Friday October 24th

This morning John, Slap Shot and I were set to fly to Kuala Lumpur and we would be meeting two other guys there who spent the first two days in Langkawi. We took the 9am tender across to the shore just to be safe on time and we walked around Penang for a bit before heading to the airport for our 12:30pm flight. The airport was only 20 minutes away. We ended up meeting a professor and another student at the airport. This professor is very unique and has lived in over 90 countries, currently teaches in Amsterdam and owns a bar and hotel. He is single so he is just living the life now and continuing to travel. We were all on the same flight to Kuala Lumpur so we were all able to sit next to each other on the plane.

We didn't realize this, but although it was only a 40 minute flight, the airport in Kuala Lumpur was about an hour away from the city. We took a bus into the city to cut taxi costs. The main section in Kuala Lumpur is called the golden triangle which is where all the huge malls, hotels and restaurants are. We got to the hotel around 4:00 and had a message from the two other guys who had been to the hotel already but couldn't check in because the room wasn't under their name. We went across the street to a mall that was full of designer stores and killed some time before meeting them in the hotel at 5:00. After meeting them we went back to the mall and shopped a bit and then went to a restaurant for dinner. It was not typical Malaysian food, but was called a fusion restaurant so it had a little bit of everything. After dinner we went back to the hotel and by this time it was dark and we had a great view of the Patronas Towers all lit up from our hotel room. The Patronas Towers are the tallest twin towers in the world and were pretty amazing to see. We got dressed in nice clothes and went out for the night. After staying out for a little bit we came back and logged some time on the internet because it was free!!

So overall today was pretty uneventful, just traveling to Kuala Lumpur. The city was nice, very clean and full of huge 5 star hotels. The section we were in was a lot of business buildings and hotels, and surprisingly there was only really restaurants in the malls. There are malls just like the one across from our hotel all over the golden triangle district, which are full of the top designer brands with really expensive clothing. There are no street vendors, and I didn't say this before but in Penang the Malaysian flag was everywhere but we hardly saw any flags here in KL. The flags in Penang were hanging form every shop, stickers on cars, and other places too. It is the best display of nationalism we have seen so far surprisingly; especially after being in India I didn't see a single Indian flag.