October 30th-November 1st

After a lazy morning and a nice lie in, we waved goodbye to GeeGee's hostel and headed up north. We navigated our way through KLs public transport like pro's, backpacks in tow and boarded a bus for the Genting Highlands. The Genting Highlands is a niche entertainment resort up in the hills surrounding KL. It is owned and ran by the Genting group, who for avid football followers are the current sponsors of Aston Villa. The bus we boarded was covered in claret and blue, it had the villa logo on the front, and the 'stars' of the team on the side. When we boarded Declan asked the driver whether the bus was headed for the Genting Highlands or the 'Championship' hahaha.

The journey to the hills is only partly travelled on a bus, so after an hour or so we arrived at another station. This station was for a cable car trip. The cable car journey lasted for 15 minutes and took us through the clouds to the top of the Highlands. The Genting Highlands has four gigantic hotels all connected by escalators and connecting walkways. Obviously fate had already decided that our hotel would be the furthest from the cable car station. As we pushed our way through hundreds of Malaysians walking diagonally we realised that to get to our hotel would also mean crossing the indoor theme park. This was extremely enjoyable for us carrying a backpack full of bricks, and not once did a Malaysian person stop walking directly in front of us to take a picture of nothing.

We were stopping at the First World hotel. This is the oldest of the four hotels but also the biggest. When it opened in 2005 in was the world's largest hotel, it has 6118 rooms, spread across two 25 storey towers. We checked in electronically and headed up towards our room on the 19th floor. We got the room for next to nothing after spotting a deal online. The room we saw online showed it to have a bath. After two months of varying temperature showers, a nice hot bath would be perfect. We strode down the corridor with two hopeful grins; we pushed the card into the slot and opened the door. No bath!!!!! We were gutted, but it was short lived, we noticed something on the bed that has eluded us for a while now. No it wasn't a quilt; it's still far too hot for that, hehe. It was two pillows, each. That might not sound a lot but the one paper thin pillow we have sadly been getting used to, plays havoc with your neck.

We dropped the bags off and put on long bottoms as it was casino policy. We headed off to explore the indoor and outdoor theme parks. The indoor theme park was very loosely designed to look like a miniature world. It had different monuments and statues like the Eiffel tower and Big Ben scattered around, it even featured the Statue of Liberty riding a motorcycle through a building. Indoors was mainly for kiddies with carousels and family style rides dotted about. We headed outside to see what was on offer there. The outdoor theme park had lots of different rides, thrill rides, water rides, simulation rides etc, all of which had a common theme. They were all closed for maintenance!! Well not all of them but all the good ones. We approached the counter and noticed something really strange; the ticket price was the same, even though the 4 main rides were shut. We thought long and hard about this one 'pay full price for a half shut park or meander about for the rest of the day?' the meandering won, hands down.

We went back inside and decided to explore the upper levels in more detail. We found a bowling alley and a massive arcade. We also found an archery course. We took it upon ourselves to test who had the better aim. It was Robin Hood vs. Katniss Everdeen (the Hunger games girl). After 12 arrows each the score came out and old leftie had won. We headed down to the casino then after exhausting all the cheap things we could do.

The casino, one of many in the four hotels, wasn't as Vegas as we had thought. Everyone seemed really focussed and serious, unlike us who were cheering and whooping about winning 500 credits, after some basic maths it turned out we won £2. We milled about inside the casino for a few hours taking small wins on the machines and leaving. We then headed towards the wheel of fortune and quickly became addicted by how big it was. The Wheel was the size of a van and you get to pull a shiny handle to make it spin. We played on this for a while before quitting while we were even. We headed to a McDonalds to hijack their free Wi-Fi.

It was in a McDonalds of all places on the 30th October that Declan became an extremely proud Uncle to Cillian Hopkins.

That evening we skipped dinner and headed to a few of the other casinos. We retired to bed extremely happy with the day's news and our two pillows.

The following morning we went to Snow world! Snow world was a huge freezer set up to look like 'Europe' during the winter. It had snow, obviously, and igloos and a snow slide, all set off with the back drop of a Christmas tree forest and fake European buildings. Before we entered we had to get in all the kit as the freezer was -7 degrees. Declan was chuffed he had to wear an XL coat and gloves, as the Malaysians aren't as big as we are. Melanie was happy she got the proper boots so she wouldn't go sliding everywhere. We entered and had loads of fun and photos. We had a few photos by a Christmas tree and in an igloo. The slide nearly killed the two of us, however it was our own fault, you were only meant to be certain height and weight but we went on anyway. At the bottom we nearly killed the poor guy who had to slow down the rubber rings. We climbed up the hills and threw snow but after half an hour we were utterly freezing and had to go warm up. As we left we realised that Snow world would be the closest to a Wintery Christmas we would have this year.

Later that day we played in the arcade and earned enough tokens to buy a postcard!Declan had a go on a strength testing hammer machine. Not only did he set the top score but he was miles ahead on the second, that badboy will be there for years to come! As we were walking back to the hotel we were 'attacked' by a herd of zombies out for Halloween. We followed them to the centre of the indoor theme park, called Times Square, where a large crowd gathered. After a while some music started and the zombies started performing a routine much to the crowds' enjoyment (see video). They danced for about 3 songs and the crowd were literally going mental at times. After, they kindly let people take photos with them then performed one of the songs again. We headed back to the casino and 'slotted' the night away.

After two goodnights at Gentings we left, we checked out and headed back down in the cable car. We boarded another bus back to KL and from there headed to our next Malaysian stop. Cherating.