Malaysia!!!!!!

I'm just going to give a brief run down of various adventures and a quick run through of our days in Penang, mainly because it would take forever to go into great detail.

Arrived Friday at 9 am at our hotel. Check in wasn't possible until 9 am so we went and ate breakfast and took the free shuttle around Georgetown to see what the city was like. Afterwards, we went and chilled at the pool and ate some lunch at a place called Mr. Pots which had Malaysian food and western food, in addition to breakfast all day! The rest of the day was spent sleeping till dinner. Audrey and I were grateful to be taken to a Country Club in Penang outside of Georgetown by my dad's friend Vythi. We had such an amazing meal that filled us up! After dinner him and his daughter gave us a quick tour of the city at night. It was beautiful!

Saturday morning had to be downstairs at 8 am in order to catch our bus to the boat for snorkeling! We made it in time with 15 minutes of waiting :). Our boat ride ended up being about 2 hours long, but it was worth it! We arrived at Pulau Payar in the midst of a huge rain storm and it pretty much downpoured for 20 minutes straight. Afterwards we hopped right in the water. The fist were EVERYWHERE - as in I stepped into the water and had fish swimming up against my leg within seconds. It was sooo unlike any snorkeling I'd done before! I saw some of the most beautiful fish I'd ever seen! Eventually in the afternoon the sun came out and we tanned on the beach for a bit until we left and headed back to Penang. That night we went to a Tapas restaurant which served absolutely zero tapas. Weird.

Sunday morning we also, well the girls, woke up at 8 am for a hike up Penang Hill. Little did we know that this was going to be one of the most intense hikes.....ever! It was raining and humid, but after 2 and a half hours the 3 girls, a family friend Bee Leng and her son made it to the top of the 800 meter MOUNTAIN! It was beautiful and fun, the only thing was none of us had mentally prepared ourselves for an ACTUAL hike. At the top we tried a local Malaysian dessert that you can see in my pictures. After that, we tried on a "python" for pictures. (check them out!!!) We then went to a Buddhist temple, Kek Lok Si, in Penang...soooo beautiful.

Here are the pictures from this part of the trip:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2619133&id=6844049&l=265e08d3eb


Sunday night we ended up going to the night market near the beach on Penang. It was a lot of fun...just the usual shopping market. Monday night we were leaving, but we wanted to get in a day of sun. We went to a sister-hotel and soaked up the rays until about 4 pm. After that we left and headed to have dinner in Little India. We then hired rickshaws (see pics) to take us around Georgetown, Little China and Little India.

Last pics from Penang:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2619143&id=6844049&l=8bcfde4eeb


We arrived at our hotel 2 am Tuesday morning in Kuala Lumpur. We woke up expecting to a full day of fun! We headed to the Petronas Towers to get tickets to the sky bridge for later in the day - they are free, but run out by about 10 am. After we got our tickets for 6 o clock, we headed to the butterfly garden. I had SUCH a great time taking pictures at the park.

Here they are:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2619150&id=6844049&l=53deaf4566

After the butterfly garden, we headed to the bird aviary park thing. It was pretty neat. After that, it was about 1:00 in the afternoon and we were all pretty hungry. We decided to head over to Central Market of KL and grab some food. We ended up eating at this Reggae Bar, which if you've ever been to China Town in KL, you've heard of the bar or at least walked by. We had amazing pizza for lunch and then proceeded to go shopping in Central Market as well as a street market. We ended up running into some people from our school. *small world* After shopping and purchasing more fake purses, we headed to the towers to grab a drink at the mall before we went up to the sky deck. Finally it was our turn to go up and it was pretty neat! The Petronas Towers are the tallest twin connected towers in the world in case you didn't know. After that, we all went back to the hotel and met up with our friends for dinner at, none other than the Hard Rock Cafe. Afterwards we walked over to the Petronas Towers to get some pictures at night.

Here are the pics from KL:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2619158&id=6844049&l=e2f2d71c65

We left the next morning, after a visit to....wait for it.....KRISPY KREME! To sum up KL, it was basically my favorite city I've EVER been to. It could be slightly because it was a MAJOR taste of the Western world I miss so much, but I would NOT mind having to take business trips to the beautiful city!


Someone told me the pictures of me and my friends aren't working, well here is a new link as well as some additions:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2605314&id=6844049&l=8d320a6d85