Kuala Lumpur

Here is a view from my window on the bus ride from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, straight jungles of palm trees.  The bus ride was six hours and we went through immigration three times so I got lots of awesome stamps on my passport.  I made some friends on the ride by sharing my mystical chocolate covered goji berries from California.

Kuala Lumpur is a crazy mish-mash of cultures, combining Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian... Soooooo needless to say the food is blowing my mind.  I'm staying in the Chinatown district, which has the cheapest accommodation and the best food.  In searching for food I try to find the dirtiest looking place that has the most people, they tend to be winners every time.

 Next day I headed out to the Batu Caves with a Russian girl from the hostel named Natalia.  The best part about the caves?  There are monkeys!  Tons and tons of little bastard monkeys!  I actually found myself much much more interested in what the monkeys were doing than the actual caves so I videoed them a lot.  I've been told that I will be encountering many many more and I couldn't be more excited.  They are as common as squirrels except they'll come steal your sunglasses or wallet.  They especially LOVE plastic bags, I saw a little girl with a bag full of bananas... bad call on her part, the monkeys went to town.

Some afternoon delight.  The Tiger Beer is Singapore's beer but it is insanely popular here too.  And to accompany my beer is an Ultra Rare Dragon Fruit!

Dinner in Chinatown with some new friends.  I was eating a massive plate of Chicken Fried Rice (for $2) when five people sat down at the table next to me.  One of the guys (the one to my left) was taking a picture of the rest and I offered to take one with him in it too, after he invited me over to their table and we all had a big Oak Tree Inn family style dinner.  I was already pretty full from my fried rice but this guy Jack wasn't having any of that, he kept putting more and more food on my plate.  Turns out he is from Malacca (a town I passed on my way up to Kuala Lumpur) and he invited me to come stay with him.  May take him up on that but also may keep heading north.

After all that food I needed a long walk so I went to the Petronas Towers, which were absolutely awesome at night.  They are in the nicer part of town, which kind of reminded me of what I think Tokyo might be like but on a smaller scale.  Tons of neon lights and video billboards and hoards of people.

The hostel I'm staying in has a rooftop terrace area where everyone hangs out as the sun goes down.  I've met some cool people from all over the world but most important is a major chiller named Dave from Montreal, Canada who is on the same path as me (for the next week or so at least).  So we're staying in Kuala Lumpur for one more night and then we are going to head north to the Cameron Highlands: tea plantations, strawberry farms, butterfly farms, honey bee farms, and the worlds biggest flowers!