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Published: August 19th 2007
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chinatown
Not as good veiw as Traders! Market Madness We walked back to Traders to collect our luggage and then grabbed a taxi to China Town. The taxi driver dropped us off at the end of Petaling Street, gesticulating that our hotel was half down the street. We naively thought we could simply alight from our taxi outside the hotel, but no chance! It was early evening and Petaling Street has a bustling street market. We had to weave our way through a labyrinth of market stalls, desperately trying to locate our hotel. Eventually a helpful market trader pointed out a small entrance, sunk back in the wall of a fabric shop. We thankfully traipsed up the steps and dropped our bags to check into Hotel China Town Inn, a suprisingly efficient little budget hotel amidst the chaos of the market. It certainly wasn't Traders and our deluxe room overlooked the rather noisy market which closed after midnight, but we didn't have any mega early starts so we coped.
Chinatown was such a contrast to KLCC - it was so chaotic and a permanently stench of rotting fruit, fetid fish and open drains hung in the humid air. We did a quick walk around the area to
chinatown
Yep still going at midnight! orient ourselves for our activities over the next few days. Petaling Street was a nightmare to negiotate in the evening and it was like running the gauntlet to get back to our hotel each night without being harrassed to buy counterfeit DVDs, designer handbags or t-shirts.
Blessed at Batu Caves We braved the number 11 bus from Chinatown to the Batu Caves. We walked up the 272 steps to the temples inside the caverns at the top. All the jungle exercise must have paid off because it was relatively easy, even in the heat, especially watching the mischievous monkeys sliding down the handrails, scavenging for food. In the temple at the top, we gave a donation to be blessed. We thought it would be good to get a photo of our heads, now dotted with red and white chalk, so Jase asked a Japanese bloke with a decent camera, thinking he would understand how to take a quick shot. The guy messed about trying to get the perfect angle for the photo, and fumbled, dropping our little camera lens down onto the stone floor. It bounced and dented the zoom completely, rendering it useless. The guy scuttled off embarrassed
Dead camera
Don't get blessed! and Jase rubbed his blessing off his head in disgust - some luck that had brought us! We endured a packed bus ride back to the city and Jase tried to mend the camera, but no luck it was officially dead.
We decided to escape the bustle of Chinatown and headed to Lake Gardens. However, peace was impossible as we were tormented all around the Butterfly Park by annoyingly loud fat Arab kids. It was worth enduring to hold a turtle and see the cool Rhino Horn Beetles. We were both feeling pretty irritable and mooched around the Bird Park in the afternoon heat. In the evening we decided to cheer ourselves up with some buffalo wings, and caught the monorail to Hard Rock Cafe (how touristy!). We had a strange waiter who seemed to have psychic powers and brought most of our food and drinks before we had ordered them. Just as we were tucking into our delish Heavy Metal wings, Jase realised in horror that the guy in the booth behind us was the Scandinavian tour guide who had plagued our journey to Taman Negara. What a horrible coincidence! Fortunately he didn't have the dreadful woman with
The fateful last photo
Gat blessed then get camera smashed! him, so we scoffed our burgers in peace, watching Hamilton win the Grand Prix.
The next day was a bit of lazy one as we hadn't slept brilliantly with the market noise and felt drained by the constant chaos of Chinatown. We took the monorail to Bukit Bintang to see if we could get a replacement camera from a shop in the Golden Triangle. We mooched about Lot 10 and a few other malls, and eventually found a camera store where Jase negiotated a good deal with the manager on a Fuji 31d - the next model up from our broken camera. Even though we already had brought a back up camera with us, we thought it wise to replace the broken one whilst in the city, especially as we were planning to use one for diving in Borneo, which posed a greater risk for damaging one.
Later in the afternoon, we decided to go back to clean KLCC and maybe catch a film. We visited the internet cafe and to our horror discovered the site had crashed and apparently lost all our blogs to date (since then, many have been recovered). We were having a bad day!
cute turtle
Butterfly park Rach was tempted to cheer herself up at Haagen Daz but we opted for a mood boosting smoothie instead. Oh well, things will be better in Borneo!
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Jones
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Japanese bastard!