from towers to caves

Kuala Lumpur! What a place. It's difficult to describe the largest city in Malaysia without getting a little tongue twisted. From the sky high twin towers of Petronas to the stunning variety of fruit in the markets to the sea of races and faces all bustling together in the crowd it's hard to put your finger on one thing that makes KL great.

Yesterday we checked in, dropped our stuff off then went out in search of food. Charlotte's uncle found us in a large shopping complex and took us for a ride around the city at night. The Petronas towers were all beautifully lit up - with a height of 1453 feet, they are one of the tallest towers in the world - amazing. They can be seen from all over the city and they represent all the progress that Malaysia has made, and hopes to continue making. Apparantly you can queue up in the morning and get a free ticket to go up to the bridge between the towers and we planning to do that this morning but we managed to sleep in until almost noon!

So instead of breakfast this morning, we had dim sum in the hotel restaurant - yum! I tried rock oysters - yuck, and dragon fruit for the first time which has an unusual white flesh with tiny black seeds but is so yummy! The dim sum was good and the coffee (much needed) was excellent.

Then on an organised trip to the Batu caves. This is a holy place for Hindus in Malaysia - apparantly they had some festival there yesterday and there were thousands of people there so today when we went they were doing a massive cleanup job - what a pong! There were some postcards there that showed pictures of people with massive needles through their cheeks holding heavy loads and stuff like that. I'm glad I wasn't there then! Still, it was a beautiful, if heathen place.



We came back to KL and went to Chinatown where I bought some otaheite apples, of course they aren't called that here, I can't remember what the man called them. They aren't quite ripe yet but I can wait! Got some postcards too... must remember to send them...

Tonight we went out for dinner with Charlotte's uncle and grandmother - a real chinese meal eaten outside at a food court. I have no idea what we ate but it was all delicious.



Tired now, tomorrow we go on a tour to Malacca which is supposed to be full of Malaysan history. I'll do an update then so look out.