Kuala Lumpur, Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Rather than taking the easy route and flying from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, we decided to be a bit more adventurous and see some of the countryside so took an overnight train. We left the bustling city of Bangkok at 2:45pm on Sunday and arrived in Butterworth (still 350 kms outside KL) and 2:00pm the next day. We are having lots of luck meeting new people and we met a very interesting Malaysian 80 year old named Hassan who regaled us with stories of all his world travelling and his family. After a late lunch of Chicken and cashew with rice and Brian's drinking of a couple of Singha beer we turned in for the night in our upper and lower berth at 7:30pm!!!! Well, there we were at 2:00am both wide awake so while everyone else was asleep we got washed (somewhat) and read before nodding off again to the swaying motion of the train. We got up for good at 6:00am and had breakfast then spent the morning reading and then met Luk a blind Christian Malaysian who spoke very good English and just before we left the train he asked us for $$$ for a Christian book!! We had thought we had to stay in this little train station until 9:30pm to catch the connecting train, but as soon as we got off we were accosted by a local who sold us bus tickets leaving in half an hour for KL. Certainly was better than doing nothing for 9 hours. The bus was very nice and we had front row seats and Brian was quite happy to watch a Bruce Willis movie "Tears of the Sun" to pass the time.
Bargaining started again when we arrived and had to get a taxi to our hotel. After not too much haggling we arrived at a fair price and had a nice taxi ride with the driver and his 2 young sons. Our hotel is very nice and we are on the 23rd floor and have an awesome view of the Petronas Twin Towers from our room. They are all lit up at night and look beautiful. We were so happy to have a room and a shower - because of the heat your always feel dirty - and a late dinner. Got to bed about 11:00pm as we wanted to look forward to a full day.