KL

Although the weather was misty and cloudy (largely due to huge forest fires in Sumatra apparently), we decided to check out the city's massive observation tower. This involved a quick metro journey and then a walk through a densely lush jungle park. But due to the poor weather conditions the girl at the ticket counter suggested we try another day. So after watching a 'building of the tower' video we headed across to a nearby 5-star hotel (the Shangri-La) to check it out.

I had read that this hotel has one of the best restaurants in the city, and after checking out the impressive buffet at the Japanese restaurant we tried to make a booking in the famous French restaurant, Lafite, for that evening. But Lafite was fully booked that night, it was closed on Sundays, and we were flying out the following evening, so instead we decided to give the buffet in the hotel's third restaurant a go.

It was still quite early, just midday, so I read the paper in the hotel's very impressive lobby area and then before the crowds got too big, we heading into the buffet. It was absolutely huge, with various cuisines - we had plates full of huge prawns and crab, Malaysian curries, sushi, Western roast meats, salads, an Italian section and of course loads of amazing deserts (after a long breather reading the paper again at our table).

So after that very long, drawn out lunch-dinner we strolled to the Petronas towers, once the tallest buildings in the world. We knew you needed to get there early in the morning to nab one of the free tickets to ride up to the cool sky bridge that links the 2 towers on their 41st floors, but it was only a short stroll from the Shangri-La, so we headed over there to see what we needed to do the next morning.

As it turned out, as we were about to leave the ticket area, an Indian guy approached us and asked if we wanted a couple of tickets for later that evening. It turned out that he had gotten a bunch of tickets earlier that morning, but now a couple of his mates couldn't make it. So after killing about 45 minutes in the attached shopping centre, and 10 minutes watching the Petronas promotional video (basically a TV advert with rubbishy 3-D technology), we were taken up in the lift to the SkyBridge. The weather was still hazy, but the views were still impressive, and just the fact that you're standing on a mad bridge 41 floors above the ground that links these 2 really cool-looking towers was mighty impressive I reckon.

The tower complex also houses a concert hall, but after checking for tickets at the desk for that evening (which they had), it turned out they had a dress code that Sarah couldn't fulfill, as she didn't have any dress shoes, just flip-flops, runners or hiking boots.

So we strolled down the road a wee bit so I could check out a fancy hotel I'd stayed in 10-years ago when Spence, Annie and Mikey came to Malaysia for their holidays and met myself and Hanno. The hotel has changed a bit, but it was still cool to stroll about and remember my few days staying there. We also helped ourselves to free Internet there for a few hours too!

The next day we checked out central sights, mostly around one of the city's main mosques. The mosque itself was a nice building, but in keeping with Muslim tradition everything is quite simple. A cleric guy there approached us and asked if we had any questions, so we got chatting to him for about 30 minutes. He had perfect English, and was fantastic at explaining some of the basic ideas of Islam and their traditions. He even gave us a free Koran and a bunch of leaflets explaining Islamic ideas in simple English.

After that we strolled to a monument to one of Malaysia's founding fathers, and then on to the worlds largest aviary, but that was a tad pricey. Instead we strolled about the nearby orchid and hibiscus gardens before heading back to the centre. We had a great meal in the atmospherically cool Old China Shop restaurant before heading back to the hostel.

The day before I had heard from Enda that the Indonesian visa takes up a full passport page. This caused a fair degree of panic, as Sarah's passport doesn't have any blank pages left. After checking as much as we could on the Internet about ways around the situation we had decided that probably the best option would be to just chance our arms and try and persuade the immigration guys to place the visa sticker over existing stamps (and probably needing to bribe the guy). We found this out on Saturday, so we couldn't ring the Irish embassy (to ask if they could just add extra pages to her passport, which I very much doubted), or the Indonesian embassy until the morning of our late-afternoon Monday flight.

So anyway, on Monday morning Sarah gets up and rings the Irish embassy. As feared, the girl told Sarah they can't add extra passport pages. The girl then told Sarah she'd ring the Indonesian embassy for us to ask if there was anything they could do. An hour later and myself and Sarah are packed, checked-out and back in the internet place to ring the Irish embassy again to see what the Indonesian guys had said. It turned out that the embassy said there was nothing Sarah could do - she would be refused entry to Indonesia (of course, the embassy has to take the official line, they certainly couldn't have suggested bribing an immigration official!).

Anyway, the girl then suggests that Sarah come to the Irish embassy and apply for a temporary Irish passport that would allow her travel, but the chances of getting the new passport for our afternoon flight that day were slim to zero (as the girl's boss wasn't in the embassy for some reason). So we headed straight to the embassy in a taxi, and Sarah pleads with the lovely girl to try and get the passport processed quickly. The girl keeps saying it would be impossible, but I could tell from her general body language that it should be possible, it just meant hassle for them, and working through their lunch hour. It also meant Sarah had run out and get fresh passport photos, fill in an application form, get that form signed by a commissioner of oaths (another taxi ride away) and pay 80Euro!

Amazingly we managed to get all that done and Sarah was handed her new temporary passport after about 2 hours. Totally relieved and with a fair bit of time to spare, we bundled ourselves into a taxi and headed straight to the airport (it wasn't that much more expensive than the express train anyway, even though it's 73km away). So even though we'd had a very stressful weekend worrying about the passport situation, the extremely helpful Malaysian staff at the Irish embassy really were fantastic and saved the day, and at 4pm that afternoon we were on our Air Asia flight to Bali.