KL and Home

29 November, Berjaya Hotel, Times Square, Kuala Lumpur

This trip was to celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary and the last two nights are our special treat. Rather than the usual 2 star to 3 star hotels, we are in the centre of downtown KL in a 5 star. A nice luxury for a couple of nights. And luxury it is. The bathroom is bigger than many hotels we have stayed in. Seriously!

Our last night in Langkawi was spoilt to some degree by the couple in the room next door. Last night they had played music on full volume early in the evening, yelled and screamed at visitors to their room, then started up again at 1:00am for an hour. We let it go, but when they started up again this afternoon we told the front desk and Security were sent to ask them to turn it down. There was a bit of yelling and when Security left, the guy tried to get into our room via the adjoining door. We naturally made a fairly loud objection to this and to their credit, Security quickly returned and we demanded, and were given, another room, away from the crazies!

After a great night’s sleep, we made our way to the airport at a very civilized hour and, after a bit of a delay, headed off to KL.

We really like Langkawi - it didn’t feel crowded or overly touristy. The beach wasn’t crowded, the traffic sedate and the lifestyle very laid-back. Duty free shopping is touted as the big attraction on Langkawi, but we felt, with the exception of alcohol, prices in the duty free shops were no better than at home. Eating options were many, varied and reasonably priced at around $25-$30 for a meal for two, including a couple of beers. Best of all, there was a lot to see and do on the island.

1 December, KLIA2 awaiting Flt D7 206

Our 40^th wedding anniversary was yesterday. We had booked ourselves a 10:15am tour of the Petronas Towers as part of our celebration, thinking that even with a leisurely breakfast at our central city hotel, the Berjaya Times Square, we would have plenty of time to jump on the monorail and make it in time to collect our tickets at the prescribed time of 9:45. Just back from a trip through China and Europe, we were used to trains arriving every few minutes. Well, not on Sunday in KL! Panic set in when we noted the 25 minutes wait time for the next monorail train, and we had to then make a connection to the light rail line to get to the Towers. Ditching the trains, we grabbed a cab and made it in the nick of time.

It was an unusually clear and sunny day, so we were rewarded with some spectacular views of the KL skyline.

KL doesn’t have a lot of things to hold our interest and what there is we have seen on previous visits, so we were done and dusted by midday. The fantastic hotel pool called, but an early storm put paid to that so we took in a movie.

Dinner the last couple of nights of our stay was Chinese. We are not great lovers of Indian or Malay cuisine, although there are a few Malay dishes that are ok. But we do draw the line at eating them for breakfast!

With almost a full day to fill before we headed to the airport for our 9:40pm flight, Paul suddenly “discovered” a model train shop way out in the suburbs of KL in Subang Jaya. A trip out to places very rarely visited by tourists is always fun and sometimes a challenge. No problem today though. The amount of English spoken in Malaysia always makes getting about, even in out of the way places, very easy.

So here we are again in KL Airport, with many hours to fill, waiting for our flight. Bars are fairly well non-existent here so we have to do with extremely expensive beer from a Dome chain café. All will soon be well though, we are travelling Business Class back to Australia with fully reclining seats!

3 December (Home)

Although we simply can’t afford to fly business class, it is a VERY tempting option. Our 8 hour flight home was made up of a meal an hour or so after take-off, a restful sleep on the fully reclining seats and then, after what seemed just an hour or so, the pilot’s announcement that we would soon be landing in Coolangatta woke us up! Backpacks on, first to the Immigration gates, through the green Customs chute and we were at our car within 15 minutes of hitting the tarmac.