Continuing from Parts 1, 2 & 3.
Upon arrival at Penang airport, we went through a most excellent set of security queues: think old style, where you can keep water and nobody gets intimately acquainted with your private parts, yet it’s still as secure as here. That pleased me. Then, onto another Malaysian 737 to make the short flight to Kuala Lumpur.
Our home in KL was to be the Mandarin Oriental, parked right next to the Petronas Towers. So right in the heart of the new centre of the city. Around us we had dozens of skyscrapers, a very nice little park, plenty of shopping malls and more than a few bars and restaurants. So we did what any sensible people would do: checked in and crashed out for an hour or two.
Then: exploring.
Pictured: A man deciding what to explore
Most of the exploring was done where we could find air-conditioning or early in the day. The shops (of course) were visited during the height of the day for reasons of aircon. There were lots of shops, may of them very high-end. So high-end, in fact, that many of the fancier watch shops and designed labels had men at the front door with actual shotguns. We didn’t go into many of those shops…
Other things we did:
- Visited the next tallest building in KL to look down on the rest of the city. Walking up the hill to the Tower nearly killed us…
TLW looking down on the Petronas Towers
- Visited a butterfly farm that also had lots of turtles and ancillary insects. Pretty interesting, actually.
- Visited a massive bird park, wherein there were lots of flamingos, peacocks, random falcons and hundreds of other things. Some of which we were encouraged to feed:
- Had actual fish eat our actual feet.
And people pay to have this done. I know we did. Twice. It was weird, but after a few minutes felt pretty good.
- Visited the Aquaria KLCC, which was again pretty excellent. Lots of videos of sharks and the like. But more importantly, we found Nemo.
DSCN4391 - Died of heat.
All in, a very busy end to the holiday. And on the last day, we went to sleep knowing that it was an early start to get to the airport and then home…