Kuala Lumpur

No, I don't like Kuala Lumpur. I'm sorry to say it, and I have tried to like it here, but no, I don't like Kuala Lumpur. The heat here is relentless, it's smelly, it's so smoggy you can't even see the sky, it's busy, it's rude, it's hot, it's ugly and did I mention it's hot, really really hot! So this morning we got up after a noisy, hot night's sleep and jumped on board the hop on hop off bus for tourists. I was excited to get on the bus thinking it would be air conditioned, and it was, but just like everywhere else here, their air conditioning is turned to 'ever so slightly cooler than the sweltering heat outside' temperature, so it doesn't really help much. We got off the bus at the Petronas Towers and found out that it's impossible to get a ticket for the sky bridge, 'oh well', i thought, 'it probably would have just been hot up there too anyway'! But Kev was pretty gutted as he really wanted to go up there. So instead we wandered around the very expensive and very exclusive shopping mall. We stopped to have lunch, but by this time my patience had worn thin and the noise of the millions of people swarming around in the heat got too much - I had a little cry and told Kev for the millionth time how much I hated Kuala Lumpur. Having got that out of my system I felt much better and cheered up even more when we stumbled across a jewelry shop with 20% off where, you'll all be pleased to know, I purchased my KL ring - the second ring of the traveling collection.

We walked round then to the sky tower, which Kev was also a little disappointed with. It was a bit like a theme park and they were charging an absolute fortune to go up the tower and take a photo - not much point going up there we though, the only photo you would get is of a smoggy hot skyline! So we didn't bother. We jumped back on our hop on hop off bus and made a few more stops before heading back to Chinatown where we're staying. We quickly stopped off in the trusty reggae bar round the corner from the hostel to grab a beer and some food. There seems to be hardly any bars here in KL, or at least in these parts anyway, and the drink is really expensive. But after chilling out with a beer and listening to endless reggae (not all bad, heard a little blast from the past 'Shine' by Aswad - it's been a while since I heard that beaut!) and then went for a walk into the busy, hot, dirty, smoggy, dusty, dirty and hot street markets of Chinatown.

Now we're back at the hostel and looking forward to a day in the lake area of KL tomorrow before hopping on board our overnight train to Singapore. My friend from Uni emailed me tonight to warn me that the train air conditioning is set to 'really cold' - I can't wait, bring it on - oh to feel cold, I think I've forgotten what it feels like.

So sorry if that was a bit of a moaning blog - I did ask Kev to write tonights installment as I thought his review of KL might be slightly more positive than mine, but he declined the invitation and reminded me that his job is the photos, mine is the writing, so, sorry folks, but your stuck with my negativity :)

Feel free to write comments if you can, Mandy - has it started letting you leave comments yet? xxx