Travelling is not for the faint of heart! Our flight from Niue to Auckland, Singapore, then Kuala Lumpur was uneventful but took about 28 hours from the time we left for the airport in Niue until we arrived at our apartment in Seoul. We are thankful for arriving safely (and relatively uneventfully) each time we fly.

We have spent nearly two months in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s largest city at 7 million people. On average, KL stays around 88-95 F, (31-35C) but with humidity “feels like” 100-110 F most days. Just the opposite problem we had in Minnesota where “feels like” in winter can be 30-40 F below. After experiencing both extremes we have decided neither place is conducive to walking. Either way, we find ourselves staying inside too much.

We have found so much we like about KL;  friendly people, cheap good food, English language speakers are plentiful, an eco-park across from our balcony where macaque monkeys can be seen often, and grab taxis (similar to Uber) are cheap and easy to get around. But because of the heat we are planning on modifying our plans going forward. We’ve realized we don’t like living long term in these temperatures, so are heading to Seoul, South Korea next. We will be able to enjoy fall temperatures there- we’ve mostly been chasing fall around the world the past year! After Seoul, we plan on doing some short stays in warmer places like Cambodia and Southern Vietnam, but then will try and find places a little cooler for longer stays.

Back to KL: Once we got settled into our apartment, found groceries and supplies, we started exploring the city. We visited the Islamic Art Museum, where they have wonderful exhibits of ceramics, illustrated manuscripts, and miniatures of mosques from all over the world.

We explored the National Mosque of Malaysia, where Deb got to wear her very own purple robe to cover her shoulders and hair. Very stylish, but not exactly what she needed on a 90+ degree (32+ C) day! The people running the entrance area were very welcoming, trying to explain to us (with our language issues) that shoes were not allowed, Deb needed a robe, but that visiting the mosque and using a robe was free of charge. We weren’t allowed in the main sanctuary, but were able to see most of the rest of the mosque.

People here tend to stick to indoor activities where possible, which we certainly understand given the heat. Lots of shopping malls, from simple malls with smaller vendors selling a huge variety of items, to large upscale malls filled with all those designer names we recognize but never buy. (Cartier, Burberry, Hermes, Rolex) If you are in the mood to pick up a 20,000 USD watch, or a nice piece of jewelry for 150,000 USD, you can find it here. Most of the larger malls are air conditioned, but although they are refreshingly cool compared to outside, they still are on the warm side when walking. (maybe 80 degrees, 27C ?) The “lower fashion” malls tend to be a lot more interesting, as there are so many unusual things for sale. For example, take a look at the “waving kitty” store.

All the malls have restaurants or food courts, and even the restaurants in the upscale malls are very reasonable by our standards. We found good dim sum in one mall, and were able to watch at they prepared it.

making dumplings

At a higher end restaurant, we might pay 20 or 25 dollars for a good meal for the two of us. In a simpler place, it might be 8 dollars, such as the meal shown below.

We’ve also visited a variety of Taoist, Hindu and Buddhist temples. Below is a Taoist temple, Sin Sze Si Ya.

And a Hindu temple, with sections dedicated to their many deities.

Thean Hou Chinese Temple was very ornate.

Inside, you can use a collection of sticks to read your fortune. Pick up the bundle of sticks, then let them drop into the canister. One will often be left standing higher than the others, if not, try again. Once you find your stick, then read the number on it and pull out the fortune from the corresponding drawer.

We didn’t do too well with fortunes, though. Started out ok- “Your future is in your own hands. Work hard for it and don’t resign entirely to divine help. Cheer up, good tidings will be forthcoming for you.” But after that, our fortunes had a few, more specific guidelines:

  • Matrimony: Look elsewhere for hopeful prospects
  • Change of abode or travel: Not advisable

Oh well, guess we’ll just have to continue on and hope for the best. Maybe these wise men will watch over us!

We took care of some “maintenance” types of items in KL. Had our teeth cleaned at the Beverly Wilshire dentist. They use rotary power scrapers to clean teeth, which is faster but more annoying. Instead of the tooth polish on the little rotating cup, they use a small “sandblaster” on the teeth. The results are good, but we prefer the methods used in the US.

We had been carrying our own travel router, both for wifi security and ease of connections, but also to allow us to have our sling TV connect to a US VPN. (Virtual private network) This makes it look to Sling TV like we are in the US, so we can get local broadcasts. But we’ve run into too many places where we can’t get access to an Ethernet connection, so decided to go to a miniature router instead, and use a Nvidia Shield TV box that can do the VPN on it’s own. We got a resupply from Amazon of all places. Turns out they will handle international orders at a pretty reasonable cost, but it turns out there were a few “gotchas”. Three of the imported devices had wireless communications, so I needed to go through an ESIRIM permit process to get these to clear customs. Short version is that it took about 15 pages of paperwork, 30 emails, and a bank payment of around 75 USD for permit fees to get these to clear. Won’t be doing that again unless absolutely necessary…

We did have one significant setback in Malaysia. My (Deb’s) purse was snatched as we were walking one day.  Yes, we experienced what it was like to be robbed.  My purse was over my shoulder, across my body, as we walked in a touristy area of KL. We were on a sidewalk when a motorcyclist with two men drove onto the sidewalk and grabbed the purse strap from behind. It pulled me forward but the purse flew over my head before I had much time to react. We are both fine and no one was hurt, so in some ways we were quite fortunate. The major issue has been the significant amount of time to get credit cards, cell phone and other items replaced. And due to the paranoia of Capital One credit cards, they have decided to lock us out of our accounts until we get back to the US, so we’ve arranged for a couple replacement cards from another company. So far I have nearly all items (yep…I shouldn’t have been carrying as much!) replaced except for my phone and a few credit cards. Tim researched and spent hours on the phone helping to get everything replaced.  My cell phone on Google Fi works great overseas, but needs to be set up in the US. And I learned customs and mailing of a phone would cost several hundred dollars and we still run the risk that it might “disappear” in customs.  But I remembered that Tim’s cousin travels about every 6 weeks to SE Asia and might be able to bring a replacement phone. Thankfully he is scheduled to come to Incheon/Seoul, South Korea soon and we can meet him there.

Flights from Kuala Lumpur to South Korea are about six hours, non stop, so we are thrilled to get my phone back, but even more excited to be in temperatures of 50-70’s F with some mountains to climb.

The day my purse was stolen we had just visited the Kuala Lumpur aquarium where we ran into groups of schoolchildren out for field trips.

Lots of fun things to see, including an underwater tunnel through the aquarium. But one of our favorite things were these little sea snakes. If they are snakes?

We also enjoyed the good foods during our time in KL. One of our favorite restaurants was just a few blocks from our apartment. They had wonderful Indian food, including the meal shown below. It consists of rice with chicken curry, a variety of side dishes and condiments, all served on a fresh banana leaf. The drink in the mug was an iced tea that Tim ordered – the large red pepper in it apparently was steeped in a sugar water solution after being slit vertically. It ended up as a sweet, very hot (spicy) iced tea- very unique. The entire meal was less than 8 dollars US.

We are used to being able to get a variety of frozen veggies for stir fry, but here we commonly found only peas, corn, or sometimes carrots. One store had Brussels sprouts. It took us a week or so to realize that we can get everything we need fresh, at very reasonable prices!  The grocery store run shown below was about 8 dollars. At the top are a couple types of dried fruits, at the bottom are jack fruit and pearl eggplant. One night Tim took advantage of the mushrooms here and made a large mushroom cream sauce for pasta, using Shiitake mushrooms along with other mushroom types.

 

And a few of the other sights from Kuala Lumpur, and activities we enjoyed here:

 

Klang River

Klang River near Merdeka (Independence) Square

Merdeka Square

Merdeka Square where Malaysian Independence Day was originally celebrated. While we were in Malaysia the festivities took place south of us in Petra Jaya district. We managed to view some fireworks from our apartment that evening.

Textile Museum

Sultan Abdul Samad Building

We visited the botanical gardens, including a sculpture park and war memorial. Ran into more schoolchildren visiting on field trips.

Children celebrating Independence Day

They asked if we’d like to be part of the celebration, of course we said yes!

And the sculpture park next door.

Sculpture park

It took us a couple of days to go through all of the the Perdana Botanical Gardens and nearby areas. We visited a butterfly park for a couple of hours, then visited a police museum next door. Air conditioned!

Butterfly Park

Butterfly Park

Part of the botanical park is an aviary, listed as the world’s largest walk in aviary.

Bird Park

Bird Park

Bird Park

Bird Park

Signs like this were posted in the aviary, to remind us to give the birds some space. Deb said she wanted one for herself…

And finally they have Stonehenge, at least a smaller version of it.

Another Chinese temple that we ran across walking in the Brickfields area of KL.

Thean Hou Chinese Temple

And one day we were walking in a nature preserve just North of our apartment, and ran across these fellows.

Macaque Monkey

Macaque Monkey

Macaque Monkeys

And the view of the Menara Kuala Lumpur from our balcony. We had hoped that our balcony, which looks out over a quieter forested area, would be nice for sitting. But even in the mornings we generally find it too hot to sit out. We do, however, get to watch the monkeys playing in the trees, and climbing on the buildings next door. Also from our balcony we can see the Menara Kuala Lumpur tower, which is lit up at night.

 

Menara Tower

Batu caves is a huge limestone cave with Hindu temples in and around it, complete with golden Buddha at the entrance. About 30 minutes drive north of us, it’s a 5 dollar US Grab ride.

Lots of monkeys line the steps going up to the caves. Watch your possessions, they don’t mind helping themselves!

Outside of the caves is another large temple complex, with more monkeys inside.

And Petaling market, a sort of Chinatown where one can find food stalls, groceries, custom tailors, and most any type of counterfeit purse, watch, bag or clothing.

And finally, Tim decided to to make a change with the photography. I (Tim) used to have a larger DSLR camera, but knew that wouldn’t work for our full time travels. So a few years ago I switched to a very compact, Panasonic 1″ sensor camera. (The one on the right) As small cameras go, it’s pretty amazing. But I still find it a little limiting with what I can do with it. So I’ve decided to try a small mirrorless Fuji camera, hoping that will be a good balance of weight and features. We’ll see how it goes!

That will do it for KL. We feel bad about having waited almost 8 weeks since the last post, but are hoping that we can get on to a more reasonable schedule. Monthly? We’ll see. Just getting a better system for processing photos would help, we’ll keep trying to streamline the process.