Pangkor island to Kuala Lumpur

Well, I certainly jinxed the weather at the end of the last entry! We arrived on Pangkor Island in glorious sunshone... which lasted until the next day. Still, at least we had somewhere to stay, which didn't seem to likely when we first arrived. We got to the island at a good time and figured that finding somewhere to stay would be easy - until, that is, we remembered it was Deepavali and a big holiday weekend. Our spirits sank as we trudged from place to place only to be told again and again that they we either full, or had one room left at some ridiculously extortionate rate. Finally we found somewhere with a shed to rent and once he had been convinced that we really didn't mind that fact that it was, well, not very nice, he agreed to let us stay that at an affordable amount. We set off down to the beach and swam and sunbathed whilst watching Indian ladies swimming in saris, Malay women swimming with every inch of their bodies and heads covered, and Chinese women in skimpy bikinis. Loving the multicultural feel of Malaysia and the way it seems to work so peacefully.
The next day the island felt totally different - the holiday weekend was over and droves of locals left for the mainland. We relocated to a better class of shed (own bathroom and a TV - luxury!) and looked mournfully out at the rain before turning on Star Movies instead. It wasn't long before things cheered up enough to take a walk down to the beach. The island is quite developed in parts, with a big town and smaller resort areas, however the centre of the island is still mainly jungle, teeming with monkeys and hornbills. The hornbills were particularly great - they look like they've been painted (in the way that toucans do), and one of the hotel owners near us fed them each night with bits of banana so that he ended up with around 20 sitting about. We threw some bits of banana up for the them to catch and even fed them up close - those beaks turn out to be pretty sharp!
We decided to leave the following day as we wanted to be in Kuala Lumpur to see my friend Dave who was visiting for a couple of days. Around 6 years ago, I promised Dave that I would come to Malaysia with him and he promised to come to Sri Lanka with me. He booked his tickets - Sri Lanka then onto Malaysia. I booked mine - but sort of forgot what I'd said I'd do and ended up in Sri Lanka and then Hong Kong instead. Ooops. But I like to keep a promise, even if it is 6 years late! We arrived in KL around 6.30pm, and made it to our hostel an hour later. We finally managed to meet not only Dave but James (who we have been running into on and off since China) and had a nice evening up on the rooftop of our hostel with a few beers.
The next day, the four of us headed to the Petronas Towers in the hopes of going up for some good views of the city. Unfortunately the tickets for the day were already sold out, so we went for a walking tour of the city instead. Mostly a walking tour of one small area of the city as we walked backwards and forwards and round and round searching for the National History Museum. We followed our maps. We asked two seperate people who pointed us in the right direction. We even followed signs. Could we find the damn thing? No. Finally, we realised that none of us were really that bothered about going to it anyway, and then discovered that it had, in fact, closed and become the lovely restaurant that we had passed at least 10 times. By this time we were pretty hungry and went for a big curry.
The rest of the day was mostly taken up wandering around markets and letting Dave have some fun haggling for various items on our behalf. Hence us ending up with 3 hand held sewing machines between us for a total of 3 pounds. Not convinced I'll use it much but at that price? Go Dave! The next day we said our emotional goodbyes to Dave and James and took the bus to Melaka where we spent a great few days seeing and her dad before coming here to Singapore. More details in the next entry.