Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia's capital city) 23.01.10 - 25.01.10

Greg waiting for our bus in Chinatown, KL

Kuala Lumpur is a bustling metropolis with new buildings going up all the time and many different areas in wealth and character, from colourful Chinatown to KLCC, (Kuala Lumpur city centre) where the mighty Petronas Towers dominate a skyline of expensive hotels, malls and banks. We find walking a difficult business sadly, because there's so much traffic and a lot of the roads are too dangerous to cross. We do succeed in finding our way but we've come to the conclusion that some parts of the city are not designed to be navigated on foot. The monorail and train system covers the city's main locations but there are only a few lines and the stations are few and far between so you do end up having to walk a fair bit to where you want to get to. I wouldn't mind walking at all normally but the traffic fumes combined with having to navigate the treacherous pavements (Greg nearly fell down a drain hole whose grate was missing!) makes it quite unpleasant. It's hot here too and the thousands of air conditioning units hanging off the sides of buildings mustn't be helping with their pumping of hot air out into the street. Again, I'm not complaining about the city, I'm just trying to accurately portray it from my viewpoint so I can attempt to remember what it was like in years to come. The driving and parking skills are 'interesting' too with cars parked up on the slip roads of the city's highway it makes it hard for our tourist bus to join into a line of oncoming traffic. As far as parking goes, the pavements are often used as buffers or for pulling right up on to. Malaysia is an Islamic country so the majority of women wear headscarves. It's a cultural mix though so there are women who don't, a large Chinese and Indian population and many other faiths are practised too including Hinduism and Buddhism. We're startled by some peoples' dress- they're wearing vests under their shirts and the women are sometimes layering up with a cardigan. We're sweating buckets in our tshirts and shorts and they're going round in layers! It's amazing how you get used to it though. Today we visited the Islamic Arts Museum in a beautiful, new air-conditioned building at 22 degrees celsius but before long I was feeling chilly and actually wanted to go outside. There's lots to do here in Kuala Lumpur. On the first evening we went up the Menara telecommunications tower

to its viewing deck to watch the sun setting over the city and especially the Petronas Towers,

which, at almost 500m, were the tallest buildings in the world up until 2003.

We've been to the Bird Park and Orchid Garden today where we saw parrots

(Greg became the 'bird man' by feeding the little parrots milk and seeds) cassowaries (we didn't see any in Australia) millions of peacocks, ostrich and lots of little monkeys. The orchid garden was stunning too but the heat of the day forced us to find shade before we wilted. The orchids didn't seem to mind though. The heat and humidity suits them very well. We've been enjoying good food while we've been here. Even the cheap dishes from the markets' foodcourts have been very tasty. In fact the cheaper the better I've found. I had an excellent Laksa (spicy coconut chicken soup) from a food court vendor and the best sweet and sour chicken I've ever tasted from a Chinese street cafe right outside our hostel on Jalan Sultan in Chinatown. Greg's favourite of the moment is Singapore noodles.