Kuala Lumpur

The hostel in Chow Kit is great and in some cases you do get what you pay for, this is not one of them. Yes, I was sleeping in a dorm and having to use a shared bathroom but it was costing me under £4 a night. It was clean, had decent internet access and was close to a monorail station. The only real downside was if you approached the hostel building from the wrong direction, you had to walk through the market and endure the smell of Durian. Durian does not smell great and it is easy to understand why some hotels ban guests from bringing it into the building.
I must have been really tired after my party weekend and slept late on Monday morning. I had no plans for the day and so lazed around the hostel, used the internet, watched tv and eventually went into town. I spent the evening in the hostel, despite this it was a late night.It didn't matter to my dorm mates, as I didn't have any. I had had a 10 person dorm to myself, lovely.So the next morning was another late start, this was a bit of a problem as I was due to check out that morning. In my pyjamas I went to speak to the manager and asked if I could stay another 2 days, he said no problem. Cool! So I went back to bed, again I had nothing that I really wanted to do in KL, this was my third visit and I think I was all sight seen out. When I did get moving I went shopping, had a late lunch and it was back to the hostel. I'm not the most exciting traveller.
During the time at the hostel I had been talking to Darren, despite various issues with computers and headsets! It drives me nuts when computers don't work or the connection is really slow. But as I wasn't paying for my computer time, I didn't feel as if I could complain about it.
Anyway I was hoping that Darren might be able to come out to Malaysia to join me, I was really missing him and it would have been awesome if we could have some time together in a warm climate. I had last seen him in Japan in December, but we spent a lot of time at my house, which was never the best heated place in the city.So I was hanging around to see if this trip would be possible for him. When I knew either way, I would decide where I was going to go. I didn't want to arrive in the US just yet and so would spend some time in Malaysia, Japan or even the UK until I was ready to start the next leg of my trip. That's how I have been thinking about this year, breaking it into parts and just dealing with that part, it has kept me calm about the whole thing. The downside is that I have not been planning as much as I would for a trip, but then I could change my plans and enjoy my freedom.
Wednesday July 1st arrived and yes you guessed it, another late start. I had breakfast at the hostel and went into town. While I had been in KL I had been contacted by people on couchsurfing,who live in KL. They were all so kind contacting me out of the blue. I had offers to meet for a coffee, drink,be shown round and was left tel no's. This illustrates the ethos of couchsurfing, you do something nice for someone without expectation of reward or immediate benefit.Last year I hosted around 40 people in Muroran and didn't have a bad experience, I guess I was reaping the benefits of that year.So in light of this I decided to go out for a drink, I went to a recommended bar in Chang Kat, but I arrived late, so it wasn't very busy.I thought I may as well have a drink since I had come across town to get there and had a glass of wine. It made a nice change after all of the beer I had drunk in Kuching and the whisky in Zouk. Unfortunately it went down too quickly and the barman gave me another. Sweet, I like people giving me alcohol.So it turns out that the bar closed at midnight, I asked the barman if there was anywhere open later and he pointed to a bar across the road where he and the other staff would be going later.So I said I would meet them there and left them to clean up.
The next bar was busy, but it didn't take me long to get another drink and start talking to some people. Among them was a lady boy and a lesbian, who I think was happy for me to kiss her. Either way we kissed, my first kiss in over 6 months. I am so sad!!!It was a good night and I didn't spend that much money which is good as KL is as expensive as the UK for alcohol.