I ended my last night in Bangkok just as I'd started it way back in October... eating street food down a dirty alley, so everything's come full circle. After one final mango and sticky rice and a little cocktail, I went back to my hole of a guesthouse on Khao San Road (literally the worst place I've stayed in all my travels to date, depressing!) Arrived at the airport in good time the next day, so did some window shopping in all the obscenely priced shops there. Needless to say no purchases were made. By the time I'd settled down on the plane with my book we were practically getting ready to land, in what looked like a palm tree plantation (KL's LCCT - Low Cost Carrier Terminal - is pretty far out of the city). After an hour on the bus I found myself wandering around Chinatown following signs to Reggae Hostel, which kept saying it was 20m ahead. I was very happy when I did find it though, mainly because of it's uber clean hot power shower, with free shower gel, it was like heaven. Went out for dinner with a lovely Aussie called Claire who I was sharing my dorm room with, and planned the next days' excursion.

First thing Friday we went to the Batu Caves, which I have to say I wasn't mega impressed with after the hour bus ride and 272 steps up to them... although there were some cute monkeys there which made up for it, slightly. You could also choose to have your photo taken with a snake/iguana - how very cave-like!? One good thing came out of the trip though as we met some very entertaining Irish lads, who we spent the rest of the day with. On the bus back we hopped off early when we saw the Petronas Towers, which were deceptively further away than they looked. We realised we were on the wrong side of the highway and so took a lunch break at a little local street cafe where we made some guesses as to what all the dishes were. Once we worked out how to use the subway and made it to the Petronas Towers it was all very surreal; Mango, Zara, Body Shop, Topshop... I could have been in Blue Water! We even stopped for milk and cookies. That night we met back up with the Irish duo and a couple of others at the Reggae bar (the only place to go in town) played some pool, smoked some strawberry sheesha, had a boogy on what I think was a dancefloor... Tried my best not to wake anyone up as we got back to the dorms, although the bed creaked if you breathed within a metre of it so probably wasn't so successful.

The next morning Claire and I braved the local bus station (bus sauna more like it) to find our bus to Melaka...