Our holiday took us to Kuala Lumpur first, via Birmingham and Dubai. KL is a really nice city. Really nice, full of friendly people, and the most polluted place I have ever seen. Car is king, and motor scooter crown prince. Step out of the air conditioning into 32 degree heat, 90% humidity, and a cloud of carbon monoxide and unburnt hydrocarbons.

Most of those cars are Protons- the local product. imported cars can have up to 100% import tax added. This is the only country where boy racers fit their lights and big exhausts to Protons.

Here’s how to simulate the air quality of KL. Get 20 full kettles, 10 fan heaters, and enough 2-stroke petrol genarators to run them. Shut yourself in the garage, and switch the lot on.

Walking in KL is, to say the least, tricky. Pavements (sidewalks) appear and dissapear again, and have open pits covered by either nothing, or a flimsy grille. Crossing a street is a daring feat.

However:
KL has lots of excellent bars and hotels (and we had one of the better ones, I’m glad to say after 22 hours travelling), a real feel of the far east, and the most polite and friendly citizens of any large city. It has the Petronas Towers too. It’s a very safe city: I suspect this might have something to do with the Malaysian attitude to crime and punishment that punishes the guilty severely. Hell, I like this country.

What did we do in KL? We eat, drank, and rested. We went to chinatown (for genuine Omega watches at well under a tenner) We went in search of a Geocache (failing miserably), and we went up the KL Tower and Petronas Towers. Pictures in the Gallery.