31st July - 5th August - Kuala Lumpur (5th August - Happy B'day to my baby bro - although I suppose not such a baby at 25! have a good one Ste!)

Oooh you are in for a long one now... Kuala Lumpur has been fantastic. We were only meant to be staying here for 5 nights and ended up staying 6. I really wanted to stay longer, in fact I could easily move here. we both could. It has been our favourite city of South East Asia.

Kuala Lumpur is the capital city of Malayisa and this is where I went to school all those many years ago but ti has completely changed since then! We arrived at about 4pm from Cherating and managed to negotiate the monorail around the city to a guesthouse. The first the thing we seen as we entered the city was the Petronas Towers...wow...amazing! We checked into our guesthouse (with clean sheets YIPEE!) and went for a Roti Chani and then attempted to visit the many millions of huge shopping malls here! Absolute bliss! We mainly got our bearings that first night and had an early night one as had a busy day planned sightseeng the following day. Oh and Si had his first pint in 5 months in an english pub we found!

Ok so the next day we were up with the birds to go and queue up at the bottom of the Petronas towers 4 the limited free tickets they hand out to visit the skybridge. You have to get one of these tickets as you are unable to buy tickets. We thought you got your free ticket then went up...erm no...we got there at 9am and the queue was equal to those seen in Disneyland! We queued for an hour and then received our free tickets but for the alloted time of 2.15pm!

Nevermind we had other places to visit so went and took photos of the towers, the building is that huge though that you still can't get it all in if you lie on the floor! I will write more on the lovely P.Towers later.

So with our trip to Petronas Towers put off till later we renegotiated the monorail again (we were experts at the end of the 6 days!) and decided to visit Menara KL (KL Tower) which is 421m and still remains an impressive structure despite been eclipsed by the Petronas Towers. It still holds the highest view of the city as the viewing deck is 100m higher than the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers (you are only allowed up to the 41st floor - the skybridge - out of 88 in P.Towers.)

The viewing deck of the KL T ower is 276m, it is the worlds 4th highest telecommunications tower. We got some good photos of the city below despite the haze and even managed to get more of Petronas Towers. (I'm sorry I'm obsssed with the twin Towers!)

From there we had lunch and then headed back towards KLCC (the area surrounding the towers) and went window shopping in Suria KLCC shopping mall (it is built at base and surrounding the towers) full of designer shops like Tiffany's and Co and Armani. We could only dream of shopping in them.

It was finally appraoching 2.15pm so we headed back to the base of the Towers. The Petronas Towers was opened in 1998. It's 88 storeys of steel clad twin towers rise up some 451.9m and are the headquarters of the national oil and gas company, Petronas. The highest you can go is the 41st floor, to the Skybridge which connects the two towers and is 170m above gound.

Our guide told you that the structure took 2 1/2 years to build, it is the tallest twin towers in the world and was the tallest building in the world until recently. We went up in the lift to the skybridge and were told we were going up at 5 - 6m per second.

The skybrdge was very impressive, it is 750 tonnes which is the equivalent of 2 boeing 747's!! Again we got snap happy up here! Nothing new there then! The guide told us it takes 3 months to clean all the windows of the twin towers, a never ending job!

The next day we did a day trip to the Genting Highlands. The Genting Highlands is 50km north of KL on the Pahang border and they are 2000m above sea level. We got a bus to the base of the highlands and then took the Genting Skyway to the top which is a 3.4km long cable car (the longest in South East Asia) glide above the dense forest upto the highlands themselves. The cable ride is definitely not for those scared of heights!

At the highlands there is a huge outdoor and indoor themeparks along with an immensely popular casino! It was pretty chilly up in the highlands so the fleece and jumper made yet another appearance!

We had a great day being kids going on all the rides and games and reeking havoc in the arcades, we even went on the kids rides, bumper cards and fruit machines! Then even had a wind tunnel for a simulated skydive but the next alloted time slot was when we were due to catch the bus back to KL, plus I wouldn't have been allowed to take photos of Si if he had done it either. Again we were shattered when we got back late that night.

The following day was yet another touristy day visiting the Lake Gardens, Bird Park and National Musuem. The 4th we went shopping round all the malls and then that evening visited the area of Petronas Towers (yes more photos but of a night!), went for a meal then hit the bars around there, it was a good night.

We loved KL and hope to visit again soon xx