I'm sitting in my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur. I cleverly managed to remember to book a place close to the start of the race, quite proud. I dragged the Boyfriend over there this morning for a quick reccie, and they were building the start line and stuff, quite exciting! It's in Merdeka Square, which has the biggest flag I've ever seen (well, the second biggest technically - I've seen the biiiiiiiiiig North Korean one at the town just over the border, but it was far away, so didn't really look that big) right next to some posh mock Tudor houses. Apparently in colonial times it was a cricket pitch (definitely looks like it could have been), and this is where the Hash House Harriers started. Thankfully no beer and songs on the way round the race though!
Here's the other big building on the square - some sort of government building I think. The start line is right in front of it, where the clock tower is. And here's the giant flag. Tudor houses off camera to the right. We walked past the huge building on the left earlier - no idea what it is, but it's a very strange building - there's no real windows, just cut out bits in the walls. And there doesn't seem to be anything in it. Anyway, flag!
After our little explore, we tried to find a museum the Lonely Planet claimed was by the square (from the description, it sounds like the small white building to the left of the flag), but it's a posh restaurant, so failed in that - boo Lonely Planet! Wandered around for a bit and ended up at the aquarium near the Petronas towers, which was wicked. No crappy Sea-Life Centre here! We saw the staff feeding the water rats (they're quite cute, they look more like huge guinea pigs), loads of geckos and lizards, and shed loads of fish. Some very nice, some very yuck! My favourite was a very cute yellow thing called a cow fish. It's body really does look a bit cow-ish, and it kept swimming over to see people. There was a huge tunnel under a big tank with all sorts of cool stuff in. Lots of different types of rays flying around (I love watching them, they look so graceful), a huge turtle, little sharks and lots of random fish I don't know the names of. There were some hideously ugly fish too though - they had a huge Mekong catfish, which is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen (but apparently very tasty. Still don't think that makes me want to eat it), and some massive things from the Amazon. They were also pretty ugly, and had something very pre-historic about them. They looked strangely squashed, a bit like a tube of toothpaste.
We wandered over to the park by the big towers, and then we had some pretty grim food in a posh cafe. Hmph.So the plan tonight is to get some nice food, which should be quite easy, seeing as the hotel is in the middle of Chinatown, on a street with loads of yummy-looking street food. And then sleep, lots of sleep.
12 hours 5 minutes to go!
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