Malaysia

We got up fairly early and took a taxi to the bus station in Kuala Lumpur. We arrived at 8:30am as they told us to and still be 9am we were boarding the wrong bus! The bay they told us to get on at had the wrong bus in it...we had a bit of a panic as we didn't want to miss it, but then it turned up about 10 mins late. So, on we got, bus looked fairly good, ok inside. We sat on the bus for 45mins while different people got on and off, people were chucked off and asked to move seats, luckily we managed to stay on the bus and in the seats that we were in. So, and hour late we headed north to Penang, an island off the North west coast of Malaysia. We were going about 30mph and the bus was making terrible noises, and we didn't stop for 4 hours and there was no toilet on the bus! Anyway, we had a short toilet stop and a couple of hours after we arrived in Penang...not in George town where we wanted to be though! Some man took us and another man in his van to George town and dropped us on Love lane. Some luck came our way when we were dropped right outside a nice guesthouse all very new inside and very cheap too, bonus!! We got into the room and then decided to go out and get some food as we thought we'd have a stop on the bus, but didn't so hence hadn't eaten all day. In KL we ate in the mall as recommended by lonely planet, so we thought we'd try the food in the mall in Penang...bad move. The duck looked lovely in the picture so Ian and I chose the same dish, mistake! The duck was like all the bad bits of a duck churned together and even the rice tasted nasty, and how can rice be nasty!!....Believe me it was! So, we picked at the food and then decided we really couldn't eat it, so we went somewhere and paid a pound for a meal rather than 50p!!! They do say you get what you pay for! To top off the bad day we went to the cinema and watched a very bad film with English subtitles, I'll say no more!
Thursday we spent the day looking around Penang, we ended up going to most of the places on the Penang Heritage trail, but weren't actually planning to do the trail. We went to a couple of temples, a mansion and then to the Penang museum which was actually quite good and fairly interesting. From there we walked down to Cornwallis fort, where we saw the obvious, some cannons and there was a small gallery there and a prison cell which Ian locked me in!! We visited another temple and a mosque and then went down to the shopping centre where I was very naughty and bought 4 pairs of shoes. The shoes in this very nice shop were beautiful and I just had to do it, it was the shop I resisted in KL, but I couldn't do it again! The most exciting part of the day was getting back from the mall, we got on a trishaw. It was fab, I loved it. Currently trying to upload the video, but not sure it's going to work on this slow computer! In the evening it chucked it down with rain yet again and we just made it to the red garden food court before we got soaked!

Hey all, hope everyone had a nice easter weekend. I didn't do anything for easter although I did manage to have half a bar of dairy milk!
The hostel we're staying at in Kuala Lumpur is really nice, 'The Haven Guesthouse' I'd recommend it. Only thing is the nocturnal guy that has been in our dorm for the past couple of nights, I didn't get too much sleep last night.
Yesterday we spent the day exploring the city and one day was enough really, there isn't heaps to do here. The night we arrived we went to look at the Petronas Towers (twin towers), looked really spectacular at night although from where we were standing there was lots of buildings in the way of them. So, on exploration of the city we saw an advert in the hostel for a free city tour. We walked a few kms to the pick up point to find that it wasn't running and we needed to book on. From there we did our own city tour, heading first to the Menara KL tower. The 4th largest in the world (Number 1 is the CN tower in Canada which I went up 2 years ago). We took the lift to the observation platform and got an MP4 player (all mod cons here!) to watch and listen about the city. It was pretty cool. We got some good views although it was misty because it was raining around the tower. The view of the towers was pretty cool, as you can see in the photos.
From the tower we headed to China town and then to another street to visit a couple of temples. From the temples to the train station which is great architecture and then onto the National Mosque. I didn't think the mosque was all that great really as it was quite modern and I prefer the older style islamic mosques, we could see an amazing one from the tower. We couldn't go in the mosque as it was prayer time. From the mosque we headed to central market and then back through china town, by this time it was about 9pm and the place was really bustling with people. Lots of men saying 'I give you good price'! From the first whole day here we saw loads and I really like the city, it's very metropolitan.
Today we ventured back down to the towers, we found the good place to take photos. They were really amazing. We spent some time in the shopping centre at the bottom of the towers and then spent the rest of the day touring other shopping centres. On the one floor of the shopping centre you had all the big names, Mont Blanc, Hugo Boss, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Guess, and many more...I couldn't afford to be there! On that floor you had to pay to go to the toilet and on the other 6 you didn't...cheek! However we did go into the Louis Vuitton shop later today so that we could have a look at a real bag as we've seen so many fakes! To be honest, the fakes look exeptionally good! So, we've spent most of the day in just 3 of the many malls in Kuala Lumpur, they are huge! We went to the top floor of the Times Square shopping mall for our dinner. Lovely food and only cost a quid, bargain!! This shopping centre was huge, the food was on floor 10 and there was a theme park running from floors 5-10. It had a really big roller coaster, have to say I'm not sure I'd have wanted to go on it. There was also a bowling alley and cinema, not to mention the hundreds of shops! It's crazy as I don't see how so many malls can keep making money as there wasn't a great deal of people in them.
Oh, by the way, weather's still humid and overcast and currently raining!
Tomorrow we're catching the bus early in the morning, heading for Penang, north west Malaysia. Hope all's well, lots of love xx