April 6th and 7th Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Friday, April 6th we departed our lovely Chiang Mai apartment  No.1502,  leaving the keys for the next tenant moving in on Sunday. The night before we had been to Victoria's setting up on Vonage phone at her place so any family/friends calling that number will get a different voice message for the month of April. We also dropped off at our friend Greg's our printer, a lap top and various of items for pick up when we are back in Chiang Mai around May 6th, when we will reorganize our suitcases to fly back to Washingon.

The AirAsia flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, was a direct 3 hour flight with a quick entry into KL, no visa fee, and also quick baggage pickup.  The airport is about 45 minutes away from the city and as we are carrying a suitcase each, one without wheels, plus back packs, camera case etc we elected to go by taxi to our hotel the Royale Bintang.  This hotel was chosen because of the location in the city's "golden triangle" which had shopping, restaurants and entertainment as well as being close to all the tourist sites.  We had read reviews on agoda our favorite asia hotel discount booking site and it seemed that it would be quiet but would have other drawbacks - AC might not be perfect, a little run down....However, after a 1 1/2 hour check in line that we have never experienced before, we were quiet put off by the hotel management and the hotel in general.  TripAdvisor and Agoda will definitely getting an interesting review from us!
 
We enjoyed a delicious Middle Eastern dinner just a short walk down the street. We have not had Lebanese food in quite awhile so it was a nice end to a long day.  The prices of things here in KL are considerably higher than in Chiang Mai (meals are running 3X more).

Saturday morning we headed out the door at 9am to go to the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park.  It was amazing to see so many school children standing in line to get in as well.  Some sporting Montessori T-shirts.  The ethnic mix of Malaysia is very obvious in these children - Malays, Chinese, Indian and other south Asian groups. We spent over 2 hours in the bird park which is noted as "the largest free-flight walk-in aviary". We remembered taking Aniesa and Jonathan to the bird park in Singapore many years ago. It was not too hot when we first got there so we walked through all 4 zones and enjoyed all the bird song of the morning.  We had our binoculars and cameras with us so enjoyed trying to "hunt" them with the camera. With only one person's finger pecked by a sharp beak we escaped the birds. The one disappointment was that the park did not have too many indigenous birds either listed in the free flight areas or in the cages.  A good learning experience for new birders!

Once the heat and humidity caught up with us we postponed our plans for the butterfly park till tomorrow morning and went to the (air conditioned) Islamic Arts Museum which at the moment also had a traveling exhibit of "Architecture in Islamic Arts" from the Aga Khan Museum. We started with this exhibit that was very interesting to us as we had seen many of the mosques for which there were replicas and hope to see others which are on the Silk route, allowing that the 2 main ones, the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina we will never see in person. The museum's collection is representative of the entire Islamic world and has artifacts not only from Iran and the Middle East but also from China, India and Southeast Asia. The collection includes architecture, qur'ans and manuscripts, jewelery, arms and armour, textiles,ceramics, glassware, coins and seals and woodworking.  The displays were very artistically done and the case descriptions were short but comprehensive. Only the artifact descriptions seems to fall a little short to someone who is reading every label.

The museum restaurant has a good reputation and we were planning to have lunch there but it was closed for a private function.  So when, after an hour we were starved we went outside and ate a shawarma and some papaya from a food stall serving a bus load of middle schoolers who must have gotten to the museum ahead of us. After that quick bite we went back into the air conditioned museum to spend almost another two hours. The gift shop was also very good and we bought a small, inexpensive paperback book put out by the museum on Ikat textiles.

We then went to see view of Kuala Lumpur city from the Menera Tower (KL Communications tower).  The tower has amusement rides for children around the outside and on the first floor.  We were able to get senior priced tickets, being over 55 years of age, for the 276 meter elevator ride to the observation platform. The Petronas Twin Towers are taller than the World Trade center towers in NY  were.

We got back to the hotel just before a thunderstorm hit so we rested a bit and then went out to see China town and Petaling street.  This area becomes a night market selling watches, jeans, shirts, etc and we really just walked through and then took a taxi to Jalan Alor (food market street) which is close to our hotel. The food stalls run all down the street on both sides, some with table clothes serving seafood, others serving Thai and Chinese. There were several stalls with Tamil Muslim food (mamaktuk-tuks or songthaews here in KL - only air conditioned taxis).  The street is the reclaimed red light district but there are still hotels there that rent rooms by the hour. We had Dim Sum, mango and cat fish salad (Thai dish) which were very good.  We stopped for a glass of wine on Bukit Bintang to just people watch before going back to the hotel.