16/11/08 Travelling from Penang to Kuala Lumpur today. On the journey down here we passed a field with a cricket match being played on it, and another field next to it with rugby posts in. I was quite surprised to see it, but I suppose it could have been an International School, and Malaysia is part of the Commonwealth after all so the British influence would come into play. The landscape was a lot more mountainous and forested than Thailand and Cambodia. We arrived at K L in the middle of a thunderstorm; all the roads had turned into shallow, fast-running rivers. The first thing we did was go into an internet cafe and look into accommodation, and then we went round and looked. The one we ended up in was in the middle of Chinatown, so the area had a lot of atmosphere! The road next to ours - Petaling Street - was filled with a market selling tropical fruits, pirated video DVDs, leather bags and fake watches, and there was a lot of colour everywhere. On the tropical fruit stands, I discovered that the fruits which looked like giant lychees were actually the infamous durian fruit. In one of the hostels we tried, they actually had a notice up saying 'no durian beyond this point'! (The smell is really bad when they're cut open, apparently.)

17/11/08 We had intended on going up to the bridge between the famous Petronus Towers (at one stage the tallest in the world) first thing, but then I read in the guidebook that it's closed to visitors on Mondays. Instead, we decided to walk to Merdeka Square, which was the British colonial core of the city and is surrounded by colonial and Moorish architecture, via Central Market - a hall filled with Malaysian handicrafts stalls. The map in the guidebook was a bit useless, though, so we couldn't find ithe market where the map said it should have been. We found Merdeka Square though; it contains the tallest flagpole in the world, a fountain, lots of Malaysian flags, and a field with what looked like an extremely dilapidated cricket strip without any markings on it in the middle.

After some lunch at a famous cafe nearby, where we had noodles local style and some caramel custard pudding (I loved it, Dave didn't so much..), we went back to our hostel, where we bought our bus tickets to Malacca tomorrow. Then we carried on walking to the National Museum. This took about an hour and a half, because the map was not good and the city is laid out in a very confusing way for pedestrians. I was so knackered when we finally got there that we had to have a drink at the cafe first to revive my energy. The musuem was very good - quite a lot of information, and presented in a far better manner than the Indian Museum in Calcutta; the exhibits looked a lot better cared for, for a start. There was a prehistoric gallery, a colonial gallery (filled with weapons and other artefacts from the Dutch, Portuguese and British occupations of the different Malay states, and information about the major industries of the 19th and 20th centuries - tin mining, rubber plantations, and rice and black pepper cultivation), a gallery about Malaysia in the past 50 years or so, and a gallery with different Malaysian sea creatures in, both alive and stuffed. Outside the museum, there was a hall with information about the tribes of Sabah and Sarawak and their traditional handicrafts (woodcarving, masks, weaving, etc.).

On the way back home we came across the Central Market! We went inside and had a look round. Downstairs was filled with carvings, souvenirs, leather goods and things like that, and upstairs was a batik clothing emporium. It was very colourful and interesting to look round, but we didn't get anything. However, we did stumble across a palmistry reader - and on an impulse, I went inside. I ended up having a 5-10 minute reading; the Chinese man doing it was quite convincing actually, the way he seemed so certain and hesitated so little, but obviously I remain sceptical about it all! The first thing he made me do was write my name and date of birth down, and then I had to clench my fists in front of him with my thumbs pointing upwards. Then he made me interlace my fingers, and then finally face both my palms upwards. He told me a lots of interesting things about myself, some good and some bad. He said some other stuff as well, but he had quite a thick accent and I didn't like to interrupt to ask him to repeat himself, so I didn't catch part of what he said. It was the evening by now, and we were tired from all the walking we had done today, so we had some dinner and then had an early night.