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Selamat tengah hari (Good day!) from Kuala Lumpur.
So, after departing Singapore at 6am we arrived in the Malaysian capital at around 8:30 local time and somehow managed to stumble onto a bus headed to the city centre. We were dropped off in a bustling square in the centre of the golden triangle area of the city, filled with huge electronic billboards with absolutely no idea where our hostel of choice (the Paradiso) was. With our huge (and expanding) ruck sacks tightly secured we hovered around for ten minutes or so, looking lost and confused, before I took command (no, really) and eventually located the entrance door to the hostel sandwiched between McDonalds (what are the chances? It surely must be fate!) and one of the huge array of ‘foot massage’ parlours. Im sure their all very legit, I do have my doubts though after seeing how some of the women guarding the doors were dressed. We seem to be making a habit of choosing ropey areas filled with even ropier looking women.
The hostel itself, as with Betel in Singapore, was fine though, clean and secure with a rather jolly local chap seemingly on 24 hour duty in reception, keen to offer advice on local food establishments, advice of which we would later take up.
After dropping the bags in our first private room since arriving in Asia - for a little less than half the price of a dorm in Australia - we again took to the streets, accompanied by our trusty guide book, in search of the famous Petronas Towers, until 2004 the tallest sky scrapers in the world.
Now, those of you that know us will be aware that we do have somewhat of a history of being scammed by various people, ranging from African street folk with threads of colourful cotton in hand in Paris to innocent looking elderly gentleman and their family photo albums in Sorrento, so as we strolled through the city towards the towers only to be approached by a small, shaven-headed, frail looking monk in the customary tangerine coloured robes, well, we were fearing the worst.
Lets just say said monk ambled over to us (obviously frothing with excitement at the sight of two saps ripe for the robbing) and continued to thrust a crappy plastic golden Buddha in my hand along with a pen and demanding that I write in his ‘donations’ book my name along with the amount we had so obviously set out that day to give.
Rather than give the monk his piece of crap back and continue onwards I decided to do the polite thing (a little intimidated by the pushy orange man) and started to jot down “20.00” in the donation column of his little book.
At this stage the orange man began getting very excited, informing us that the minimum donation that he “accepted” was 200 (about 40 GBP). Oh really, is that right? And there was me thinking that the whole idea of a DONATION was that the person doing the donating chose the amount they wished to give. Honestly, religious cause or not these chaps have got some balls…
We eventually managed to barter with the orange con artist over the amount and stuck to 20. He kindly allowed us to keep the crappy Buddha card thing. We’re keeping it as a reminder of yet another fleecing.
20 Ringit lighter we continued onto the towers. Because of the density of high-rise buildings in the city centre, even the huge Petronas Towers are hidden from view until your actually stood in front of them. When you are though you cant help but stand and stare for a second at the scale of the two of them, side by side.
You can buy tickets to ascend to the 41st floor and the sky bridge that links the two towers, but unfortunately we were about two hours late so we had to make do with the outside view.
As I mentioned previously, our jolly hostel owner chap had kindly recommended a local food stand down the road from the hostel called ’Jalan Alor’, which, so he informs, boasted a rather smashing “chicken fish”.
Not quite sure what a chicken fish was but quite literally wasting away with hunger (id estimate at mere hours from death), we found the place, which was a street stall along a long road filled with them, with plastic patio style garden seats out front.
We took the chaps advice and went for the chicken fish - along with salt and pepper squid, special fried rice and a drink each - all for about 3 quid.
The squid was AMAZING. Truly top drawer, the Fernando Torres of squid dishes. If you had paid 20 quid in a posh restaurant you would have still been well chuffed. The chicken fish was pretty good as well, basically a big fillet of which looked to have been char grilled. Sehr gut, as ze Germans would put it.
After loosening the top buttons of our trousers and forcing down as much as possible, we finally tore ourselves away from Jalan’s Alor and back to the room. We needed a lie down after such a hearty feast.
After packing our bags (AGAIN) ready for our flight to Hanoi the next day we opted for an early night.
Vietnam was my personal highlight of the trip before we left home so I was dead excited about what might be in store for us, even though really, I had no idea what to expect, neither of us did…
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