Well after a few more days in KL we have been having fun, the shopping is fantastic; everything from the markets where you can haggle for a good price or if this is not your scene there are many shopping malls, large multi-story places where the prices are fixed but still very cheap by Australian standards.
We went to one of the main shopping precincts that had all the designer label stuff, no knockoffs here, all legitimate items and all mega prices of course!. But 100 meters down the road are all the knockoff items, Armani clothes, Rolex watches, Jimmy Choo bags you name it they have it. We haven't bought much yet this is just a recce as we will be stopping in KL again on the way home from Europe so we will shop then rather than carry it around with us now.
We spent time in the city central area but unfortunately we missed out on the Petronas Tower sky-walk because they only allocate so many tickets per day and you have to queue for them at 6:30 in the morning or miss out. When we mentioned this to our tour guide he laughed and said that the locals make money from this by queuing early for the tickets, which are free, and then selling them to the tour-guides who can then sell them to tourists like us!!! see "Malaysia is good" he said "everyone can make money."
We had a great tour out to the town of Kuala Selangor which is famous for seafood and fireflies. We booked online with a great guy named Michael who runs his own adventure tours business, he picked us up at the hotel in a mercedes then drove like a lunatic through peak hour traffic 65Km to the coastal town of Kuala Selangor. When we arrived, our knuckles still white from hanging on for our lives, thank goodness it was a mercedes and bigger than most other cars on the road, we drove to the top of a large hill from where we could look out over the Malacca Straights, some time ago the Dutch built a fort and lighthouse there, nowadays this spot is more famous for the silverhaired monkeys that inhabit the hill, you can feed them, the tourguides provide green beans, the monkeys love them and will take them from your hand, this was great fun and two adult monkeys had babies with them. Chris really enjoyed this part of the tour.
After feeding the monkeys it was time to feed the humans, it seems like all we do is eat on this holiday, but the servings are small and we like to enjoy plenty of variety so we have been trying as much as we can. The tour included a seafood dinner at a local restaurant, the word restaurant is a much misssed used word in Malaysia, a restaurant can be a kiosk with 2 or 3 tables and chairs or it can be as we know; a full blown tastefully decorated fine dining establishment. The seafood restaurant in this case was a large tin roofed covered area with about 50 tables with plastic chairs on the riverbank. By now it was dark and we couldn't see anything anyway. The food more than made up for the ambiance. It was full of local families enjoying a Saturday night dinner, this is always a good sign. Michael choose well we had chilli crab, butter prawns, a fish dish, green veggies and the ususal fried rice, the chilli crab was to die for!. The crabs were fresh from the large holding tanks that were all around the restaurant.
On to the main part of the tour; a visit to see the fireflies, this was spectacular, a trip down the river in complete darkness in a silent electric powered dingy. The fireflies inhabit trees on the riverbank and the scene looks like a christmas tree with hundreds of blinking lights. As you cruise slowly down the river the trees are alive with small brightly blinking lights, something we will remember for a long time.
Only a couple more days of KL then on to Europe, we are just planning to relax and enjoy the pool a few cold beverages and generally just chill out before the next leg.P.S The temp in KL is 33 degrees C and in Paris will be 15 degrees C.......what are we in for?
