Stop over in Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in KL at about 10 in the evening - about the time Watford were kicking off their play-off final so no chance to see it. I hadn't realised how far KL airport is from the city. I was a little concerned at one point that we were going to get murdered but thankfully we arrived into the city about 50 minutes after leaving the airport.

The Petronas Towers and the KL Tower were immediately obvious on the skyline. We were staying on a hotel on Petaling Street - right in the middle of Chinatown. It was about half eleven by the time we arrived and things were winding down in the night markets by this time. We were knackered and so just checked in and crashed. No luck in finding out the Watford score though. Our room was a cheap one and hence had no window which was very freaky, especially to wake up to.

The following morning we woke up and managed to get from ESPN that Watford had won the play-off final 3-0. It was the lead news bulletin too and we got to see all the goals!

We wandered out for a bit of sightseeing in a very good mood. Well, me anyway! We got a little lost wandering round the streets of KL but managed to find the monorail line which connected us to the underground. We took the underground up to the KL Tower which is a communications tower. It was hot and humid and we were struggling a little before we were called over and offered a free shuttle bus up to the KL Tower entrance. Miraculously it was actually free!

We got ourselves a ticket to go up to the observation deck. At the deck itself we were given commentary headsets (again for free) and wandered around admiring the view. KL as a city is much more modern since I was last there in 2000 and it is noticeable how many new buildings have been thrown up in that time and how many building sites are there too.

We spent about half an hour up there admiring the view (although it was a little hazy) and taking photos. When we got to the bottom we took the time to wander round the forest that has remained at the foot of the tower (it's in a couple of hectares of forest which they have kept as parkland). The walk was good and there was plenty of information about the trees and we even caught a slight glimpse of a monkey.

We then wandered across to the Petronas towers for lunch and to go up to the skybridge, but we found that the bridge was closed on Mondays. We got lunch in the shopping centre there (nice air conditioning!!) and Dave had a wander round the electronic store. We also sent a parcel each back home to lighten our bags (stuff I wanted to send in Perth!!).

Our next stop was the Central Markets, which are craft markets. We wandered round them for a while but nothing took our fancy. Our next stop was Independence Square where the Malaysian flag was raised when they were granted independence in the 50's. It isn't really a square as it's actually a cricket pitch where ex-pats used to play. It's bordered on one side by an impressive Arabic looking building which we couldn't find out anything about.

We went back to our hotel at this point (after stopping at a net cafe to read everything I could about Watford's win) for a bit of a rest (and cool down).

We then wandered out into the night markets which were right at the door of our hotel (deliberately). Had a bit of a comical moment when a guy at a stall selling football shirts asked me what team I supported. I told him Watford and he said he didn't have any Watford shirts (unsuprisingly!) but then suddenly piped up "but I have Leeds!" (for the non-football followers among you Watford beat Leeds in the final).

We did a bit of shopping - got a pair of cheap sunglasses each and a football shirt each (I got a Barcelona shirt, Dave a Real Madrid) and a few cheap DVDs and then had a good dinner and a few beers.

The next day we got up early to go to the Petronas Towers because the tickets are given away free. We got there about 9:30 (that's early for us now) and managed to get on the 2pm tour. This caused a little trouble with our day so we got a taxi to the KL Butterfly park (we were going to train and walk).

The Butterfly Park is enclosed with nets and has literally hundreds of butterflies everywhere. We had to keep on ducking every once in a while! There was all kinds of plants and several ponds with Koi Carp in them. The area itself was quite small so it only took us about half an hour to wander round.

We then walked to the KL Bird Park next door. This was also enclosed with nets but was a lot bigger. It took us over an hour to walk round and we saw all kinds of birds including peacocks, flamingos, hawks, eagles, owls, ibises, macaws and plenty I can't remember. Really impressive.

We then got a taxi back to the Petronas towers and grabbed some lunch before joining our tour group. We waited in a little room with a video all about the building of the tower, which was very interesting and several displays including one showing how a lightning strike is conducted. When our tour was called we came through to an auditorium showing the same construction film on a loop (I think we saw it three times through by the end). We eventually got called at about quarter past and were loaded into the service elevator.

The view from the bridge was pretty impressive, although not as good as the KL tower because the two towers got in the way of most of the view (you couldn't see the KL tower itself as a result). We'll have to watch Entrapment again now we've been up there though!

Part of the KLCC complex also encompasses a park with a swimming pool/paddling pool and we had a wander round this - mainly because it offered great views of the towers themselves.

There were no night markets in the evening so we just had a little wander round Chinatown and then polished off something called a Swiss Tower (3l beer tower - I'll post a picture).

We had a really early start the next day to catch our flight to Bangkok. Our taxi driver picked us up at 7 and amazingly he was early! Got to KLIA no worries and then just more sitting around waiting in airports!!