Kuala Lumpar

We left the beaches of Thailand and boarded our flight to Kuala Lumpa; luckily it was not a long flight and we arrived at the airport located about an hour out of the city itself. We headed for our hotel and reached it by early evening, our room was on the 16th floor and from the huge floor to ceiling windows we had an amazing view of the Petronas Towers, which was absolutely stunning, and even more so at night when the whole skyline twinkled. John and Roman went to eat and I went to bed - I'm feeling worn out on this trip and have been sleeping for England.

Our first full day was spent getting our bearings. Thankfully we were less than a ten minute walk from the towers as it was unbearably hot and sticky (once again we had to rely upon air-con as our best friend) We intended to go up the towers that day; two slight problems with this however: the first being that they are closed on Monday's, and the second I will get to later. We decided to have a look around the mall that's under the towers and take advantage of the cool air. Here we discovered that everything in Malaysia that you purchase in a shop is more expensive than in England; high end products by a large amount, so we had some yummy but expensive ice cream and headed out into the heat again for the walk back to our hotel. The afternoon was spent relaxing by the pool whilst Roman burnt off some energy swimming and learning to dive to the bottom, which isn't going so well as Roman insists on holding his nose.

On day two we took a tour with a guy we found on trip advisor. When looking for guides his name came up time and again so we felt confident in booking him. We went with CK to Deerland, which was on route to our elephant experience and is a side stop that pretty much everyone does. It's basically a small zoo where you can feed the deer and rabbits and hold a python. (It has other animals too, which are all in varying states of health!) They used to have a bear but he was taken from them due to the conditions and to be honest I can only wonder why the whole place hasn't been closed down. This is not somewhere we would have chosen to visit had we had a choice, nor would we recommend it to anyone else. We left feeling rather sad and refused to sign the petition to get the bear back.

We then headed for lunch in a tiny village before going to the elephant rehabilitation centre. John and Roman chose to swim and ride, I went with just feeding so I could take pictures. We fed them sugar cane and papaya, and we quickly worked out they loved the papaya best and so Roman stocked up with a box. Towards the end of feeding he was actually putting it into the elephants mouth himself, whilst the elephant lowered itself to help him.

After feeding time John and Roman rode around a tiny square bareback, it took all of 5 minutes and most of that was getting on and off. John got off lightly after my 40 minute ride in Cambodia earlier in the year! It was then time to get in the river with the baby elephants and give them a wash, splashing about and getting splashed by the elephant. It looked heaps of fun and the boys enjoyed it but they came out freezing, to find themselves in a cold shower with a torrential downpour looming. We've grown to love elephants so much more on this trip and have been so lucky to observe and interact with them so much.

Our final day started with the short walk to the towers to buy our tickets (it used to be free but you now pay). They only let 1000 people up a day so you need to get there early, no problem we think and reach there at 10am to find all tickets sold out?? Argh it's our last day and we can't do it, so we head to the information desk to ask what time they sold out and found out that it opens at 8.30am for tickets and tour guides often queue from 5.30am to buy them, so they are all are usually gone by 9am at the latest. Ok, so we didn't see that one coming and now we were faced with not being able to go up the towers at all...I guess we must have done a good deed at some point on our trip though because the guy behind the counter gave us 3 of his own personal tickets to use; I can't even explain how much this made our day. It was such a kind thing to do and we of course rewarded him with a tip.

You go up the tower in set groups and by now John is fighting with his fear of heights and questioning doing it, I'm proud to say he made the choice to go. We took the lift to the 41st/42nd floors and stepped out onto the glass walkway that connects the two towers. Roman and I had pictures taken and looked down at the city below, for the most part John stood in the middle of the walkway looking forward!

Now, I've been up the towers before and then you only went to the walkway level, so it was a great surprise to find out that you then continue to the 86th floor where they've built an observation deck. It has amazing 360 degrees views, and you can literally see the whole city and miles beyond. We even spotted our hotel, which looked like a little playmobil building.

We were picked up from the towers by CK and headed to meet some monkeys and go see some fireflies. We drove out of the city which took about an hour and came to monkey town (not its real name but it should be!) It comes complete with food stalls catering just for the monkeys. We got out and watched as they ruled the whole area. We bought some food and were advised to put in a bag or keep it out of sight or they would be on us in a second. We fed them runner beans and did really well with the first bag. They don't snatch or scratch and are actually nice little things; very soft and not aggressive at all. The second bunch of food I bought I tried to hide inside my jacket: epic fail! I found myself besieged by 20+ of them all doing their utmost to steal my stash. They jumped on my back, head, crawled up my legs and whilst they never hurt or scratched once I relented and threw the beans away from me and conceded defeat.

We spent the next hour stroking, feeding and sitting with them and loved it. Roman declared he liked monkeys again after he had struck them off the like list earlier in the holiday when they stole his weetabix.

We headed to a seafood place for dinner and to wait for the sun to set, then we went to see the fireflies. Wow! It was amazing for so many reasons, we sat in a row boat in the dark with not a noise to be heard (even Roman stopped chattering for once), it was so peaceful. Then you see them twinkling in the trees; it looked like every tree was decorated for Christmas. You can't take photos with flash and without nothing came out so it's one of the amazing things we have done that we can only advise you to go and do for yourself. The fireflies are not actually flies but beetles and so small, about the size of daisy petal and so there are literally thousands of them filling the trees along the riverbank. It was a great peaceful way to end our time in Kuala Lumpar, as in the morning we would be heading to Vietnam - crazy central.

A few pointers about KL, it is expensive! You can eat locally for cheaper than in the malls, cafes or hotels but compared with other Asian places it is still costly. Alcohol of any kind, being a Muslim country, is very expensive: it costs around £7 for a beer and cocktails around £15. (We thought Copenhagen was expensive, well Camilla we found somewhere even more expensive!) It is like Singapore, very green and clean, not quite as upscale in all areas as Singapore feels but not to far behind. It's a great hub for cheap flights all over Asia with Air Asia and definitely worth a few days stop off.

More coming soon :D