When we first decided to go to Malaysia my first thought was "Cool, we can see the world's tallest building, the Petronas Towers". I have been fascinated by tall buildings ever since I read the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid, back then it was the Empire State Building (okay it was an older edition). For years the Twin Towers in NYC reigned as the tallest buildings before being surpassed by the Sears Tower in Chicago. In 1998 Malayasia decided to show the world its wealth and modernity by building the Petronas Towers, the world's tallest building in KLCC Kuala Lumpur city center. The Petronas Towers stood as the world's tallest building until last year when it was surpassed by a building in Taiwan. To say we just visited the world's second tallest building does not have a great ring to it so let's do what they say here and say that we visited the world's tallest towers.

Malaysia is definitely a wealthy country and the first thing you notice are the roads and the excellent quality of the buses. Even the huge bridge that we crossed to get from Penang to the mainland was amazing. On the bus from Penang we had these huge comfortable seats (only 3 in a row); it was great. Looking out the window, the first sight that we were in Kuala Lumpur were the Petronas Towers in all their glory.

The next day we got up early to go and get tickets to visit the towers and cross the skybridge on the 41st floor. They only allow 1200 visitors in per day and normally the tickets are sold out early as they are free. The views were great from the skybridge even though we were a mere third of the way up the towers as the public are not allowed any higher. There was a large mall at the base of the towers and we spent the next few hours enjoying the a/c and all the trappings of the western world, including a wonderful latte.

Our first night, we stayed in a crappy guesthouse in Chinatown and were determined to find something better so we spent the next few hours wandering around and looking for a nice hotel within our budget (or maybe just a tad outside it). It was really hot out so we decided to stop for a quick fruit juice in a local restaurant and no sooner did we sit down when it started to rain quite hard. We ended up staying at the restaurant over an hour before it finally stopped and luckily we found a nice hotel not too far away. Strangely, this hotel was the same one we were about to check out the day before when this guy started talking to us and offered to show us his guesthouse in Chinatown. We discovered that a nice room is really important to us and can be the difference between really liking or disliking a city. Don't get me wrong, I like cheap, but when you get to be my age comfort is more important.

After lugging around our heavy bags in the heat we decided to do something drastic and we went through all our stuff and sent home some stuff we felt we no longer needed. We went to the post office, got a large box and now our bags are 5 kg (10 lbs) lighter. No sooner had we left the post office, though, when we started second guessing ourselves about whether we will need some of the stuff or not. Truth be told we still have way too much stuff and we probably could get away with just 1 large backpack for clothes - everything else could go. We also had some old books and we made our way to this second hand book shop to sell or trade them, but after walking nearly 2 km, it turns out the book shop had closed down. We did check out the National Museum on the way and then spent the rest of the day walking around the Lake Gardens. There was an Orchid Garden, a Hibiscus Garden as well as the largest covered Bird Park in the world. It was quite hot and needless to say we were very thirsty after our walk. I settled for a drink from the fountain while Amie insisted on getting a bucket of beer. On the way back to our hotel, we took a mini-version of a walking tour and walked past the beautiful KL City Hall and some other interesting buildings.

That night we went back to Chinatown for dinner even though the night before we had one of the worst dinners ever when we ordered a Hong Kong style clay pot with chicken & rice. This dinner was much better even though halfway through we had to grab everything and move inside as it started to rain. Chinatown is shoppers paradise and there are loads of people selling everything from bootleg DVDs to Rolex watches, etc., but after just lightening our bags, we were unwilling to fill them with items we did not need.