. . . . Ricks Extra Long Summer . . . .: Kuala Lumpur and the wait for the Petronas towers

Sad people - no tickets left

the queue for tickets

not a nice drink

a ticket!!

a nice drink!!

the view!!!

Our afternoon out in KL was pretty good. We found a massive shopping centre, called Times Square that is so big, we took half an hour to find the theme park, that is hidden inside it, even though the thing has a roller coaster that is big enough for Blackpool.

After a rest in the hotel later on, Buffy finally arrived back with Joel, who had flown over from Canadia. He will be with is for the next couple of months. We decided to take him out for something to eat and to get a drink, so naturally we headed down to the KL towers again, where after eating in the food court, we found an Irish Pub around the back of the mall, overlooking the fountains and garden. The only two things remotely Irish about it, was that fact it sold Guinness and the sign was written in green!

The next morning, me and Nikki returned to the gardens near the Irish bar, where we had found a 1200metre running track. We did a couple of laps of the track, overtaking a few of the local runners, whilst taking in the views of the towers, then we ran the mile or so back to the hotel, before it started to get too hot. Later, we went on a bus tour of the city. It was supposed to take an hour or so, but with the shitty Kuala Lumpur traffic, we started to get frustrated after not moving more than a mile for about 45 minutes. The bus was hot and sticky and so I clambered down the stairs and asked to be let off in the middle of Chinatown. The rest of the gang followed and we walked the short walk back to the hotel for a rest away from the near 40degree heat of the afternoon. It hadn’t been a bad day though as we had seen a big theatre and some more sights we wouldn’t have got to if we didn’t do the bus.

The evening was a quiet one – a quick walk back to Chinatown, where we had Chinese street food, sat in the middle of Chinatown at a small café that served beers in an ice bucket and claimed to sell chicken frog porridge, whatever that is!! The food was nice enough, with little squid things served in a black sauce with noodles.

After dinner we had one more beer in a bar where a quite obvious arranged marriage thing was going on – A middle aged white woman sitting eating with a young tall black dude, who every now and then was fed by the woman – I think they are both getting what they want out of the relationship. It was funny to watch though as they rubbed noses!!

A quiet night watching a bit of downloaded TV followed, before bed.

The next morning we were up early to get up the Petronas Towers. Only 1000 ticket are sold every day and the ticket office opens at 8.30, so we headed won there for the opening. Unfortunately we were held up at a set of lights, where the traffic seemed to go on forever and we eventually arrived at about 8.40. There was a big queue and a sign, saying all the tickets for the day had been sold!! Bugar. We have two days left here and will try again tomorrow and then Sunday if we have to.

We got breakfast in the mall, did some shopping, where Nikki found some shoes but alas they didn’t have the ones that I wanted and then we took a walk across town to a bus station, where we are planing on getting am overnight bus on Sunday evening to the east coast of Malaysia and onward to some beautiful islands for few days. We decided to buy our tickets now and then we are sorted on Sunday. Quite near the bus station we also found a Canadian Pizza Company, which made Joel and Buffy happy – it may provide us with dinner on Sunday night!

Back to the hotel on the train, costing about 27p, we had a bit of an afternoon siesta before we headed out again late afternoon. Although it was more difficult to get in the hotel today, as there was Friday prayers going on in the market outside, so we had to go around them too!!

One thing we have noticed about KL, is the motorbikes everywhere. The majority of riders do the same thing which is quite weird......They wear their jackets backwards, with the front (at the back) open. We think, it is a way to keep their clothes clean, from the dirty roads, without getting too hot. But this is only a theory. There are a few pictures of people doing it in the blog and on Picasa.

In the evening we went up the KL Tower, to look at the view of the city and of the Petronas towers from the observation gallery. We also had a go on F1 simulation race game, but were a bit disappointed when we were only allowed 4 minutes driving and the 'game' was stopped halfway around the final lap of 3. We enjoyed the tower itself though as it gave great views over the city . I also got some great pictures of Petronas, looking though one of the telescopes. After dinner, a drink and a milk shake, we headed back to the hotel and bed.

We tried again to get a ticket for the Petronas towers in the morning and after getting up at 6.45am, we were in the queue by 7.30. The limit of 1000 people a day was pretty close to us as there were only 30 people behind us in the queue. We took turns to keep our place and watched as people arrived late and were disappointed that the tickets for the day were sold out. We also did a lot of people watching as the queue took nearly 2 hours to get to us. There were some strange people around!!! We finally got to the desk and bought tickets for a tour, starting at 3.20pm, so for the rest of the morning we took a walk around a park, with lakes and waterfalls, plus some bright red dragonflies, that seemed to dislike getting their pictures taken. It was getting really hot, so we eventually went back to the hotel for an early siesta before venturing back out at half 2 to make our way back to the Petronas towers and our tour.

It was well worth the wait from this morning. We had another little wait this afternoon, so we decided to each have a drink of something we have never had before. I some grass jelly drink, that tasted of old cold tea and had lumps of foul tasting jelly in. Buffy had some sort of winter melon drink that was even worse and looked like it had been made from an eggplant. Nicki, however had never had Mountain Dew, which if you don’t know, is a sweet sugary lovely drink from USA. Me and Buffy were both jealous as we poured most of our drinks away!

The tour was over in under an hour – after a short introduction about the building of the towers and a little confusion over our coloured tickets (Haahaa Nicki!) We ascended the 41 floors in a speedy lift, with more buttons than you have ever seen in a lift before. We were allowed 15 minutes to look around the bridge between the towers and take photos, so we took full advantage, taking loads of pictures of each other and the view. It cost us a total of 10 Ringitts – about £2, and after 15 minutes we had done all we wanted, so we rejoined our group and descended the 170 metres to the ground floor.

By this time KL was getting mad- It is the weekend and everyone was out and about, so we grabbed the Rapid train back to the hotel and rested again before our last night out in KL tonight.