whether from the chili or the shopping!) we split up the bags a bit better and headed back into China Town.

About five minutes after we had gone in the first time, this guy selling DVDs came and started trying to get us into his shop. We told him we didn't want DVDs, but he followed us around for half an hour, and then swapped with another guy from the shop, who he got to follow us for another fifteen minutes. By this stage we were getting annoyed that they wouldn't leave us alone, so we made it very clear that we didn't want DVDs, and he stormed off. We thought we had gotten rid of them for good, but as soon as we came back in the second time, the same guy came up trying to get us to come into his store. He followed us for another 20 minutes or so, and then we were right next to his store so we went in just so he would leave us alone. He tried to sell Danny a bunch of movies we don't have any desire to see, and then we asked the prices of box sets. He wanted 30RM for House - insisting that they were real. Danny took one look at the case and knew straight away that it was photocopied. He just laughed at him and said if he wanted a fake copy he would just download it for free, and we left. Finally! We were free from our little band of followers.
We probably shopped for another two hours before we started to get really tired and they started to set up more and more stalls, which made it hard for us to get through with our ridiculous amount of shopping bags.
The other downside to having so many shopping bags was that everyone could see we were there to buy lots, and tried even harder to sell us stuff, even though we already had a lot of what they were trying to sell us!

We got told so many times "I do best deal for you" "You are my lucky customer!" "I do this just for you!" "I make no money on that... I buy it for more than that"
We had so much fun haggling with them - Danny is great at it. I think he almost made one guy cry or have a heart attack when he was haggling a better price on a miu miu handbag for me.
I started off not liking the haggling and just letting Danny do it, but by the end of it I was having lots of fun and enjoying getting the prices down.
One guy tried to tell me he had paid 80RM for a bag, and I just laughed at him and said he was getting ripped off. I ended up getting it for about 50RM. I'm pretty sure he still made a pretty good profit off that too!

As it started to get dark, we made our way out of the markets and headed to the twin towers to see them lit up and have some dinner. We were so tired, and so sore by this stage, and went out to get a taxi home after we had eaten. One taxi driver said it would cost 100RM to go back to Subang Jaya, and (since we knew it shouldn't cost much more than 50) we said no way. He wouldn't budge though (he seemed like a massive jerk) so another guy there offered us 60. He seemed much nicer (the other guy was big and rough with a massive scar down his face) so we went to put our stuff in his taxi, but while we were getting in the taxi, the rough guy came over and was yelling at our taxi driver. He started threatening him and stuff, and we ended up having to just tell the angry guy that we were not going with him, and some of the other taxi drivers made him back off.

Anyway, that was about it for day Seven - sorry there aren't as many photos - since the products they were selling were not exactly above board, they didn't like photos in the China Town markets, so we didn't really take any.

Today (Day Eight) we are just relaxing and packing before taking an overnight flight to Paris.
We are going to get a massage and buy a suitcase for all the stuff we bought yesterday as it won't fit in our back packs!

Love you all, hope everyone at home is well.

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Comments

[Wez]

Towers
I've seen those towers. Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones were in them =p