We left Singapore by train, an 8 hour train to Kuala Lumpur. The metro station and train station were both called Woodlands. With our western hats on, we imagined Woodlands to be like a much smaller Paddington in London and have the tube and train station in one location but, we MUST remember not to assume; we're not in a Western country! Even though they are called the same name the train station wasn't by the metro and wasn't within walking distance. It was a paid bus journey away.

We had found a great website, a blog from a train fanatic which gave us all the info we needed about the railways from Singapore up to Thailand and surrounding areas. Now… if we'd been sensible and read the website page to the bottom, we would have found out all the instructions of how to get from Woodlands metro to Woodlands railway station but no, we weren't that smart!

So we're standing in the metro station thinking…. Oh, no signs anyway for the Railway station… hmmm… something isn't right. Umm… We need to be there in like 30 minutes! Luckily we asked the staff, got bus tickets and got instructions and were on our way. As you can imagine, James remained relaxed the whole time and I panicked that the actual train station was a few miles away, we couldn't determine how many miles from any staff or local when we asked so I impatiently sat on the bus and James chilled. Luckily everything went smoothly with no problems and we arrived in plenty of time! Either a lot of tourists make this same mistake or the people of Singapore are very helpful as one local lady helped us on the bus telling us where to get off and which way to go all with one word English words.

So we arrive to the train station, go through immigration for Singapore and then Kuala Lumper, and I gotta tell you…I'm loving all the new stamps in my passport… 2 new stamps all within 5 minutes!

Finally we're on the train…Easy!! I can now relax! James is still relaxed!

We had followed the blog website which gave instructions on how to use the trains and had followed the advice to get on at the second stop of our journey from Singapore to KL so that we paid the journey in KL currency rather than Singapore dollars as we were in fact leaving from KL soil. This saved us about £20 each and worked a treat! :-) The 8 hour journey by train ended up costing us £6 each! Crazy! The only downside was the speed of the train, we swear it would have taken a third of the time in the UK! But it was pretty cool surroundings so we checked out the scenery and chilled out. Only 1 more school boy error… we didn't get time to buy snacks for the 8 hour journey before we left Singapore as we'd woken up late and rushed to the metro station. We assumed there would be a shop or at least something at the Woodlands area but couldn't find one. So ended up spending x3 times the normal price for drinks and snacks of the train. Whoops! Still only pennies but silly to pay more hey?!

We arrived in KL at 10pm and checked into our hostel which was right above Mc Donald's! Well picked Claire!! Lol! I know we shouldn't eat it, we should be exploring and eating the locals foods, but it's just so dam cheap and you know what you're getting and it's always got free wifi.

We'd not really done much research about KL other than James really wanted to go up the Petronas twin towers. I had no idea what/why/who Petronas was but the buildings looked cool, so I agreed we had to go up the twin towers and I later found out all about their involvement in the Grand Prix and their background within oil and gas. Jacob and Harvey would have loved it, the lobby area of the buildings has 2 Grand Prix cars hanging from the ceiling.

We choose to go up the Twin Towers to their observation deck and an adjoining walkway between the towers in the evening and as much as I'm not massively into buildings and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai had been a bit of a let down, The twin towers were actually a very cool building or 2 buildings! The lighting was lovely and the surrounding grounds too. Plus it was connected to a massive shopping mall. James got a bit of vertigo at the very top which surprised us both, so he enjoyed the midway viewing deck that joined the twin towers the most and had to stay away from the edge of the building at the top.
After, we went to another light and water fountain show, this time just water, lights and music, but very beautiful, as the fountains danced to Celine Dion's titanic song.

We only had 1 full day in KL so during the day we explored the city by visiting their Chinatown and looking around the market. We did consider going to the Batu Caves but it had like over a stupid number of steps to walk up and we chose against this in the heat of the day!! Lazy I know! Instead we enjoyed lunch in the market and had an ice cream sundae type thing which wasn't really ice cream as it didn't melt until you put it in your mouth... Delicious!

So KL was short but sweet. We left the following morning in a taxi ride which made it onto the list of highlights in KL. This 65 year old Malaysian taxi driver who chatted near enough the whole time drove us the 1.5 hours to the airport! It should have taken more like 1 hour but he insisted he was very safety conscious and drove under the speed limit the whole way! Thing is, normally this would annoy the hell out if me but he really was rather sweet! Told us history of KL and pointed out landmarks and shared his views on taking time off work when you ill, explaining he couldn't afford to take time off as his needed 120MYR (£23) to live each day working out his taxi taxes, money to give to wife for rent and living and food for himself. He explained he had to be dying to take time off and then it could only be a day or two else he'd be out if pocket too much to catch up on his finances. He was definitely a hard worker but a cautious one at that. A sweet guy :-)