Kuala Lumpur, 8/12/07

Breakfast at the hotel rocks! They have everything—American continental, European, and get ready for this—Asian food. I had chicken curry, steamed rice, and Japanese curry for breakfast.

Today we went to the Petronas Towers—the tallest connected buildings in the world. To go to the “viewing level” on the 44th floor, you have to get one of the free tickets. The tickets are handed out to the first 1400 people, starting daily at 8:30am. We arrived at 8:30 to find a huge line zigzagging all over the place. We quickly went to the end and hoped we weren’t too late. After a while, we discovered a fellow Houstonian in line behind us! What a small world!
It should be noted that all Caucasians (Europeans, Canadians, Australians, and Americans) stick out because there are so few there.
Lucky for us, we made the cut—barely. I would say that there were only 20 or so people behind us. We were assigned the 4pm “tour”.
Waiting for our tickets took 1 ½hrs; by the time we got the tickets it was 10am. A massive mall is connected to the towers so we went there to waste some time. Shopping there is like the Galleria on steroids. It was 6 or so stories with every single major brand you can think of (Chanel to The Gap). Sadly, they had Starbucks, Chili’s, Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s, California Pizza Kitchen and a few others. We made a pact to avoid them all and stick to local food.

After staring at lots of high-end stores, we found the Petrosains. Petrosains is like a science museum but it is entirely funded by Petronas (hence the name).
This place is really awesome; it has lots of hands-on exhibits explaining things. We visited the speed exhibit first and had fun with the games. Frank got to time his baseball and cricket pitches and I practiced my high-speed karate chop and reaction time. There were tons of kids there but the adults were having just as much (if not more) fun.

After finishing the museum, it was 3:50pm!!!! Wow does time fly.
The Petronas Tower tour was very nice but a little underwhelming. We watched a short video regarding petroleum & the towers. Then we were escorted up to the 44th floor—it took under 50 seconds to reach that floor and our ears were popping. Our group of 15 or so was told that we had a few minutes to explore the walkway connecting the two buildings. The view was impressive but unfortunately it was raining and the pictures are a little hazy

On the way back to the monorail station, we stopped at the Malaysian Tourism Center (MTC). Determined to find out more info about the local races next weekend, I asked them what they knew. No one there had any idea what I was talking about but they took the time to phone anyone and everyone to find out info. I learned that the beach run I wanted to do (my back up race) is approximately 300km from Kuala Lumpur. To make matters worse, no one had heard of the Batu Caves Tanggathon. I insisted it was on the 19th and they finally found a shred of evidence about it. The MTC workers called the Batu Caves to get more info—they had never heard of it! This is supposedly the 15th or so annual race; it doesn’t add confidence when the location of the event is clueless. My research had given me the following information—date and time. I didn’t know where to meet (never been to the Batu Caves so I don’t know how big it is) and I didn’t know how to register. Because of the lack of information and uncertainty, I decided to give up on my race t-shirt quest. Hopefully my new magnet, wooden frog sculpture, and cute hippo doll will ease my suffering.

We leave tomorrow for Tamen Negara National Park. It is on the opposite side of the peninsula so it will probably be a long trip. Because it is a rainforest, I’m not sure what to expect. I’m told that there is free wi-fi there but I’m not sure where it is here—the hotel charges for this connection.

I’m now going to attempt to post the pictures—hopefully it works!!!