Kuala Lumpur - day one

Well. our trip is rapidly coming to its conclusion..
We organised ourselves a taxi to get to the Fiumicino airport - quite a distance out of Rome.
Airports can be very daunting but we seem to have been lucky enough to find people who know the ropes and can guide one in the correct direction..
The flight to KL was about 12 hours .. but Malaysian Airlines have good food..
The first thing that hit us was the temperature and humidity.. very warm and as humid as you could get..

Arriving in KL in the early morning we again managed to find two delightful Aussies who knew exactly where to go to get passport stamped and collect luggage.. They gave us excellent advice about catching the express train to the city from the airport ..
A short taxi ride again to the Federal Hotel and we were able to get into our room and have some rest.. had some jetlag to overcome..

But a couple of hours later we were off exploring .. rather carefully so as not to get lost!.. the map we had did not have all the steets marked.. just main buildings..
Kuala Lumpur is a VERY busy city.. lots of busy traffic .. cars everywhere. Driving seems to be very chaotic .. but they do drive on the left!!
The city is a developing entity with modern skyscrapers and older buildings side by side.. the streets though are not well planned to deal with the traffic..
We walked down to see the markets and again were lucky to get good directions from people along the way..
People here are very friendly and will try their best to help..
So we explored the market area - an amazing array of goods .. but there is an enormous amount of competition...
Prices are very cheap.. $100 AUD gives 330 MHR . Malaysian ringats.. so we'd just divide the price of goods by 3 to compare..

We learned later that apparently the government has a subsidy system for young people to start their own businesses... everyone here is encouraged to work if they possibly can..
but the wages cannot compare to those in Australia.. the cost of living is no where near as expensive though.
We had an excellent dinner in the Hotel restaurant..
Then went up to the top floor to explore the view from the revolving restaurant .. the manager was most friendly as seeing as there were only two people having a meal, he chatted and let us explore the views from all around.