Kuala Lumpur and Cameron Highlands

Well we failed on the whole getting up to heights in KL - we tried to have tea in the KL tower and discovered that you have to book about a week in advance, then we tried to get up the Petronas towers and missed that too as they only allow 800 people up a day and the loney planet lied as to the time to be there. But the Petronas Towers were impressive from below (and at least we can say we were in them...).

Anyway we went to the Batu caves (large caves just outside KL that were converted into a Hindu shrine about 110 years ago). Pretty amazing - firstly just the size - the main cave is about 100 metres high and big round too. You get to it via 272 steps up a big staircase that isn't far from vertical. You can hire these little voice things that tell you all about the various parts of the temple. They explained all the different gods (well the most common ones anyway) and the mythology that goes with them. They have heaps of statues built right into the walls of the cave. I couldn't imagine it being built in NZ - the greenies would throw their toys about the cave desecration.

Next we discovered that it was school holidays *and* a public holiday when we wanted to go to the Cameron Highlands. So we rang around about 20 places until we found one that had a spare room - 340 Ringit - compared to the 40-50 odd that we've been paying in other places. Kerstin was pretty keen to go anyway, so we made it a honeymoon special. I quite enjoyed walking into a flash hotel wearing sandals, a singlet and running shorts.

Today we went on a tour around the "Boh" tea plantation. It was pretty interesting. Firstly the countryside looks pretty cool with the vast rows of tea bushes, then we visited the factory and saw how tea is actually made. Our guide also took us bush for a while and taught us how to survive slightly longer in the bush and how to kill anyone we don't like in various nasty ways. All in all a really enjoyable day.

Tomorrow we head north to Penang as a stopover, before heading up to the Ko Samui and Ko Tao island group in Thailand. I'm looking forward to doing a diving course - and am trying to persuede Kerstin that she does too...