5/4/18 - Day 68 (Continued)

Arrived in KL safe and sound and Didier picked us from the airport (he works at Airbus just near by anyway thankfully). It takes us about an hour to get back to their lovely apartment in central KL. it’s lovely to catch up with Ann and Laura over dinner and nice to be staying in a home rather than hotel for a change.

6/4/18 - Day 69

A leisurely start to the day and then we head out using the wonderful Grab car to the Pedana Botanical Gardens, in particular we head for the Butterfly Park which is incredible and anyone who knows me knows I love my butterfly’s! After that we headed to the Hornbill Restaurant where they serve hornbill with chips (or I think it’s the other way round, you order chips and a hornbill usually lands in front of you and begs for chips!). The whole restaurant is covered by a gigantic net so there are all kinds of birds and monkeys living in coexistence with the restaurant. J fed a few of the cheeky monkeys. We sat on the balcony watched the wildlife and the thunderstorm. Once the storm passed we continued walking to Central Market. This is a huge building housing all manner of stalls but mainly Batik clothes and material. We went on when it was light and emerged when it was dark! Caught a grab taxi back to A&D’s before heading out to a huge outdoor Chinese / Malay restaurant, delicious crab (several done in their signature Marmite sauce) and prawns along with lots of eggplant and morning glory with garlic, which I preferred over the seafood. After my food poisioning experience in Phnom Phen at the seafood restaurant I’m nervous about eating it, plus I think I cracked a tooth on the shell so I’m a little ‘off’ crab at the moment. Saw one of the ladies wandering around clearing up with her pet parrot on her shoulder and just had to go and say hello. Stupidly I offered a hello to the parrot by way of one of my fingers which it then attempted to take a chunk out of (ouch!).

7/4/18 - Day 70

We head to the Scuba Warehouse shop in Didier’s car and it’s wonderful, my idea of heaven. I acquire some scuba gear for my trip in a few weeks then we head to Tesco’s so that A&D can do a bit of a shop. D leaves us as he needs to prep for his business trip and heads home with all the shopping and we head off to see Petronas Towers. They’re amazing but we make the mistake of going in, the Chinese are queuing in their masses outside the Louis Vutton shop, is a handbag really worth that? We then grab some quick food from the food-hall, which is ok but again it’s eating with the masses in a massive shopping mall and you cannot hear yourself think or eat. We head back outside and admire the towers from all angles, although we decide to walk through the park to the KL Tower (which looks oddly like a bigger version of the BT tower), this time we head up to the observation tower just as the heavens open. Just hoping that there’s no thunder and lightening whilst we’re up there... we survive and wait out the rain and then catch another Grab back to A&D’s. J and I spend some time planning our next trip and re-packing as we leave tomorrow...we all then walk over the road (which involves crossing the metro and freeway by bridge) to get to the restaurants near to where they live. We opt for an Italian place and I order some salmon with grilled veg, my first western food in a while. Before we go to bed J and I spend an hour on line checking out reviews of the northern part of Malaysia as we have booked internal flights to Kuala Terengganu, there are four or more islands on that coastline that we might visit. Looking at the accommodation we are horrified with what we find, I send emails to those which look reasonable and also the one which A&D recommend and decide to sleep on it.

8/4/18 - Day 71

Having slept on it, fate plays a hand and the two hotels we contacted advise that adverse weather conditions meant that the jetty which we’d need to use will be closed for the next day or so. One of the other hotels advises that they have no availability so it looks like our Plan B now kicks into gear. This means binning the flights sadly and booking a bus instead to Penang which is north of KL on the coast. J books tickets for our journey (£8 each) and we catch a Grab car to the bus station. The driver who turns up is lovely, so friendly and helpful and his ‘ride’ is totally ‘pimped’ but he’s absolutely great and takes me to a shop on the way so I can pick up snacks for the journey, which is meant to be 5 hours. The coach is great, when we eventually get on it, but it leaves nearly an hour later than scheduled. I absolutely love KL, the people are great and it’s so amazing clean everywhere, it’s a cross between being in Seattle and Singapore. I love it and will definitely come back...maybe not during this trip but it’s been lovely spending time with Ann. Laura and Didier. Feel a bit sad to leave but onwards with our next adventure, we’re staying in George Town tonight which will involve a long coach journey