Posts Tagged With: travel

For some reason I’ve just discovered this didn’t post when it was meant to! Oh well, it’s published now.

We took a short holiday break to visit KL – a first time location for both of us. We were only here for a couple of days so see below for the highlights! As a plus, the aussie dollar has a good exchange rate here with $1 AUD buying about 3 Ringgits so most food and services were very reasonably priced. Tiger Beer was only $3-4 AUD a pint in most places which made B super happy! Food and drink outside of 5 star hotels is very reasonably priced.

One thing I wished we had done before landing was download the app GRAB, which is the rideshare app they use here. I had a horror experience with a jerk taxi driver who wouldn’t use the meter and grabbed my arm. I ended up using a chunk of my data to download the app on the spot. It’s well worth using as it is much more reasonably priced than taxis and removes the stress of when they try to haggle with you.

Highlight 1. Flying Air Asia (no joke)

I flew on Air Asia flat beds both ways and they were so awesome! Only a couple of hundred dollars more than economy and they made the 8 hr flight so much more bearable! I would absolutely do this again. The food and service is still the same but the seats, the entertainment devices and the blankets made it well worth the extra $$. In fact, we are doing this again on our next overseas trip!

Highlight 2. Hotel Capri by Fraser aka Mel’s first infinity pool experience!

Sooooooo pretty! Each room was like a little apartment with a TV, fridge, microwave, rainfall shower, desk etc. Then there was the amazing infinity pool and private spas on the roof! There was also a rooftop bar, included buffet breakfast and a shuttle into the city each day for just m $130 AUD a night.

Highlight 3. The epic thunder and lightning storms

Holy cow was I NOT prepared for these. Our first one was during the trip from the airport to the hotel and it was terrifyingly loud and raining so hard you couldn’t see out the windscreen! The second one was while staying on the 27th floor of the hotel! It was so loud it felt like it was overhead….glorious to watch on the balcony though. This article explains why Malaysia is one of the lightning strike capitals of the world and I have borrowed one of their images to show you what it looked like.

Highlight 4. All the touristy stuff we crammed in to such a short time

With such a short stay (only a couple of days) we managed to knock a fair few things off the tourist list and still spend plenty of time relaxing in the pool. Our first tourist stop was Central Markets. I was not super impressed with these to be honest. The building itself was very cool (it is heritage listed) but the markets were fairly expensive and it was all the same stuff. I get that it’s meant to be more of a boutique feel in comparison to the hustle and bustle of the street markets but the quality of the items was fairly similar to the street markets with prices 3 x as much. The outside markets in Kasturi Walk were cheaper and had some great food as well, I think they were more to my taste.

We also stopped in at the Aquaria at KLCC where I saw the cutest sand tiger shark cuddle pile ever and patted a baby bamboo shark. The aquarium wasn’t as big as advertising makes out but for 60R ($20 AUD) it’s great value and the animals appeared happy and well cared for.

Near the Aquauria is Petronas Twin Towers which are an iconic landmark here and very impressive to look at….but a pain in the ass to go up! You have to pre-book a ticket (80R so about $26 AUD) and then you just shuffle along in a giant queue to get your trip up in the elevator. If you rock up on the day, they are nearly always fully booked with no tickets available and a very long line. The crowds moving towards the lift, up, across the sky walk and down are HUGE and I would have felt immensely claustrophobic so we gave it a miss and satisfied ourselves with pretty daytime photos from the KLCC Park which is an amazing open air water park next door. Maybe next time.

On another day, we went to the KL Bird Park which was pretty impressive….despite my fear of birds!! It was only 63R per adult (so about $21 AUD) to get in and it’s the largest walk through aviary in the world. There were lots of different birds and opportunities to interact with them, plus some SUPER DUPER cute little monkeys. Most of the birds seemed happy and well looked after but we did note the ostriches were missing feathers and appeared quite distressed.

When asked what he wanted to do in KL, B said all he really wanted was to seek out some Hawker Centres as he loved the food in those places in Singapore…so I did some research and discovered Jalan Alor and Lot 10 Hutong Food Court. We didn’t end up going to Jalan Alor but stopped by Lot 10 while I was cheap suitcase shopping at Sungei Wang Plaza shopping complex. Lot 10 is definitely very tourist oriented but still had lots of cheap food stalls in one accessible location and was great as a middle of the day option.

We visited the KL Eco Park Tree Canopy Walk which is free and very pretty. Our suggestion would be to get dropped off at the KL Tower car park if you’re not very fit as the whole canopy walk is then downhill….but it’s still doable going the other way. See image below for the two potential drop off points in red (upper end near KL Tower, all downhill) and yellow (uphill but only slight + short bursts of stairs, the yellow drop off is the entrance point).

As we started at the bottom of the KL Eco Park we ended up at the KL Tower at the end. We visited the KLTower mini zoo (31R each so $10AUD) which was really interactive and a great example of a zoo trying to help out those animals inadvertently finding themselves in the city with no other options for rehab. They had monkeys, turtles, a goat, alpacas, snakes, ferrets, prairie dogs and even baby emus!

Since we were standing next to it, we then went up the KL Tower which had a 49R observation option and 99R skybox option….where else in the world can I do a sky box for $35AUD? Be warned the wait times are long at the top though, they don’t police the photo times enough and people can be jerks. We went on a non-busy day with a short line and it was close to a 90 minute wait for a photo with no chairs in sight. Kinda worth it though.

My last touristy activity was Chinatown. For the Chinatown visit, I left B at the hotel with his computer for company and went with my friend Fiona. She is a mad-crazy shopper and had a great time filling her extra suitcase, I’ll admit I filled in all my extra packing space as well 🙂 I got replica Nike’s for 90R, some very cool sunglasses with rubber arms for 100R, Birkenstock knock offs for 30R and a new travel shoulder bag for 30R. All up that’s about $85 AUD.

Places I want to see next time we visit: Petronas Towers, elephant sanctuary, Batu Caves, the firefly dance, the butterfly garden, Jalan Alar (Wong Ah Wah – roast pork dark noodle and BBQ chicken wings get repeated mention. Satay from here also gets a good write up. My extensive research also brought up repeated mentions of Meng Kee next to Wong ah Wah which does all sorts of grilled seafood, Pin Chen Haianese Chicken Rice – the best of many in the street – and Gou Lou who make infamous Tom yum soup and fish head noodles), the FRIM tree top canopy walk (when it reopens), Sunway Lagoon fun park, LegoLand (it’s only an 8hr drive away dammit), the palace, maybe the hop on hop off bus annnnnd I’m sure many others I haven’t thought of!