Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in KL dehydrated and hungry, and with a bag of the most foul smelling sweat soaked clothes ever. We were ready for the comforts of the large city, but KL had other things in mind for us. We were planning on taking the monorail from the bus station to our hostel, which was pretty far away, but the monorail was shut down for "45 minutes" when we arrived. A helpful local showed us a newspaper article which stated that the monorail had broken down twice that week, once for over 12 hours. We didn't know when the 45 minutes had started, or when it would end, so we thought we would try to get a taxi. We had heard that taxi drivers in KL are notoriously awful, they over charge, won't use the meter and refuse to pick up passengers if they don't pay inflated prices, but we thought we would have a go. We were denied by all the taxi drivers when we asked for the meter to be used, the first time we have ever been turned away by taxis. It was actually pretty funny, and I respected the fact that they were upfront about ripping people off, it is worse when you find out about the scam when you are already in the taxi. We had no choice but to take the light rail, another public transport system, and walk a very long way to our hostel. We arrived very annoyed at the big city, but once we got inside our cool room, not quite ready to go back to the rainforest. Traditional house dwarfed by the Petronus Towers Big city, beware

We spent the next day mostly inside, we needed a short rest. We slept in, watched a movie and read. When it came time for dinner we decided to indulge and treat ourselves to Pizza Hut. Going to Pizza Hut in China was always a great cultural experience, and we wanted to see if it would be the same in Malaysia. In China Pizza Hut is fancy dining. Not quite so in KL, Malaysia is a little too developed for Pizza Hut to be high class and it has ventured more into the delivery based Pizza Hut that Americans know. But it still was nicer than an American chain, and had some distinctive Asian characteristics. In China we had loved the salad bar, Pizza Hut only allows patrons to go up to the bar once, so the Chinese would make giant towers of salad. It was an art form, we would watch women spend up to an hour on the tall towers, and then struggle to take them back to the table. They would never eat them all, it was all for fun. I had a great time making my tower, it wasn't as high as a Chinese woman's, but I'm still an Asian salad bar amateur. We had Chicken Masala pizza, which was actually really good. It was a little unnerving eating pizza with Burka clad women, but they like their pizza too I suppose. And of course, the Pizza Hut was Halal certified.

Don't worry, it is Halal!

The next day we set out for some exploring and somehow ended up wandering around a never ending maze of a wet market, where I saw a giant cows head, skinned but still intact, eyeballs and all. We should have known better than to eat at a food stall after walking through a hive of unsanitary conditions, but we had a go at a Malay stand and of course I got sick. We made our way to the National Mosque, which was huge, but off limits to foreigners, and went through the lovely Islamic Arts museum. Getting around the city though is quite the hassle, and transportation is terrible. It took us almost an hour to get from the museum to the nearest metro stop. We had to cross several parks, hop a fence, run across a freeway, go over an underpass, walk alongside a busy highway with no shoulder, run a gauntlet of fast moving taxis, go through a train station, down four escalators, past a bus station, swim through a giant cloud of bus exhaust, run along a mysterious path and across one last death trap of a road. We haven't been hit by a car yet, we almost lost Dan to a bus, but somehow we've made it.

Jury is still out on whether we like the city. During the day the traffic is terrible and the smog is uncomfortable. But, during the night, the city comes alive. Everyone is out and about, the temperature is perfect and the street food is wonderful. The beer is super expensive though, so KL's reputation as a party city didn't hold true for us. It is very diverse, people are nice and there is a lot to do. We began to spend more time inside during the day, and then would go out during the night, which is when KL thrives.