Early start for sightseeing today. Up at 6.30am so we've only had 5 hours sleep!! But we have to be at the Petronas Twin Towers early to get free tickets for the skywalk observation deck.
We jumped on the monorail and walked another 15 minutes to the towers. Fancy looking place with lots of workers arriving - wonder what they do and if they have any jobs available (just kidding YBS). We walked inside to find out where to queue for the tickets. Found the notice board...no skywalk tickets left. Then another notice board behind that...closed on Mondays!!! Stupid place.

Wasn't such a bad thing actually because we also wanted to go to Batu Caves this early, which we were going to do tomorrow, and it's a taxi ride away anyway.

First, we went to get some breakfast and coffee in the mall on the bottom floor area of the towers. Fortunately no shops were open, so I wouldn't have to drag Therese out of each one. We even spotted M&S. Oh my god, what if they do food!? What if they do mince pies!?!?!? It was closed, which is a good thing.

So, we went to get a taxi from the towers to the caves. First taxi we asked wanted 50 Ringitt (£10)!! Next guy said 25 Ringitt (£5)!! Con artist. It was about a 20 minute taxi ride so not too bad a price. There's a bus that we could've got but we read a few comments from people saying it's a farce.

We made it to Batu Caves and agreed with the taxi driver to meet back in two hours. There's a massive gold statue of some religious figure and to the left a steep, long set of stairs up into the middle of a huge limestone cliff. And there's little monkeys jumping around everywhere.
The stairs are really steep, but we've done the great wall so can handle it... We made it to the top and it looked pretty impressive apart from seeing two shops in there and then some guys trying to sell pictures with snakes. We walked through and then up another set of steep stairs but they weren't long. There's a big opening there with shrubs and small trees with little monkeys playing around. And that's it. We couldn't believe it. There was nothing else to it. I mean, it was pretty impressive the size of it but there wasn't really much to it and there's concrete and metal poles all over the place. I think that's because it's a kind of pilgrimage place and gets very very busy around that time apparently, so maybe for safety they made the huge concrete areas. Shame.

We spent some time watching the monkeys to try kill some time and then walked back down. We still had over an hour to wait for the taxi to come back to get us! We booked him to come back because we didn't want the taxis at the caves trying to rip us off which we'd been warned about.

He turned up on time anyway and we headed back to the Petronas Towers area to have a look around the mall there...really, we wanted to go into M&S. And guess what, they do Mince Pies! Just a shame it's £3 per box!! We were very tempted but managed to resist. But then...then we saw Percy Pig...AND Pals! Don't know why we put ourselves through it.
The only food they had were things like crisps, biscuits, sweets, tins, jars etc. Could've really done with a decent sandwich. All way overpriced too. Most things were double or triple the normal price.

After picking our slavering jaws up off the floor, we had a quick look around the mall. I don't really know why we do because we ain't going to be buying anything. Just interested in seeing what shops they have I suppose.
We made it to the food court level and were starving so ate in there. Really cheap as usual, about £2 a meal. The thing is, McDonalds do a lunchtime value meal making it only £1.20 for a chicken sandwich meal! Why do they do that to me!? I really could've eaten one, but need to stop eating fast food. So I had a chicken kebab instead...
They had a big chart saying why they are a healthier option and all the fat drains away, blah blah blah.

We made our way back to our guesthouse and I decided to get my haircut at this little barbers we'd seen. I had a bit of a dodgy do last time I used my own clippers with the broken prong - few bumps here and there.
Anyway, SpeedyCut it's called. 13 Ringitt (£2.60) for a cut within 15 minutes. I don't know how they're trying to advertise there. Is it a good thing that they cut your hair so quick? Doubt it looking at the last guy who came out. They can't get a number 4 all over wrong, surely.

Oh, number 4 isn't the same over here, as it is England, it's more like an 8. I tried to explain a few things and asked him to try a lower grade and then show me how much hair came off but he didn't seem to have a clue what I was talking about even though he spoke English. I was trying not to speak Yorkshire as well. I told him to go with a grade 2 and see what happens.
Turned out alright. Malaysian grade 2 isn't even as short as UK grade 4 though. But it'll do. Then, to get the hair off me, the guy pulled put a vacuum cleaner. I kid you not. He had one of those brush parts on the end that you use for staircases and was using it on my head and neck, and in my ears...
Glad I cut all my hair off and didn't want it styling all the way through Asia anyway.

We didn't do a load more other than go back out for some cheap food court tea at about 5.30pm. We're tired from our early start and have another early start tomorrow. Petronas Twin Towers round 2...

(I've put a 3 posts on today: 11th, 12th and 13th of December)