Kula Lumpar - Petronas Towers

Mon June 11 & Tues June 12

Our last few days in Lombok were low key. We rented the scooter for another day of galavanting. And spent our last day just lying on the beach and eating.  It was lovely and relaxing.  

View from our window

Wednesday June 13 morning  we caught a flight to mainland Malaysia, into the city of Kula Lampur.  At this point we finally had to accept that the size and weight of one of our bags has now moved it into the checked baggage category.  This was very hard for N, as you pay quite a bit to check bags.  We did so well for so long!  Nearly two months with only two carrying bags!  

We're in nicer hotel, although it is teeny tiny and looks like the Easter Bunny decorated it.  We can see one of the Pretrona Twin Towers just through the trees from our window.  

We are now into the last week of our time in Asia!  Naturally my body would assume this is the time to fall ill,  again! Thank God for N!  He takes such amazing care of me: goes out to find the food I that willl settle my stomach, finds a clean sock (no face clothes)  to dampen to cool my head, turns the A/C off and on about a thousand times in the night and also gets no sleep because I am up every hour.  I am so, SO grateful for him!

I'm very eager to get out and explore the city.  One of its main attractions is supposed to be the food, not sure how that is going to sit today maybe we will put our emphasis elsewhere for our first day and go all out the second. 

A sample of the hilarious decore and poor sicky N in bed 

Thursday June 13 2013 

Sadly, instead of my health improving N joined me on team bed rest. Poor guy is in rough shape.  We spent very little time outside our room yesterday and a lot of time admiring bathroom tiling.  

Feeling a bit better in the after noon I decided to brave the streets on my own, while N rest and recouped.  I felt a bit intimidated in such a big city at first but I managed to find my way to a major mall, of which there are many.  I  found a hair salon that looked decent.  I am trying to grow out my short hair and it is always an awkward phase.  I was pleased with the result.  

Friday June 14

We are both a bit better today so decided to push ourselves to see some of the things on our short list.  In truth just wandering around the city feels like enough for me.  This is just such an interesting place.  

We were headed to Starbucks for breakfast but passed a little cafe called The Loaf. We were lure in by the amazing smell.  I don't know if its just been a long time since we had real breads but I'm pretty sure these were some of the best pastries I may have ever had.  My latte was also worth bragging about.  The chocolate pistachio croissant literally melted in my mouth, and all over my face.    (That may have had something to do with temp being well over 30).   I picked up this random little thing that I thought was a cranberry scone but turned out to be extremely moist and filled with a cream-cheesy kind of custard.  It took me about twenty minutes to finish because I just never wanted it to end.  It was so delicious!

Downtown KL feels a lot like Manhattan, NY.  It is all glamour!  There are designer shops on every corner.  The whole downtown area is just one mall bumping into another mall.  Some places we have travelled my camera is always horizontal.  All the shots are landscapes: beaches, fields, winding roads.  In cities like KL and NY it's always portrait mode.  The camera in in a constant vertical state to capture the colossal giants that adorn the streets.  It's not all posh, the city still has its own very authentic, unique flavour.  It's a really neat place to just amble around and window shop (since I'm not in the market for Louis Vuitton luggage).  They do have lots of my favourite stores from home too but I find it depressing to try on clothes when the other women shopping are too small for the xs!

The mix of people in KL is also fascinating to observe.  The local people are a cross section of mainly Malay, Indian and Chinese.  There are many visible Muslim's: women in bright patterned hijabs (head scarves) fastened with glitzy jewelled broaches and quite a few full burkas.  You see many badly dressed Caucasians (I assume mainly tourists) as well as those who appear to be doing business here in suits.   I think there is a significant expat community in KL as well.  Some people dressed extremely well in designer clothes or just fashionably trendy but not high end with cutting edge haircuts.  It's a really diverse metropolis.  I enjoy the vibe of the city.  It's the kind of place where it seems like no one really blends in so you don't feel like you stick out so badly.  

We headed to the Bird Park, which is the largest in the world.  I took two photos and the camera battery promptly died.  Charging it apparently got overlooked in our delirium yesterday.  We wandered around trying to find somewhere to sell us a cheap one with no luck (it's a stupid $80 specialty battery) so we headed back to the hotel to charge it.  

After some lunch the battery was finally charged so we headed back to the Bird Park.  

It may be because I watched Free Willy too many times as a kid...but I really hated this place.  The park aspect is lovely.  The exotic birds in cramped cages next to blaring low heavy bass music and the peacocks missing all their tail feathers was extremely distressing.  Places like this make me like people a little less.  And also hate children a lot.  In my opinion if parents don't prevent their children from tormenting innocent creatures then there should be nothing preventing strangers from smacking evil children!  Obviously I would never hit kid but man there were some parents in that park I seriously wanted to punch in the face. Clearly,I have a high tolerance for the abuse of nature...I am now committed to stop visiting these type of places.  It's more of a necessity thing, before I end up in a foreign prison somewhere.  

I do love taking photos of birds though so that was a redeeming factor.  And I love flamingos...and I especially love when those hilariously awkward birds fly.  

Mandarin Ducks...little cuties kept splashing around and wouldn't hold still long enough to get very good pics of them.  The pond was filled with coy fish as well, you can see them in the water.  

Hornbill

In the afternoon we got up close to Petronas Twin Towers.  They are quite impressive.  There is a shopping mall between them.  We got some frozen yogurt and dinner while we waited for dark.  The towers look even cooler all lit up at night.  

 

Yea for selfies on the iPad!

 

As always, photos don't do it justice

Tomorrow at 2pm we fly off to Tokyo for a few days.  This is the last lag of our journey before returning to Canada!

Caves in Gunu Mulu National Park, Borneo Jungle

Friday May 24 2013 9 pm 

My alternate title for this blog was "Fighting Phobias".  I'm quite proud myself for overcoming a couple of my major phobias in the last few days!  Mainly heights and small dark spaces!  

Getting to this place was a long journey.  It took four flights with long layovers before we finally arrived.  Fortunately when we did finally get here, we could see it was well worth the escapade.  Entering Gunu Mulu National Park is like stepping into another world Louisiananter into complete rain forest.  The power of nature here is quite enveloping.  

The bridge into Gunu Mulu National Park

We arrived yesterday evening too late to go out on any tours and too tiered to do much trekking on our own.  We tried to go on a walk and ended up about a hundred meters out in a total downpour.  It was lovely but we were completely soaked.  There is a decent cafe where we passed most of the evening.  We turned in early totally exhausted from our journey.  I think we fell asleep shortly after 6pm!  

We had two cave tours with a guide booked for today.  Shortly after breakfast though I fell violently ill and vomited for half an hour.  So we rescheduled the morning tour for tomorrow and I slept off whatever they was with N at my side caring for me.  I was so grateful to have him!  And very happy that they rescheduled our trek hassle free!  

In the afternoons I was feeling mostly fine again.  

It is a 3 km walk through the rainforest on boardwalks, although it took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop about a million times for photos.  There is so much cool stuff to see:  plants and bugs.  It took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop and look at everything!  (Inside joke: I couldn't help wishing Enviro-Gord was there with us).  I took so many photos but I really don't think any photo could translate the depth or interest of the rainforest.  N and I both felt that they've done a very good job of making the park feeling natural and accessible to visitors.  

We went to Lang Cave and Deer Cave.  The caves far exceeded my expectations.  They are enormous! The magnitude of them really cannot be captured in a photo because of the dark.  Deer Cave is the largest public cave in the world.  And there is only one other known larger cave in the world.  Again the park has done an excellent job if these!  They at lit inside but just enough so that you can see the really cool stalactite and stalagmite formations and the boardwalk.  It is a huge!  And the formations and just unbelievable!  I am not a huge fan of small, dark, damp places but I really enjoyed the tour of these caves.  

In the evening you wait outside to see the "bat exodus"!  Every evening, that is not raining, 2-3 million bats leave Deer Cave in a thin spiralling cork screw formation to go out and hunt bugs for their late night dinner.  There at almost no mosquitos in the area.  We haven't even worn bug spray even though it is hot and humid.  It's really perfect mosquito climate but there are very few.  It's great!  For about a half and hour the bats spin and wind our of the cave in a long stream.  It initially looks more like bugs than bats.  It's quite cool though!

We met a Dutch couple from our tour and had dinner with them and then played some cards.  It was a great day of exploring despite its rocky start.  

Saturday May 25 2013 

We have crossed the half way point in our trip, as we are scheduled to be back in Edmonton June 24.  

We got up a bit earlier this morning to pack up and then go up a bird watch tower.  It's about a fifteen minute walk and then a lot f stairs but to the tops of the trees.  I wish we'd had time for the canopy walk, which I think at some point gives you a view over the trees.  This one is designed for bird watchers so you can just see over the tree tops but mostly just into trees all around you, not over them.  

Next we joined a tour for two more caves.  You take a boat down the river to get to these caves.  Clear Water Cave is the longest cave in Asia, eighth in the world, at 190 km and still being explored.  It has a river running through it with, you guessed it, clear water!  We also went to Wind Cave.  These caves were darker, damper and the passages were smaller.  These caves had a lot more stairs in them.  I have officially worked off my winter weight! They were cool but I enjoyed the ones yesterday more.  

The major perk to this trek was that we got to go swimming in the river at the rest point outside the caves.  The water was chilly but very refreshing after the long hike.  It started raining while we were in the river.  It's a bit surreal to be swimming in a Malaysian Rainforest River in the rain!

We're flying to Kuching now for a few days.  The plan is to do some day tours into the jungle to see the orang utans.