KL (2)

By the way, there's a few pictures of us on our Flickr page. I'll put some more up when I manage to find an easy way of uploading them!

The third day, we started by strolling over to the mall (again) and going into the amusement park. The rollercoaster was surprisingly good (4 inversions! In a shopping centre!) and we went on all the other stomach-churning rides. I also had some corn...stalls which, in England, would sell Coca-colas and crisps and hot-dogs, here, sell Coca-colas and smoothies and sweetcorn with butter in little cups, and mashed potato with gravy. What a great idea!
Anyhoo, we had a few goes on the arcade...they're easy to find around here, and of course, they're about a sixth of the price, and then we headed out.

We took the futuristic and smooth monorail to Jalan Kuching, a main street that's flanked by pretty statues and colonial buildings, as well as some more modern, Islamic architecture. Strolling south, we eventually ended up in Chinatown. Like most chinatowns, it's a busy, bustling, colourful scene...we walked up and down Jalan Petaling, the main street crammed with stalls selling knock-off T-shirts, knock-off sweatshirts, knock-off watches (We both bought one, mine loses five minutes every six hours and broke shortly after), knock-off ties and cufflinks, knock-off zippos, knock-off DVDs, and other stuff. Once upon a time I would have found this bewildering, but after India, this was easy! We killed a few hours there, nearly buying lots of things, and then eventually headed futher afield with the vague idea of finding something to eat.
We ended up in front of a massage shop (parlour?). Don't worry, it was very upmarket and respectable! We decided to treat ourselves - an hour-long reflexology foot massage and then a back massage came to less than the cost of hiring a towel at a spa at home. It's a bit wierd watching someone spending an hour massaging your feet, but it was quite nice. An hour and a half later, we were both feeling very relaxed, comfortable and energised (although that might have been the green tea).
On the way back, we stopped for a sheesha (or, hookah) at an Arabic cafe, where Alex showed off her Arabic to the amazement of all (not least, me) and then ate at a traditional hawker court. It was refreshing to eat somewhere so lively and the choice was good - and it's nice not having to wait for the bill! Of course, it's really cheap, too, which is good. We headed back on the monorail.

Our last day in KL, and we felt we had seen plenty of malls. We went over to the Lake Gardens, a set of gardens and parks, with, unsurprisingly, a lake in the middle. It was good to get away from the traffic and noise, and the park was empty. We strolled down to the lake and had an ice-cream. We didn't hire paddle-boats, because they had a really long break for lunch and we didn't fancy waiting for an hour and a half in the heat. For the same reason we didn't go in the deer park. There's a bird park and a butterfly park, and we went over to find them, but they were expensive so we didn't go in. Maybe we were tired of deciding not to do things, but when we saw the planetarium we went in (well, it was only Rn1). It wasn't particularly groundbreaking, but it was fun, and it was a bit of a novelty to be in the cool and dark, with glowy things hanging from the ceiling, and buttons to press, etc. I don't know what plasma balls have to do with space, but it's always fun to be able to light up a flourescent tube with your bare hands.

I don't remember where we ate...we must have had something, because the train left pretty late. I might fill this bit in later. [edit: Alex says we ate in a food court again.] But anyway, we went back to the hostel for a shower and to get our bags, and then took the monorail to the station to catch the overnighter train, down to Singapore.