An Incredibly Brief Start In Malaysia...

Our first port of call on our adventure was Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. After nearly not being able to leave due to a lot of grounded flights in London and a ton of traffic, we finally begun our 16 hour flight on an incredibly budget Air Asia flight direct to KL. It was a boringly uneventful flight, not moving much and having an asian man asleep on you for the duration tended to make it rather uncomfortable! At the time it felt like the longest journey ever (which is pretty accurate for most British people, as you very rarely need to travel for more than 2-3 hours at a time!) So, upon arriving in KL airport at some silly time which i currently don't remember, the arguments began, mainly because I left the airport straight away wanting a cigarette! It quite quickly became apparent that we should have booked a taxi while in the airport because we had no clue where we were! After a lot of shouting at each other and trying to find a way back inside to get to a booking office, I just kind of snuck past security to go to a taxi booth! This, took about an hour as we were both very tired and grumpy! Fortunately, courtesy of mother, we had a fancy hotel room booked for our first 2 nights. If it's your first time travelling I highly recommend this, mainly because the first time we set foot outside the hotel intending to explore, we got scared and ran back inside! After having a chat with the friendly concierge, we procured a map and directions and set about going on an adventure in KL. The place itself was huge and incredibly easy to get lost, especially if you've spent 99.9% of your life living in small towns where if you walk too far you just end up in a field! Thankfully, KL has a pretty good monorail system which takes you directly to most major landmarks in the city. This made going to the few places we visited pretty simple! Our first destination was chinatown. At the time the place was confusing and a bit too full on, little did we know, that this would probably be one of the more sedate chinatown areas we would visit in asia. Any how, the main problem I, in particular faced, was food. Being a chef, i have had food hygiene drilled into me for the past 3-4 years, therefore i refused to eat street food for the first month and a half of travelling. This put me at a slight disadvantage as most restaurants are ridiculously expensive (compared to street food that is, in the uk restaurant prices would compare to mcdonalds) So, ended up paying to eat at a guest house's breakfast buffet. He tried to charge us 50 ringit, but we said no, and he put it down to 20, so that was a bargain! After a lot of incredibly western food, we went exploring round the shops and market stalls. All we ended up buying was some sunglasses for Eloise as she wanted to try out her bartering skills. We also went into some random shops and took photos of the random shit they sold! We ended up back in the hotel quite sharpish after and chilled by the pool and slept as jetlag had apparently kicked in!

So, there's what our first day in Malaysia consisted of! The next post will be longer and more detailed but my brain has decided to stop working for now!