The long travel proved to be too much for the Nixon clan. Paul was the first down with a bad cold, followed by Callum then Lydia. So far I have been healthy, but I’m not gloating as I usually would because I know if I do, karma will kick me in the butt. Lesson learned, break up long flights with days in between. It’s just not worth the recovery time. Thankfully, our only really long journey is behind us now, and it prompted Paul to bump us up to Business class on our 4 hour flight from KL to Sri Lanka. The rest of our flights will be no longer than 8 hours. YAY! No more of this 24 hour thing.

We are starting to feel settled in Kuala Lumpur and have been out exploring a bit. What we have discovered is transit sucks, but taxi’s are quick and relatively inexpensive and KL is for the most part, not pedestrian friendly. No extending your arm and crossing at a cross walk here. It’s more of a run, dodge and weave situation or glom onto a local and stick with them for as long as you can. Our first venture was to KL City Centre (KLCC) where we checked out the Aquarium (KLCC Aquaria), City Park, Petrosains discovery centre (similar to science world in Vancouver) and the Petronas Twin Towers. 

The aquarium was pretty cool and the kids enjoyed seeing some different types of fish, seahorses and sharks. Great walk-through tunnel where the sharks and fish are swimming all around you. The Aquarium is a bit pricey, 180 ringgits for a family of four which converts to 60 bucks Canadian, but still well worth it for the kids. They have feeding times during the day, but we missed them all. May be worthwhile to make a call first and get the feeding schedule before a visit.

In the background on the left, you can see the water park which is a great place for the kids to cool down when exploring KLCC. This park has several playgrounds, walking/running trials and a mosque nearby so you can hear the call to prayer which is quite cool for us newbies.

Callum and Lydia loved Petrosains Discovery Centre. You could easily spend a few hours here with lots of hands on activities for the kids. The Petrosans is open until 5:30 and the last tickets are sold at 4:oo which is when we bought ours. We all felt a bit rushed and would have loved to have a bit more time checking out all the different activities.

After spending the day downtown, we hung around into the evening to get a picture of the Petronas Twin Towers. Rush hour traffic out of KLCC is very congested from 5 to 8ish, so we decided to hang around in town and wait it out. The Petronas are the tallest Twin Towers in the world and an icon for KL.

The Batu Caves are a quick 15 minute cab ride from where we are staying in KL. This is an easy to get to, old Limestone cave system with portions being used as temples for the Hindu population. I found it all pretty cool, but beware it is a bit dirty in the caves and all women must have their knees covered. They will give you a scarf before you enter if you need to cover your legs. Kids are exempt from the dress code.

On arrival, you are met by the giant statue of Lord Murugan and the hundreds of steps you must take to reach the mouth of the cave.

As we neared the cave entrance we were met by some local monkeys. The guy posing with Paul was a pretty laid back little fella, but once we got into the caves, it was a whole new ballgame. Chaos ensued several times over food and anyone holding a grocery bag, well that’s just asking for trouble.

At one point, while Callum was trying to get a picture of a monkey eating Doritos, another monkey came running and hissed at him. Freaked my boy right out! A nearby lady that watched the whole scenario play out, was laughing when the monkey turned and charged her. She started screaming, came running over to hide behind me and then proceeded to push me towards the deranged beast! I guess he felt he had reached the desired effect because he quickly lost interest and walked over to a female monkey and mounted her. Bonus sex education lesson for the kids.

Once we were done in the caves we came down to one of many restaurants and shops in the area to cool down before we made our journey home.

One of the best things this week has been spending time with family. The four of us adults even got to go out for a drink. Up until then, It had been 8 weeks, 3 days and 17 hours that Paul and I had been with the kids every waking moment. But who’s counting right!

The cousins chillin.