Our lovely hotel in Hoi An not only provided free laundry, but also a free shuttle service to the airport in Danang.
So we got a car to the airport for our morning flight at about 8am and said goodbye to Vietnam 🇻🇳 Our 6th flight so far…
On arrival in Kuala Lumpur, we had a right debacle with passport control – which took over an hour. Some of us were allowed through and some weren’t due to immigration forms.
By the time we all got through, everyone was starving (everyone else) and irritable (me and Jonathan), so we grabbed an uninspiring dinner and loads of Krispy Kreme in the airport (which had a multi level mall attached to it) before heading to our apartment.
I think we were in the airport for over 3 hours all in, so my hopes for a trip to one of the street food markets were dashed
This was one of the occasions I hadn’t organised a taxi with the hotel in advance, and planned to just order on Grab/ Bolt (like uber). The only problem is, they don’t do 8 seaters and you can only book 1 car at a time on the app.
So every time we wanted to go anywhere I would need to order 2 separate cars, on two different apps, then we’d need to be sure we were dropped off in exactly the same place or have a right faff trying to find each other. But anyway, my first bash at that proved successful and off we went.
We got to the apartment (3 bed, we all bunked up), on a relatively high floor, in a circular building near KLCC
Everyone was tired and had anticipated an early night but Jonathan was adamant we had to go out for a walk and see what was around.
And so we walked to the nearby Petronas towers and KLCC park, while hunting fruitlessly for ice cream (it’s no Shanghai or Hoi An in that respect, where you can get ice cream everywhere) and so the kids ended up with Mcflurries at about 11pm and no one got to bed til midnight. Oh well.
Kuala Lumpur is big. Big. Concretey. And bright lights everywhere. On first appearances and only from the very short amount of time I spent there, it is not my favourite.
It seems very hard to find anything old, historical or attractive. Just massive roads. Massive skyscrapers. Massive malls.
Everything is so spread out that so you need a car to get anywhere, so there is a lack of community or anything that feels like a neighbourhood. Just big and shiny.
I’m sure you could spend time seeking out proper little neighbourhoods and cultural areas that aren’t just blocks of apartments, hotels or shopping malls. But other places offer that in abundance and this just feels too modern for me, personally.
A great place for shopping, if you like to do that kind of thing on holiday. But while we might pop in to the odd shop or two at night, as we wander around a town at dinner time, we don’t actively go shopping, so it didn’t tick any boxes for us.
In the morning we decided to go for a massive breakfast to give everyone energy for a full day out, we popped to Gravy Baby, which we had walked past the night before.
We then got taxis to the Batu Caves, a big Hindu shrine complex, inside and around some limestone caves.
The cave complex includes a shrine dedicated to Murugan (aka Kartikeya, son of Shiva and Parvati, and brother of Ganesh) and the cave is the focus point of the annual Tamil Hindu festival of Thaipusam, which attracts thousands of visitors.
More interesting is that the central part of the festival is Kavadi Aattam – a ceremonial act of sacrifice practised by devotees in attendance.
The most extreme is the carrying of the vel kavadi, an alter decorated with peacock feathers, which is attached to the body (of said devotee) through multiple skewers and metal hooks pierced in to their chest and back!
People also practice mortification of the flesh at the festival, piercing themselves with skewers in the tongue, cheek or skin. Or do self flagellation.
It is home to a humongous gold Murugan statue, standing 43m tall, next to 272 colourful steps which lead up to the cave. There are apparently plans to build an escalator.
There were bloody monkeys everywhere. Stealing things off people, but not quite as aggressively as the monkeys in Thailand. Last time in Thailand they stole a whole carrier bag out of my hand – full of oreos and crisps and drinks for the kids – and pegged off with it.
We climbed up the 270 colourful steps (nothing to us anymore, after 500 in Phong Nha in 40* ☀️) up to the cave at the top – which had further Hindu shrines, a load of cave nesting pigeons and randomly, a coup of full of chickens, which Rai delighted in chasing all over the cave.
As we hadn’t managed the quad biking in Hoi An, I thought the kids might enjoy some go karting, and KL is full of go karting options! They have full car parks and malls converted in to tracks.
So we headed by taxis to MyKart; which had a 2 floor adult track plus a junior track.
But, surprise surprise when we got there, the adult track was under maintenance. So only Bo and Rai had a go.
So then we got another 2 taxis, to another go-karting place – Evolt – where we somehow spent 5 hours and hundreds of pounds, but and all the boys loved it.
Me, Soph and Crickett, not so much.
We did manage to get some street food while we were there, as Malaysia food scene is epic and there are plentiful food market areas. I had planned on visiting 2 more authentic markets but when it came down to it, abandoned it for the more touristy one because – 6 kids.
I just can’t be arsed ending my day with a battle to cajole them to eat unusual things, after a long day in a hot country. So we went to Jalan Alor, which is packed with stalls and little restaurants; but it is easy to find things that at all the kids will eat. Namely – meat and fruit.
I did get a bit gung ho – as usual – and ordered about 2,000 meat skewers, aka skewer gate. I managed to give some away to some homeless people but we did still have a million to bring home with us.
And off to Indonesia 🇮🇩
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