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Our trip from Koh Samui to KL was a bit of an epic...

When our taxi arrived at the guesthouse it wasn't the minibus we were expecting, but one of the ute-taxis with already too many people in it. We squeezed in and waved goodbye to Penzy and David and hung on while the driver drove crazily around the island, stopping to pick up 5 more people! How we managed to fit 17 people in one ute I will never know but we had 3 of the guys hanging off the back! Anyway we made it to the port in one piece and were transferred onto a bus to drive to the vehicle ferry. Unfortunately while we were sitting upstairs on the ferry, someone was going through our stuff in the bus below. Both Shane and my bags had been rifled through and the only thing missing is Shane's manky thermarest pillow. Shame we didn't realise until later when we were at the train station. They didn't seem to want any of our other dirty laundry so at least that was good, but it is still frustrating. Obviously the Kathmandu combination locks are completely useless.

The ferry trip actually only took just over an hour and we were soon back on dry land and in the bus, heading for Surat Thani town. The trip to the train station took about 1.5 hours, and we were turfed off in town and had to take a public bus for the last part, but at least it was all paid for and quite smooth. Once we got to the train station we started the wait until 00:50. It was about 6:30 when we started, and later on we found out that the train was delayed until 1:35. It ended up not arriving until 2 :( But at least once we were on, the 2nd class sleepers we had were comfy and we managed to get a bit of sleep.

Noisy people got on at about 6 so we were awake from then. We got to the Malaysian border at about 10 or so and took all our gear off to go through customs. It didn't take too long but we sat at the station for ages because the train was late and we had to wait for other trains to go by. When we got back on after the border the beds had been folded away and we had some comfy seats to sit in the rest of the way.

The train arrived at Butterworth at about 2, and we were happy to not be ripped off for bus tickets to KL. All the food places were closed at the station since Ramadan has started now, but we found some sandwiches and our bus. The bus was really quite comfy - much nicer than the one we got from Bangkok, but as we pulled onto the highway we realised the suspension at the back was really bouncy - kind of like a really bad day at the back of the truck. We got used to it though. The trip was supposed to be 4.5 hours but we stopped a couple of times for food so we ended up not getting in until about an hour late at about 8 I think. We just got a taxi to our hotel because it was raining and we couldn't be arsed working out a new city :P

Our hotel is Attapsana Guesthouse, a small place with shared bathrooms but its comfy and in a great location.

We only had 2 nights in KL, but we got around to see a fair bit of the city. We got the monorail (feeling a little like Seaworld) to go and see the Menara KL Tower. The view over the city is very nice from up there - it's the 4t highest tower in the world. They also have other little attractions there like an animal area where they basically had a load of snakes and spiders in fish tanks, plus a few other bored-looking species of birds, monkeys and raccoons. They also had a "F1 simulator" which was just a computer game played sitting in a car thingy with pedals and a steering wheel. Shane was disappointed as it wasn't even the Malaysian track. Anyway we walked all the way to the Petronas Towers building but didn't go up it. Everything in the city centre here is really close together but none of the streets are straight so it can be a little disorientating. In the afternoon it started bucketing with rain so we hung out in a posh shopping centre for a few hours and had nasi lemak for dinner (which is a bit weird, rice and a boiled egg, anchovies, peanuts and chilli sauce?). When we left it still hadn't stopped raining but that's the monsoon for you. KL is a nice city - not much to do here but it feels really modern and is probably a nice place to live.

The second day we did a big walk around the city, taking in Chinatown (don't bother, the markets have the same touristy rubbish they have everywhere), past the Jamek Mosque (which was packed with people praying on a Friday), and the gardens near KL Sentral. We got the bus from KL Sentral to the LCCT terminal of the airport for our AirAsia flight to the Gold Coast, which was pretty uncomfortable and we didn't get a wink of sleep, but I did manage to read almost the whole of New Moon by the time we arrived.