We took a two hour bus to get to Kuala Lumpur, or KL as it's often referred to. Dropped our bags at a not so good hotel. The rooms were good enough (and lets face ot for 15 pounds a night you can't argue!) but it was bang in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Chinatown and the second you step outside the front door onto the street you can taste the petrol fumes - yum! Yep, we're back into the life of a smoggy city, which I think is something we've both almost had enough of!

We all headed straight out for lunch and Scott, our tour leader took us to a street food hall, which wasn't the cleanest of places to have a bite to eat! In fact we heard afterwards that one of the girls spotted a rat under their table and Scott chased it away with his chair, but decided to keep that quiet!! Probably a good thing, as there's no way James would have stuck around and maybe he'd have done a great impression of that cartoon woman in Tom and Jerry that jumps onto the table and screams when she sees the mouse! Got the image? Pretty funny when you look at it like that, especially if you imagine James in the skirt she wears (sorry Darling!) ;-)

After lunch, which was actually not bad at all (I had pork noodles, with loads of chilli) we went on an afternoon tour of KL, with a mute tour guide / driver! The first stop was a Pewter Factory, where James tried his hand at some art work and he was pretty good I've got to say! Then we went to the Batu Caves, where there was a huge gold buddha outside and then to get to the caves themselves, which house a temple, you have to climb a few hundred steps. Normally this would have been easy, but it had decided to chuck it down with rain just as we were arriving, so not only were we getting soaked but the steps were really slippery. Because of this I didn't take my camera, as am so paranoid about dropping it and loosing the photos I've already got! I was gutted when we got to the top though as there were loads of monkeys roaming around in the temple / cave. They were little demons though, as kept trying to steal things that people were holding and a few times had little viscious fights between themselves! Sorry Karl, I'd have loved to get a photo for you - I'll see if I can get a copy from one of the others . . . .

We also saw a huge Palace from outside the gates, as the guards, who were doing great impression of pretending we weren't there, were in charge of keeping the likes of us or any uninvited visitors out. Lastly on this tour we stopped to see the National Monument and the area behind it housed the most amazing statue of soldiers in a war, that I've ever seen - amazing! After this would have been Frances' highlight - the chocolate shop! We got to try an array of lovely chocolate, including white chocolate coconut balls, which were delicious! The perfect end to our day of touring . . . .

This just left dinner at a local restaurant and then a few bevvies in a Reggae Bar in the City Centre. The bad part about this was they had an offer on buckets of spirits and mixers and me and some of the other girls decided to share a few of these! Surprise surprise, I wasn't feeling so hot the next day! We had a chilled one and did a few boring things like laundry, photo CD's, then had an early dinner and checked out the markets in Chinatown, which were pretty good. We resisted temptation to buy anything though, as it's a pain to carry too much - we are looking forward to a spending spree in our last two weeks though!

Overall, we found KL pretty average and probably wouldn't go back . . . not liking the smog any more, actually never did in the first place!