We have been planing this trip for so long it seems like it could only be something in the future...but it has now become the past. It was hard saying goodbye to Thailand as well as Austin and Aileen. We are left with some amazing memories, great photos, and the desire to return someday.
We are now off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We landed at 2am after a long last day of traveling up from Koh Lanta back to the Phuket airport. Two truck rides and two ferry rides later we were at the airport. The flight went smooth and we landed in KL with very little expectations. With all the Thailand hype, neither of us had really focused on Malaysia as one of our destinations. We really only added Malaysia, Singapore, and Bali after seeing how cheap the flights between them were. Of course we had always hoped to travel to more places and adding these destinations fit in our schedule perfectly.
We got off the plane and headed to an ATM to pull out some Ringgits. (About a 4-1 to USD) Then it was onto a Taxi and an hour drive to downtown Kuala Lumpur. We didn't get to the hostel until 3am and fell asleep instantly.
Debra wasn't feeling great the next day so we took it easy for most of the day. I dragged her along to watch me eat some of the best Indian food I've ever had while she ate naan and rice. (We went back a few days later when we was feeling better so that she could finally try some more.)
If you are ever in Kuala Lumpur you must go to "Betel Leaf" Months later we still talk about how amazing this Indian food was.
Neither of us knew exactly what to expect of Malaysia so we were surprised and found many things very interesting. We learned that the culture and history of Malaysia has many influences including Chinese, Indian, British, Dutch, Portuguese, etc. All of the people we interacted with spoke English and we saw so many corporate looking business men and women (something we rarely saw in Thailand). It was such a drastic difference coming from a month in Thailand and made the experience so fun.
We spent the afternoon wandering around and looking at the historic buildings. Afterwards, we went to MUD the musical and learned more about the history of Kuala Lumpur in a silly/fun way.
It took us way too long to realize that the Chinatown market "Petaling Street" meant peddling, as in selling... It was an interesting market but mostly full of knock off bags, clothes, and scarves.
This market was less than a block from our hotel. We walked through it everyday on our way to other places or just to grab a quick snack from one of the food stalls. The architecture lining the market was incredible.
Our time in KL involved walking the streets to find interesting foods, a few trips through the different markets and the KL butterfly park! For 22 Ringgit each($5.33USD) it was some of the cheapest entertainment we have had yet!
The enclosure was large and filled with beautiful plants and fountains.
This was our favorite part of KL and we had a blast taking pictures of the different butterflies and challenging each other on our "big year" of butterfly spotting. We ending up spending most the day here. We think we've found Debra's spirit animal.
After the butterfly park we went down the road to the bird park. This park was huge and was all open environment so the birds were flying all around. We only had a few hours here so we ran though to make sure we fit everything in.
We spent about 15 minutes trying to get a great picture of this peacock near the entrance only to later realize that there are hundreds of free roaming peacocks in this park.
That night we went to the KL Menara tower to get some great views of KL and to see one of the tallest building in the world, the Petronas towers. It was much cheaper to go to the top of the Menara tower than the Petronas towers AND we had a great view of the Petronas towers. Both of these buildings were fun to check out.
We then took a bus down to the UNESCO town of Malacca (or Melaka, there are a few spellings of this town). This is a vacation destination for many Malaysian and Singaporeans. It's an old port city with some amazing architecture and a famous market. We spent our 1 night waking the market, getting our portrait drawn, and exploring the historic part of town. The next day we took another bus down to Singapore. The border crossing was smooth with only a little confusion of where our bus picked us up on the other side.
Our Malaysia trip was quick but we had a great time exploring another country. It was a shock how quiet and laid back everything was compared to Thailand. The people, sites, and especially the food were great but it was time to move onto Singapore.
