Exploring KL

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This morning we had a lazy start before getting breakkie. Breakfast (Cereals & Toast) are all complimentary at this hostel, which makes life nice and easy!

After breakfast we went for a wander through the Financial District and the trendy Street - Jalan Bukit Bintang. We checked that Hertz were cool with the car, and then wandered round to the base of the Petronas Towers. The Towers are awesome, but considering they are the 2nd tallest building in the world don't actually look that high. Maybe we have seen so many huge buildings now having done the CN Tower, Empire State and IFC2 we just don't appreciate them as much as we should!

We had a wander to the Tourist Info office - it was a good opportunity to get some trips booked up for this week. I'll not reveal what we are up to yet!

Lunch was cool - again only about 3 quid for a meal and drinks for us both. Clare had Prawn noodles and I had Stingray and Baby Cuttlefish Curry. All of the food here is cheap - as a guide a McD's/KFC Meal is about 75p.

This afternoon we did more and more wandering round the City centre - a trait of Clare and I's which was stupid really as we got knackered quite quickly - my watch was showing about 33 degrees centigrade - perhaps factoring in the humidity! We did manage to make amends - we found a store selling high tech massage chairs and spent 20 minutes pretending to be very interested customers whilst getting a serious massage!

I also managed to find the Star Hall Shopping Centre this afternoon - they have 20,000sq feet dedicated to the worlds finest watches which was brilliant. Clare was disgusted, and kept mumbling some rubbish about Diamonds. I added a couple of Swiss beauties to my collection wish list. They are about 20 - 30% cheaper than in the UK I'd guess. There were some awful gawdy one's tough - although SE Asia seems to have a penchant for big tacky blingy things and especially nasty looking gold watches and ornaments.

Later on we eventually found the entrance to the KL Tower - Menara KL - which is the 4th highest communication tower in the world at 276m. Altough it is in the centre of the city, and dead easy to see, it is ridiculously difficult to find the entrance to it! Sign posts in this place are useless - if you can find any. And the quality of the maps is dire both from an accuracy and a scale/distance perspective - we even asked a police man for directions at one point today and he looked at our map in a state of sheer confusion. I ended up showing him where he lived. It was a 58 second high speed lift to the observation deck and was quite a cool view - especially the hills in the background and the rolling monsoon clouds coming in. The Menara Tower also gives you the best view of the Petronas Towers. The PT's only allow you to go up to the sky bridge on the 41st floor so hence the popularity of the communications tower in the city.

Tonight we have been down to the China Town street market. Clare was mad for it as there are loads of fake handbags and purses, I couldn't believe how much crap people were trying to flog. It was quite a large market but basically 5 types of stands seemed to repeat each other continuously. Fake Handbags, Fake Watches, Fake Trainers, Fake Electronics, Fake Mont Blancs infinitum!

We've just returned to the Hostel completely drenched after Dinner. November is the rainiest month in KL - but it just seems to absolutely piss it down at night. For Dinner we ate Thai Steam Boat - a popular dish in both HK and Malaysia. It basically involves having a big boiling pot of stock in the centre of the table, and placing in it a variety of meats, sea food, vegetables and noodles. It is a really fun and social way of eating albeit we didn't really have a clue what order to put stuff in!

See you later,

Dan

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Comments

[Bex]

Nice wheels!
Wow, all sounds fab to me. But I thought a Petronas was a type of spell in Harry Potter 3. The steam boat looks tasty too. Do you think Buzz would be able to rustle one up for me......heehee! keep enjoying the speedy fast hire car and make sure you beep back at the road raged yocals. x

[Clare and Dan]

Steamo
Bex even Buzz would struggle to bugger up making steam boat. It's like a posh super noodle soup that you chuck loads of stuff out of the fridge into!