A New Favorite: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

On a last minute flight, we flew from Osaka to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Because we were running almost a month ahead of some perceived schedule arriving, we had done no research and had zero expectations.

The city adventure started a bit rough. The flight from Osaka to KL was almost seven hours, so we didn’t arrive until almost midnight and with no place to stay. While waiting on baggage, we tried several hotels to find them all sold out. The first place not sold out in city center was what we nabbed. Rated as four stars on booking.com, the Zon ended up as our final destination that night. It was so gross that we all considered sleeping in the clothes that we had been traveling in for 13 hours. Suffice it to say that as soon as the sun was shining, we were on airbnb.com finding a proper place to stay. You know, one that has a working air conditioner, without the smell of vomit, a bathroom that isn’t flooded, and towels and sheets without cigarette holes in them.

By lunch, we were at our new place, and we were not disappointed when we arrived. We ended up staying in Bukit Bindang in an airbnb in the Pavilion Residence above the Pavilion Mall. A beautiful pool, a playground, and the convenience of everything we could possibly need downstairs made the already beautiful apartment even better.

I won’t lie. We spent more days than we should have just hanging out in the apartment, pool, or mall. When we finally felt obligated to leave, we headed out on a evening foot tour with a local that we booked through withlocals.com. Brendon showed us the old square, an amazing and historic Chinese temple, Chinatown, the Petronas (Twin) Towers, introduced us to some delicious local specialities, gave us loads of history information, as well as how their monarchy works (with various sultans taking turns acting as king), and too many other things to list.

I was surprised to learn that there are quite a few laws that actually discriminate against an entire group of the people. The pro-Islam laws seem to be pretty in line with the direction many of the laws the USA are attempting to enact look in terms of pro-Christianity. Malaysia just seems to be a little ahead in terms of how many religious laws they have made to date…

As a predominantly Muslim country, it shouldn’t be surprising that well over half of the women we passed by in the mall or on the street were wearing head coverings of various kinds. It provided us a great opportunity to learn about Islam. The kids know more now about Islam than I did even a year ago.

We spent one day (walking twenty minutes in an air conditioned skywalk – brilliant!) to the Discovery Science Center in the twin towers. It started with an amazing thing that I haven’t seen in any other science museum: a dark coaster ride. (It ended the same.) What a fantastic way to get the kids back into the activity areas while also controlling the number of people entering the fun stuff. Spacing matters.

KL proved to be really cheap. We were able to go see a couple of movies at the cinema. The price we paid per movie for all four of us plus popcorn, hotdogs, candy and cokes was right at $25USD. The four of us can’t even get into a theater in the states for $25USD, so we were pretty excited about this. Even more exciting was that none of us had been to a movie in over six months since we had skipped all movies leading up to our departure flight in hopes they would be showing on our flight over.

One of our (my) more courageous adventures out was at the Bird Park. KL has the largest enclosed aviary of anywhere in the world. I figured we would walk through in about 30 minutes.

We ended up being there almost three hours and really only left because of hunger. The place was incredible. Very few birds were in cages.

The section of tropical birds allowed visitors to feed the birds. Keali and Scott loved having all the birds landing on them. Caden not so much.

My friends know that I am absolutely terrified of birds and other flying critters, not the kind that fly off in the distance, but rather the kind that always seem to fly into my face or hair. I am proud to say that I (kind of) overcame my fears. When the kids had birds landing on them, I went in to get pictures and some birds landed on me. It may sound anticlimactic to someone else, but I think the picture says it better. I didn’t scream or cry or totally freak out, mostly.

I’m sure we did some other very exciting stuff, but I’ll always remember the place also for being one of multiple date nights. With overachieving levels of security in our building (locked entry doors, guards, keycarded elevators, etc), Scott and I felt perfectly comfortable leaving the kids in the apartment to run out for some cocktails and adult time. Of course while on dates, we were as always able to solve the world’s problems.

I was extremely sad to leave KL. The locals were all friendly and helpful, while the city itself was wildly different than any other southeast Asian city we have visited to date. It also provided us with a great opportunity to learn more about the people who practice Islam. It’s no wonder why so many people who world school love KL.

 

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