We arrived into Kuala Lumpur airport around 11.30pm after a delay of our flight from sandakan. We thought we'd have to take an expensive taxi to our hotel in the city, but we found out we could take a bus pretty cheaply. We used a company called city star and paid 18 ringgit each, which was for an hour journey. It drops you at the hotel too, bonus. When we got on the bus it was freezing as the air con was up so high, and we had to sit for over an hour! It was packed full so we had to grin and bear it. There was a commotion along the way and they stopped when we were near the city. I thought they were asking everyone to get off the bus, which was strange. Then they were telling us to change buses for hotels. So we had to get on a smaller minivan, which would take us to our hotel. The air con was just as bad on here, and I had to sit in the front, right beside the fan blowing out at me! I just wished we could be there as it was around 2am by now! We arrived at last, and got dropped off right outside the hotel, where we crashed out for a well overdue good nights sleep!

Bukit Bintang- low yat plaza

The next day, we had our first lay in for ages and made it out of our hotel by lunchtime. We wanted to head down towards the Bukit Bintang area, this is where most of the good shopping malls are, and also the technology haven; low yat plaza. As our laptop got stolen in Buenos Aires, we wanted to buy a cheap one to replace it with the insurance money. So we headed to find the low yat plaza mall. It was a large shopping centre dedicated to all electronic products. It was much nicer, than the sim lim one we visited in Singapore and much more modern. The good thing about buying a laptop in Malaysia is that they use the same plug sockets as us, and most of the laptops use the English keyboard. We walked around the levels, but did get hassled by quite a few people, which was annoying. I had checked online that if you are going to purchase a laptop here, make sure you get the staff in the shop to set the laptop up in front of you and make sure that one is the product you take home. There were stories of ones being switched for non genuine windows products. We found a little Asus, similar to John's old one, with a lower spec and compared prices of a few sellers. When we got a good price, we settled and bought it. We tested it out in store and it was fine. It came with a years international warranty too, so it should be ok.

We tested the laptop when we got back to the hotel and again it seemed to be fine. It will help me keep up to date with the blog and for uploading pictures, and backing up our travel photos too. It's good to back them up somewhere other than just on the external hard drive. After playing round with the ultrabook for a few hours, we chilled and watched some films as our hotel has an English movie channel. After 8 months of travel, i'm beginning to want to chill out in front of the telly, which is something we haven't really been able to do in South America.

Petronas Towers

The next day, we wanted to go and visit the Petronas Towers. We looked up the prices of going up the tower and across the sky bridge and it's pretty expensive, plus you have to get in the queue to book tickets by 7am. They also have a limited number of tickets they can sell, so it wasn't really an option for us. We also considered booking lunch at the KL (Menara Tower) as you get a good view of the towers from there, but luck not being on our side with the weather, it was an overcast day and we wouldn't have been able to see them anyway! Also, by going up the Petronas towers, you don't actually get to see them in the skyline, so we decided we won't go up the towers, we'll just visit them on the ground and marvel at them from there.

We headed towards the towers, just looking at top of them above the city to see them dominating the skyline. It was a bit further than we first realised, so we stopped off along the way in Bukit Bintang to get some energising fruit juices. We then carried on and found the Petronas Towers. As we approached from below, I felt dwarfed by them, they are huge, a mere 1483 feet tall. From 1998-2004, they were the tallest freestanding building in the world, until the record got taken over by the Taipei 101 in 2004. We marvelled at their impressive architecture, and just looked up in awe at them. Or should I say one of them, as from this angle, you can only see one of the towers.

There is a luxury shopping mall built right underneath the towers. It has most of the big designer brands inside. We took a wander through the mall, only passing the shops. We found the exit that leads to the park and gardens. This is directly in front of the towers, and best of all, it's free. There is a pool with some water features nearby, and a paddling pool for kids. Once you walk up onto the bridge, you can see both of the towers standing tall together. I must have taken a couple of hundred photos easily! From this angle, the right tower looks slightly taller than the left, although it's not really! There's a dolphin and whale sculpture in the water, so we got closer to that and took more pictures from that angle. I really would love to see the towers all lit up at night, they would be a show stopper.

However, for now, we had to walk all the way back to where we're staying to pick up the laundry we'd put into the dry cleaners. It wasn't ready for another day, annoyingly, so we could have spent the evening around by the Petronas Towers. We were supposed to check out today, so it's lucky we decided to stay another night. As we'd done so much walking, we were knackered and couldn't be bothered to go out. We saw our hotel has food delivery services, so we just ordered a nandos to our room and watch some more movies that evening. We're turning into lazy bums!

Views of the city skyline? Hmm

The next day, we really wanted to visit a part of the city where you get a better view of the city skyline, and the Petronas Towers. I tried searching online for good views of the city, but I could only find out where you get a good view of the Petronas Towers, and not the rest of the city. I wanted to find a place where we could look out over the towers and the KL tower, but it was too much like hard work, so we gave up on that idea in favour of getting a great view of the Petronas Towers. Lots of online blogs had recommended that the best place to see the towers was up on the 33rd floor of the Traders Hotel, in the Sky Bar. So that's where we're headed tonight! The weather is slightly better today too, even with some blue in the sky.

Sky bar- Traders Hotel

The plan was to arrive at the bar in the late afternoon to grab some good seats. Apparently if you get there later, all the good window seats will be taken. It's a pricey bar, especially for budget backpackers, so we decided to hold back and got there after 5pm as we can't really afford to be buying lots of £5.00 a time soft drinks! In the meantime while we waited to go to the bar, we hung around the shopping malls and sat around the park killing time.

So we put our best glad backpackers rags on and luckily when we got in the bar, the window seats were still available. We grabbed the best seats in the house and ordered some mocktails as they were much cheaper than cocktails and waited for it to turn from day to night. We drank very slowly and tried to make them last. I kept taking loads of pictures from the window, the towers were perfectly symmetrical from here. I think if we'd arrived 5 minutes later, all the window seats would be gone. Some older French couple sat opposite us, they must have thought I was some crazy lady taking so many pictures!

Sunset

We picked the best day to come up here as the sky was pale blue and the sun was fast approaching sunset. We were actually lucky that the sun made an appearance at all, considering how the weather has been over the last few days. So although the sun didn't set right over the Petronas Towers, it did set further west, but you could still see the sunset from the window. It was pretty spectacular watching the colours in the sky change from blue, to orange and pink. I took so many pictures, it's unreal!

Diamonds in the sky

Once the sun had set, I was looking forward to seeing all the lights on the buildings turn on. It felt like we were waiting for ages, but eventually the lights went on to reveal what can only be described like diamonds in the sky. The towers lit up white and they were glowing like a diamond. Lots of other buildings lit up, but the Petronas were the star attraction for a good reason. Underneath the towers, the water feature by day, also lit up, making for a stunning setting.

From sunset to moonlight

We couldn't stay in the bar all night as it was too expensive, so we left after dark and walked out under the towers to see the moon right above them, it looked magical. We saw that the water features had loads of colourful flashing lights, which was pretty cool to watch the display. It was like we saw in Singapore though. We left to get some food in the shopping mall. As we walked back to the hotel, John saw the arsenal game playing, so we went into an equally expensive bar as the Sky Bar so he could watch the beloved arsenal get beaten 3-0 by Everton! We promptly paid up and left. Apart from arsenal loosing, we've had a really good evening out at the bars seeing the towers. It's free to get in the Sky Bar, and by far the best place in town to see the towers. For the price of a drink, you get great views over the city, although you don't get to see the KL tower. You can't have it all though, can you!