Kuala Lumpur

The flight wasn't enjoyable. An overnighter, I was sat next to the biggest Indian in the world. He was huge...it's no exaggeration to say that he took up a quarter of my seat. So I was very uncomfortable for that four hours, and neither of us slept.
Arriving at KL airport was a pleasant experience. We were met by a cool, vast corridor of glass and steel; signs were plastisized and lit, and there were phones and internet kiosks in stainless steel terminals sticking out the floor.
Alex says it's her favourite airport. I know why. (Also, it's got a small forest in a glass box in the middle!) It's a complete surprise after India!
We had a small crisis in the airport...none of the ATMs would take our cards. Alex made a very expensive call to the english number on the back of the card, and after numerous security questions, they declared that there was nothing wrong with it. Luckily, she had some ringgits from last time she was here, so we had enough for a taxi to the hostel. The taxi driver was very friendly - explaining what various buildings were, and his opinion of the Iraq war, and things - but we were very tired. I was more amazed by the state of the roads and infrastructure and the way people drove and the quality of their cars (smooth and wide; very good; curteously and within lanes; high and mostly Protons, respectively). The hostel is amazing - basic, but very friendly and colourful, free tea and coffee and cornflakes and toast (all from Tesco, bizarrely) and our room is simple but adequate. The first thing they did was to sit us down with a map and explain where the tourist attractions were and how to get there, and suggest some routes around.
We couldn't check in until later, so we went for a wander, with the idea of finding a bank to sort out our cards problem. KL is really nice - clean, and quiet (no horns), with wide pavements and frequent crossing points to navigate the wide, well-marked roads, traffic lights, and plenty of skyscrapers full of air-conditioned shops and malls and banks and hotels (more of that in a minute), and - how could I forget - monorails gliding overhead on concrete pillars, banking into the corners...anyway, I was very impressed, as you have noticed. Probably the fact that India has none of these things made it even more amazing. Not that I don't like India! I'll be really interested to see the rest of Malaysia, actually...it's incredible to think that theres all this here, and yet in the jungles there's still tribes living in communal huts.
So, anyway, we eventually sorted out the card thing after speaking to several banks (you have to tell your card company that you're in Malaysia! After mentioning it to the second girl at the call centre, she says, "Oh yes, there's a note about Malaysia..."). We went into the mall that's opposite the hostel. It's got ten huge floors of shops, two 5-star hotels (apparently), and an indoor amusement park with a rollercoaster, and and IMAX theatre. We would spend a lot of our time here.
We wandered back to the hostel to check in and had a sleep. In the evening, we wandered back over to the mall and ate on the food court floor, with a fellow traveller we had met in the hostel. Then, we went to watch Transformers on IMAX. Awesome.

On Tuesday we took the monorail to the KL Tower. It was quite a stroll to get there; I'm sure there's an easy way but we went up through the forest and nature park in the very middle of the city, and it's not small (and it's not flat either - in fact, it's a pretty steep hill, which I suppose is a good place to start if you want to build a really tall building). Eventually we made it, and with our wallets slightly lighter we shot up the express lifts for a bird's eye view of the city. Unfortunately it was quite hazy, but it was still an impressive view, and the electronic video and audioguides were very talkative, even if they did digress. We shot down again, and strolled back through the forest, which I might have mentioned, is quite big.
We ambled over to the Petronas Towers. I should point out that KL isn't really that big - it's fairly easy to walk from one point on the map to another. So anyway, they're really big and shiny, and you can feel the cool breeze of the AC even from outside. Inside is another huge mall, which we had a look round. You can't go up the towers unless you are there by 8:30am and queue for a ticket, so we had a coffee, and then took the monorail back (via our favourite mall to buy bread, cheese, pringles and peanut butter...we didn't feel like eating out).

As usual, I've run out of time...we've got to shoot off now to get the train to Singapore. I'll post the other two days as soon as I can.