Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The coach trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur was comfortable, as we had the front seats on the top deck. On arriving into Malaysia we found the scenery was palm trees, well plantations of palm trees, 300km all the way from the boarder with Singapore to the edges of Kuala Lumpur about four hours driving (what do they do with all those palm trees?) Arrival into Kuala Lumpur; the first sight you see is the KL tower and the twin Petronas towers on the skyline, both impressive buildings. Hopping onto the monorail we headed for our hotel on the edges of Kuala Lumpur city. As we travelled further out to the area where we are staying(an area called Chow Kip), we got to see how the locals live, all the smells and the rougher parts of the city. Our hotel, Wira, was quite a stark contrast to the area, nice, bright, clean, and our very own bathroom, luxury for us travellers and something we hadn’t had since Fiji. Our first morning we headed to the Petronas towers only to find the directly under the tower they have a huge shopping centre, so Bryan decided it was time to get his hair cut. He chose a swanky salon costing RM75 (£12) that’s a heck of a lot of money in Malaysia. But it looks much nicer now, much more like Bryan and less like some hippy dude! Then we met up with Julia and Jane, (Julia is friend Karen’s daughter) a fellow traveller now in this part of the world, for a drink in an Irish bar to exchange stories and get some tips for Bali (our next port of call). We are finding that eating out is costing around £2 for a meal and the transportation is costing less than 50p for each trip no matter how far you travel. So the city is really cheap, about time too as we keep blowing our budget. So next morning, Bryan headed off at 7am to queue for tickets to the Towers. He left Jody asleep in bed and returned later clutching two tickets! all the tickets for the very top had gone as they only issue about 100 a day but he managed to get tickets to the skybridge. Thankfully, Jody’s cold seems to have disappeared and we headed off again after a big cooked breakfast (yes £11 a night gets you breakfast too here!) and headed to the Towers again (3rd time for Bryan). the Skybridge was ok - view was a bit cloudy - but as we have been up higher on this trip, it wasn’t as good. but still nice. Torrential rain hit us in the afternoon so no hanging around, straight back to the hotel to snooze. All this walking around in the heat is wearing us out! Next day is our trip to Bali so spent the morning packing and after some confusion about which train of many went to the right airport terminal, we managed to get to the airport on time :-) passing along the way, the Formula One circuit where the Grand Prix will take place on Sunday. Once again we just miss out on a proper race! :-( Wira Hotel Room rating: 9/10 own bathroom, tv & air con. WOW! Location: 4/10 - dodgy area & out of the city Staff: 5/10 - lovely Value for Money: 8/10 all this for £11 a night! Other comments: Stay again? maybe if more central rooms were unavailable Overall City experience: 8 - a lot of walking as everywhere is very spread out