9th December 2009 - 11th December 2009:

Despite having over three months to explore most of Asia we are now short on time and decided that a flight to Kuala Lumpur would be time & money best spent over the bus which would take us 20+ hours.

We booked onto Asia's version of Ryanair - Air Asia - and despite some extra charges such as luggage and using your credit card to pay, the experience was far from Ryanair - the cabin crew were actually smiling! The only particularly annoying part of choosing this airline is that Sean felt the need to constantly sing the theme tune from the ads - I am sure you have all heard it 'Malaysia, truly Asia' - only funny the first couple of times.

Before we arrived at KL airport Liza (very clever) decided to investigate the best way into the city but instead of writing the directions on a piece of paper, decided that submitting it to memory (very silly) would be the better option. We are sure you know where we are going with this but needless to say we ended up paying for a thirty minute bus journey to the main airport terminal only to find out that the bus transfer we needed was from the terminal we landed in - after our 4am wake up Sean was far from happy to say the least!!

We can't really put into words how to describe Kuala Lumpur, one moment you are standing on a run down street full of street food stalls and lots of people scurrying around, whilst the next moment you are standing in the middle of the most magnificent display of modern architecture with fabulous shopping to boot - which is even better when the prices are tax free!! One of the shopping centres was so big that it had an actual rollercoaster located on the seventh floor if you wanted that extra thrill after a tough days shopping.

The highlight of our short stay was by far was the Petronas Towers and we even managed to get tickets to go up to the viewing platform - the large walkway around 130 meters in the air that connects the two towers together - and meant we got to look out over the City which was amazing.

However queuing for the tickets was an experience just in itself as they only hand out a limited number each day and despite the ticket office not opening until 10am we were told by the visitor centre to get there by 7.30am to even stand a chance. We thought this was a bit of an over exaggeration but nevertheless didn't want to risk it so arrived, still half asleep, at around 8am, which actually ended up being a very good move as there were already a few hundred people in the queue - do these people not like their beds or what!!!

In addition we took the opportunity to visit the KL tower which was lit up red (although looks pink in the photos) to celebrate World Aids Day.

We also went on the bus tour around the city in order to cram in as much as we possibly could within our short visit and managed to see their impressive lake gardens and palaces, however we left the best stop to the end which was Chili's Restaurant.

For those of you who knew of our love for Chili's you will remember our utter sadness when finding out that it had been closed down in the UK earlier this year - it was the equivalent of losing a close relative……. only much, much, worse!!! However what upset us more than anything was the fact that we didn't get the chance to say a proper goodbye, therefore you will totally understand our happiness when we finally got seated for our "last supper" and not be at all surprised to hear that we ordered WAY too much food for two people, ha, ha!!