Kuala Lumpur - Hot Hot HOT!

Well after the initial hassle upon arrival, having to make do with the stuff in just my rucksack (no, Daz didn't wear my underwear!) and spending a day or so hunting around for a guide book (Kuala Lumpur has an abundance of large, air conditioned shopping malls), we were finally able to start doing touristy things.  Out we went to explore what K/L had to offer!
It boasts an efficient and easy to navigate transport system in the form of various overhead mono rail trains, an underground and overground train system so we took full advantage of this plus because Malaysia is celebrating it's 60th year of independence the fares were half price - wonderful! We visited Bukit Bintang which is full of malls, a large Sports Direct, McDonalds etc. as well as many restaurants and bars.  Here we went to a night club which had 'Rock Night' on a Sunday - with a live band playing who were really good and did covers of Deep Purple. The Scorpions, Bryan Adams... but the place was pretty empty so maybe Sunday isn't rocking for most people!
We discovered a good local restaurant around the corner from the hotel which consisted of a large metal food bar with various 'help yourself'' containers of food.  The meat dishes looked suspiciously dodgy so we stuck to vegetarian and it was delicious plus cheap. The first visit came to 11 ringgit (about 2 quid!) but the subsequent visits kept increasing in cost so we got the impression they were cashing in on our custom and decided to look elsewhere in the end. The woman running it was very tall and wore jeans with a hijab (head covering scarf worn by Muslim women) and reminded me of Cruella De Ville the way she loomed over us every visit. No messing with her!
We also had fun with the hotel and the breakfast. Seems the done thing is to boil an egg for a minimum time resulting in a white, gooey explosion and even though we asked for them 'full' cooked we still got the same thing. Breakfast was basically a coffee (yukky and with sugar/condensed milk if you weren't careful), 2 slices of toast with butter/jam and a 'boiled' egg (sometimes 2 each!). If you dared to ask for more (never a problem elsewhere) then you were told you had to pay! We decided to buy some cereal and use our plastic bowls bought in Bali to boost the paltry hotel breakfast.
We joined a free walking tour one day which should have been for 20 people but ended up with double this. Our guide took us around a tourist museum explaining about the history of Kuala Lumpur and the tin mining boom in the 1800's involving the Chinese and British. We were shown around the main English settlement area (Merdeka Square) and told about it's history with the tour finishing at the club house used by the Brits to sink their gin & tonic's whilst watching cricket on the field in front of it - the long bar inside has a ban on women/children so I (K) was tempted to run around inside so as not to be discriminated against but I was too chicken! We did another free walking tour and highly recommend them as something cheap & interesting to do here.

Batu Caves

'No officer, it wasn't me who stole the bananas, honest'

We took the overground train one day to Batu Caves and were amazed by the tacky Hindu sculptures inside with lot's of bright LED rope lighting in red and gold illuminating the large cave.

Technicolor Hindu Cave - so much for natural beauty!

In addition to this, the sculptures of animals included horses and elephants with brightly painted male genitalia - err yes ok! Weird but each to their own. We carried on to the main caves (one is called the cathedral) which had an entrance with so many steps up to it we thought we would collapse! We made our way up, closely watching the macaque monkeys jumping on people trying to steal their bags/food.  Inside it was more natural than the above cave but with building works in the first area and a Hindu shrine/temple in the second where you could get blessed and receive some sticky rice dished out by some fat Indian guy who looked like he ate all the leftovers! When we left, we treated ourselves to an ice cream only to be confronted by hooligan monkeys looking for free food - I legged it the other way fast whilst Daz played dodge the macaque trying to scoff his quickly at the same time. Some Asian couple with a big bunch of bananas got mugged - a monkey jumped up grabbing her bags then scarpered with the bananas (enough to feed him for a week!). We retreated to the safety of the train making sure no monkey had stowed away in our rucksack.
  Other highlights were the jungle canopy walk under the KL tower, the butterfly farm which was amazing and claims to be the largest in the world as it had 15000 specimens with butterflies in your whole field of vision, landing on you if you wore bright clothes and some were bigger than my hand, the orchid gardens, and the lake side gardens and the temples in chinatown. We actually found the hotel we stayed in 12 years ago when we come here last and went inside to find it had been turned into a cheapo backpacker hostel. We even pretended we wanted a room so we could look inside for a shot of nostalgia.

                                    Monster butterfly consumes hat for an afternoon snack.


   Good stuff that we found was we booked the hotel in a seedy area called Chow Kit which was the red light area (it never said that on booking.com!) and our local supermarket was hooker central. Also there was a booze shop for the local hobos which done a good line in extra strong beer for knock down prices. We ended up in there every night buying our 16.2% Belgian lager and the odd export strength Chang. The area had loads of character and we used to cruise the streets at night taking in the pavement action while prospecting for food/booze and it had excellent transport links to the rest of KL with a monorail station, a train station and a light railway station all within 5 minutes walk also Petalaling bus station around the corner that took us to our next destination the Cameron Highlands.
   

Men only!