Day 2

Today I slept in a little and slowly made my way down to the hotels buffet breakfast. As usual, the breakfast spread was massive! They had eggs, toast, bread, fruit, Yoghurt, rice, vegetables, etc.

After breakfast I went to the convenience store across the road and picked up some snacks. Alot of cheap knock off's avoiding copyright laws: Oreos became Stereos, Pocky became Rocky

Dropped them off at the hotel, packed my bag and went off to explore.
First stop was Jalan Bukit Bintang - which I knew had lots of shops.
I eventually came across Plaza Low Yat and was very impressed!
Its a multilevel building full of electronic stores! Enough to get lost in - at least for me.

I ended up getting a backpack for my camera gear for just under $80 (RM 230), it has a side loading panel for my camera, a strap to hold a tripod and plenty of compartments for lenses, etc.

Before I bought it, I went back to my hotel to get my tripod and macro lens, which was good because I wanted to see if I could get another hood for the lens, and I wanted the tripod for a night shot of the Petronas Towers, but bad because I couldn't be bothered making another trip back to the hotel, so I carried 2 bags and a tripod all day :(

I got some food and left Plaza Low Yat again, but by now it was raining quite heavily, so I took a taxi from there to KLCC to check out KLCC Aquaria.

The aquarium was pretty cool. I got to see a piranha feeding show and plenty of scary looking spiders, scorpions, etc. but the coolest thing for me was the underwater tunnel. As you slowly get pulled along the conveyor belt your surrounded by massive sharks, stingrays and colourful fish - it was quite well done.

After that I walked through the Convention Centre and headed underground to the KLCC Concourse - which is an underground tunnel that links the Convention Centre with KLCC Suria - a big shopping centre.

KLCC Suria was pretty big and kinda reminded me of a cross between Melbourne Central and Highpoint. It was pretty big, but for me wasn't nearly as interesting as Plaza Low Yat.

The rain eventually stopped and  headed out to get some shots of the Petronas towers. I did want a night shot, but I couldn't be bothered waiting around any longer.

After this I was going to head to KL Tower, but I couldn't really find a taxi that wasn't going to rip me off, so I started walking and took stroll through the KLCC Parks and Gardens. This was probably a bad idea as I was still carrying too much and by this stage my feet were in a lot of pain - shouldn't have worn thongs :(

Took me a while, but when I got out of the park I got another shot of the towers from a distance, but there was not a taxi in sight, so I kept walking. Finally found a hotel and got a taxi from there.

By the time I got home, I was so tired, I fell asleep.
Then I woke up and wrote this! :)

...Now I'm going to bed

Day 1

Got to Melbourne airport early yesterday morning to get some crappy Maccas breakie. Eventually got airborne after some minor delays and unfortunately got seated next to a guy that was bigger than me, and therefore hogged the arm rest :P But apart from not being able to sit perfectly straight, the flight was pretty good. Just needed a bit more food, haha.

Finally got to KL Airport at LCCT where had a passport check, picked up my luggage and walked through the non-existent customs check, but there were gaurds holding quite scary looking machine guns so I guess that makes up for it! I would have taken a photo, but I value my life too much :P

Bought a ticket for the "AeroBus" that took me from LCCT to KL Sentral for 8 Ringgits (under $3). This ~$3 trip took what felt like an hour and we went through 3 toll gates.. talk about value for money!

On the bus I bumped into another Melbournite named Neem (which is a Hindu name) and ended up having a chat. He was on his way to India to do a Buddhism retreat for a few weeks which included 11 hours of meditation a day!

At KL Sentral, I was so hungry and couldn't find anything but hungry Jacks and Macca's. I was actually in line at Macca's and I thought there had to be some more authentic food places around and eventually found this place:

I asked the lady for something not hot, and she gave me something hot, lol. but then kindly swapped it for free! :) The first meal (left) was a hot "Laksa" or something (lol, no idea) and then got replaced with the meal on the right. The drink is a Orange, Apple and Carrot crush thing - was pretty good :)

From there I got a taxi from KL Sentral to my hotel for about $4 or so. Checked into my hotel where the staff were really friendly. I requested a non-smoking "superior" (aka standard) room, but they didn't have any left, so they upgraded me to a premium room! Score! Very fancy and incredibly spacious!

Called home, washed up and went to bed after a long day! Not a bad first day :)

Almost ready!

So in about 2 and half days I'll be boarding my plane for Kuala Lumpur!

The excitement actually kicked in today. This will be my first time traveling solo, but I'll only be alone for 3 nights before meeting Michelle in Hong Kong. I figured 3 days is a nice soft introduction to the traveling solo thing before potentially going on extended trips like this in the future.

I've just about got everything organised. The only things left to do are finishing packing my bag and get some Malaysian Ringgits as my CBA Travel Money card doesn't support that currency :(

I've printed all my documents, have my custom maps with all the places I want to see marked out. I've worked out the way I'm getting from the airport to the hotel.
I've prepared any medication I (could) need to bring, formatted my netbook and installed VoIP software (Ekiga & Skype) to phone home, photography software (Picasa, The Gimp) and configured my browsers :P ...yes, I'm a nerd!

... and the count down is on! :D