(Daniel) After a slow morning, I flew to KL this afternoon, arriving at around 4pm, and then going through customs to find a taxi to the city. After haggling for a while, despite not having a clue what I should pay, I was headed for town, an hour away. I didn’t know where to stay, so I asked the driver where the majority of guest houses were located. He told me that Petaling Street was my best bet, which I remember from a previous visit to KL, is the area that Chinatown is located.

The taxi dropped me off to a bustling throng and I struggled with my two backpacks down the narrow alleys of the Chinatown market, hindered at every step by hawkers with fake Rolex watches and copied DVD’s. I saw a couple of Hotels, their outer doors flanked by Chinese prostitutes, and realised that this probably wasn’t the best spot in town to find a guesthouse after all, but as it was late, and I would be heading off early in the morning, I walked through the door of the least seedy looking one. This place had room rates by the night or the hour, and had an ever changing selection of girls hanging around it's front door, who only seemed to move if their phone rang, or a policeman walked down the street, only to return seconds later or be replaced by another pair, seeing the gap in the market! I looked at the room, which seemed livable, and checked in. There was a strange effect in the place caused by the false ceiling, which meant that you could hear pretty much everyone on the same floor as you, as if they were whispering in the corner of the room, quite eerie. This freaked me out a bit, so I decided to take a walk around the area and see if there was anything to do.

Just around the corner from the hotel, was the Reggae bar, a lively place that sold overpriced beer and always forgot to give you your change! I sat in there for a while and met a Dutch guy who I played a few Games of pool with, again I found myself explaining the whole Expedition to him. He was suitably impressed, and I made a plan to see him again tomorrow, along with a Malay girl who had got in on the pool games also. Then, after having sunk a few more beers than required for a good nights sleep, I went back to the seedy Hotel.

At around 1 or 2 am, I was woken up by the most amazing thunder, crashing noises and a feeling that there was some serious weather going on outside. Of course I didn’t have a window in my room, so I got up and, interested by the noise, I took the lift downstairs and walked outside. The most amazing tropical rain was pouring down, sheets of water like nothing that you could ever get in England, and possibly worse than I have seen in the height of the monsoons in Thailand. I stood outside and watched in the empty street, until someone appeared next to me. An Indian woman, she looked around 30-32 years old. She was smiling and asked if I was looking for a woman. I could see that she was suffering badly with some kind of withdrawal symptoms and asked what drugs she took. She looked shy at first, but then told me that she smoked Ice, I am not sure what this is, but it sounded pretty bad, I asked if she had any family, she said that she had a daughter, and her eyes seemed to light up for a minute. I told her in the nicest possible way that hard drugs were going to ruin her life, and possibly her daughter's, and that this was not a way to make a living. We talked for a few minutes, about how much money she made, and how much of it she spent on this Ice stuff, but I started to feel a bit exposed on the street alone, and decided to go back inside. As I walked back across the road, another two men appeared and offered to sell me some Ice. I said no, and walked back into the Hotel. An interesting first night in a country so hard on drugs.

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