Reasons To Go Off Track ... Typhoon Warnings!! ...

Day 33 ... Landed in KL, didn't get arrested at Bali airport and only got fined 300,000 IDR per day and not 1 million, so all in all it was a win, win! We were taken to a side room/office (which we were told would happen so I was surprisingly calm and not panicking!) and told we had over stayed so we explained the situation and that it was an honest mistake. We then had to go to the ATM to withdraw the £65 for the fine, which was the best case scenario so all okay by us. That was enough excitement for one day!
We landed at KL airport (the biggest airport I've ever been to I think), walking out felt like we were walking through a shopping mall, it even had a supermarket near the exit!! We then gave Uber a try to see if we had anymore success in Kuala Lumpur than Bali. First time worked a treat, we were picked up outside the airport within 10 minutes and charged around £13 for a 45 minute drive to our hotel. We checked in to our room at 1 am, which was more like a suite with a separate bedroom, lounge/office area which was perfect for what we wanted...research and diary updating for the next couple of days, hoping the bad weather will pass soon. Plus the added bonus that the room had a hairdryer, so I get to dry my hair for only the 2nd time in a month and feel human again for a while after 3 days of sea salt coated hair!

Day 34 ... Our bedroom view is a little different today than it was last week! But breakfast at this place is the best yet! There is everything and anything you could think of, from Kelloggs Cornflakes to an omelette station to an array of fruit to a noodle station to pastries, salad, rice (of course!) and what looked like a beef curry or casserole! Definitely going to have to watch what we eat these next few days!! We've booked 2 nights at this hotel but we may stay longer depending on weather forecasts..not great for the next week and also the vicinity of things around us. It's around a 25 minute walk to the Petronas Towers and the gardens nearby. We need to head out for a wander today to scope out restaurants for lunch and dinner and anything else we could entertain ourselves with indoors while the weather is a little sketchy. I've already spotted a mall on the map nearby!! H&M here I come... I'm not exactly kitted out for hot, wet, city living weather!
We found a shopping mall 3 minutes walk from our hotel, and then another one, and then another one! They are everywhere! Varying slightly in quality, one was like a Selfriedges where another was like a lot of cheap market stall clothing shops. But we found a Nandos, and as daft as it seems to eat our lunch at Nandos, I just wanted a nice tasty salad, and that's exactly what I got, for £4, it's so cheap to eat here! Seems to be slightly cheaper than Bali from what we've seen so far! Once I had my fill of shopping, which was only about half an hour later, mainly to walk off our Nandos, we headed back to the hotel. Adam spotted a short cut through what he thought was the mall we had been in...it wasn't...it was another one!! We got in there and it was like a 6 floor maze, we could not find the exit no

matter which signs we followed, we couldn't find the exit signs, all we could see were 'More shops' signs! They went on and on and on! Eventually we found a sign for main entrance so we followed that and promptly arrived at the 'short cut' entrance Adam had pointed out and taken us through about 10 minutes earlier..!! We got back to the hotel eventually, now to try and amend our Traders Hotel booking and bring it forward as we pre booked it when we booked our original Philippines to KL flight, which was on 7th December.

Day 35 ... Another dull day in paradise! Its cloudy and raining, although starting to brighten up a little. We've booked to stay in this hotel until Friday, hopefully the weather will start to pick up and we can finally make a plan of action for our itinerary. All the places we are planning to visit from here on are terrible forecasts! Yikes!
We had a morning on the laptops and then headed over to the Petronas Towers to have a look and walk around the nearby gardens. This area is a lot more like the Kuala Lumpur I was expecting to see. The area we are staying in is on the outskirts I think so a little more run down. There was a huge fancy shopping mall inside the towers with every designer name you can think of, we had a wander around here then found another Nandos for lunch! We had another 2 successful trips using the Uber app and for a total of more than 30 minute round trip, it cost us less than £3, bargain!

We went back to the mall which is 4 minutes walk from our hotel for dinner and decided to try out a Chinese, there are 3 main ethnic foods in Malaysia, Chinese, Indian, Malay. This was definitely an authentic Chinese restaurant, we were the only Westerners in there, the menu was interesting...crispy eel, no thanks! After looking through the huge book type menu for a while, we decided on probably the plainest dishes on there to try, beef and black pepper noodles and chicken szechuan. The chicken came with what can only be described as a plate full of dried and fresh chillies, we picked them out as best we could but we both managed to get a slap in the face with the heat from probably just a seed from the copious amount of chillies in there! Lesson learned! So the only option, of course, was to head to Baskin Robbins ice cream in the shopping mall I had seen the day before. Adam didn't even know what Baskin Robbins was so he was in for a treat! 2 scoops each later and we were stuffed but had got rid of the hot chilli remnants from our Chinese! Then it was back to the hotel for some Netflix. I think we may run out of things to watch on Netflix soon!

Day 36 ... It's cloudy and raining again :( We can't decide what to do or where to go next, no where has a decent weather outlook at the moment! And we don't think we can amend our Traders Hotel booking for 7th to 9th December. So our only 2 options are come back to KL for these dates

or miss the hotel booking and stay wherever we are at that time. We have missed a couple of hotel bookings after our recent itinerary amendment, but this hotel was over £100 a night, it was going to be a fancy treat for ourselves after travelling around The Philippines in accommodation that isn't the best! We'll have to think about it and see where we are at the beginning of December and if it's worth the cost of travelling back to KL. Oh the joys of travel and plans not going quite as we'd planned them!

Day 37 ... So we booked flights to Dubai last night...!!! We spent a small fortune but we will be staying with Hayley and Sean, and Anneka and Matt so we will save a fortune on hotels! We worked out that staying in KL paying for a hotel and food for the next 25 days, or wherever we moved on to (everywhere of which has rain forecast) would cost the same as it does to book flights to Dubai, stay with friends and family and just pay for food. No brainer...we're following the sunshine! So we're flying out tomorrow (Friday 10th November) and flying back in to KL for our Traders Hotel stay on 7th December. Hopefully by then the weather will have

sorted itself out and we can carry on with our travels to Langkawi and up to Thailand for Christmas and New Year!
So, first things first, I am not kitted out for Ladies Night in Dubai! Laura has already said we'll have to do ladies night and a brunch. So I'm off to a couple of the local malls, all within walking distance of our hotel, while Adam does some coding, to see if Asian shoe sizes stretch to a size 7, I won't get my hopes up!
So the shopping trip was a success apart from shoes! I now have a lovely outfit for going on a Ladies Night in Dubai! Adam came to meet me for lunch, Nando's, again, for the 4th day in a row. But I just want chicken salads and not many places do salads so it's our best option and it's so good and so cheap! After lunch we went a did a bit of archery, as you do, inside the mall where the theme park is! Good fun, something I've not done before and Adam hasn't done for years! Then back to the hotel to pack ready for our flight tomorrow!