Asian Escapes #4 - Kuala Lumpur

Catching up again - Kuala Lumpur seems so long ago, though I guess it has been 6 weeks.

It was Buddha's birthday in the middle of May, which was nice of him as we got Friday off. We thought we'd make the most of the long weekend so took ourselves off to Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur to be precise. It's still almost a 4 hour flight from here so quite far for a weekend but we want to see lots of places while we're here!

We flew Malaysian Airlines and landed at lunchtime on Friday, went through immigration and jumped on the KLIA express into the city.

Model version of the train, should you not know what one looks like....

To get to our hotel you had to go through a shopping mall (standard asian practise) - I was pretty pleased to see Nandos! Stephen wouldn't let me go though, apparently we didn't come all the way to Malaysia to go to Nandos, pfft he gets to enjoy some tasty chicken when he goes back to London every few months for work!

Picture of Nandos, as clearly you wouldn't know what that looks like either. 

Now, the main reason for going to KL? The PETRONAS TOWERS !! These towers are awesome - they totally dominate the KL skyline. They were the tallest building(s) in the world when I was at high school and partly inspired my engineering career, true fact. (The other part likely came from the fact I was good at maths and physics so it seemed like a good degree to do...). We didn't go up them, because well if you're up them then you can't see them! We did however stay in the Traders Hotel in a tower view room, the following photos taken from our room at various times of the day:

See, awesome towers! 

Turns out there's not a great deal to do in KL apart from admire the towers. It's less like any other asian cities we've been to and more like Europe - wide streets you can walk down and less high rise I guess. After enjoying free cocktail (two) hours in the hotel we went out to find this place...

The Taps Beer Bar! 

We have a good knack of hunting down the best bars wherever we are in the world, this was no exception with a fab beer list. We were quite tired and feeling a bit lazy so just had dinner in here too - think I had pizza and Stephen burger and chips - not exactly embracing Malaysian cuisine.

The next morning we'd booked ourselves onto the top rated thing to do on Tripadvisor - A Malaysia Heritage Walk. The one we did was the most popular and called 'Eat Pray Love'.  We turned up at 9:30 and got given these super cool caps and a bottle of water while we waited for the rest of the tour to turn up.

Malaysia truly asia.....

The first stop on the tour was the cafe downstairs (turns out the walking tour didn't actually involve much walking, but lots of eating - win!).

Us eating breakfast #2 (the hotel rate included breakfast so it would have been rude to miss it!)

Breakfast #2 consisted of a 'Pour Tea' - very sweet frothy tea, surprisingly tasty and a banana roti/pancake with curry dipping sauce - also very tasty!

 We were then shown around the older part of the city (most tourists don't venture out here and mainly stay in the newer shopping centre tastic part of town) and went to a chinese temple.

Older part of town

Mucky river..

Mosque

Typical street with the Kuala Lumpur Tower in the background.

We went to places you wouldn't think to go unless somebody told you. That includes this 'banana leaf' restaurant... It's basically curries and rice, which you eat off a banana leaf, and with your fingers! 

Sad face no food

Happy face lots of food

Jasmine bracelet all the girls got given before we went to the Hindu temple

Sri Mahamariamman Temple

Inside

Ah, back on the food... this was in a backstreet market somewhere.

 I'd really recommend the tour to anyone going to KL, I can't remember all the things we ate / drank but we probably tried about 10 different things in total and definitely good value for 3-4 hours entertainment, I think we paid about £25 each.

 After the tour we went back to the hotel to enjoy the air conditioning, we went to the pool before going to enjoy the free cocktails again. Stephen managed to drink 7 beers and myself 7 cocktails... value for money no?! After this not surprisingly we couldn't be bothered venturing too far for tea and ended up in an Italian just by the hotel. It was alright, but nothing special. I also forgot Malaysia is a muslim country  - wondered why my pepperoni tasted weird, it was made from beef not pork, oops.

On Sunday we had a lazy day before flying back to Hong Kong, another succesful trip :-)

Shuttle from the hotel to the shopping centre - a whole 200m, really not necessary!

Model planes in the airport

Another pic of my favourite towers, just because :)

Me & he + towers :)

UK Adventures - Part 2 of 2

Ah I bet you thought I'd forgotten, oh no, not I - here's part 2 of our UK adventures documented for completeness. I think I left you on Saturday night with the BBQ in the snow, so the second Sunday seems a good place to start!

Sunday was the day of the ROAST. Yes, PROPER MEAT, YORKSHIRE PUDDINGS and ROAST POTATOES. Capitals required since they are important; yorkshire puddings are possibly the greatest food ever - I had some of mine with golden syrup, obvs. (We went to the Globe for pie - yes, again, though we've not been for a little while - last Sunday lunchtime and they were serving roasts. They did look quite appealing, but given they were double the cost of the pie, which we know to be awesome, then really it was a no brainer!).

Back to the UK... on Monday morning we woke up in Ramsbottom and so began Operation Road Trip (though really we cheated and got the train for some of it). We drove down to some random garden centre just off the Motorway near Stoke to meet friends for coffee. As I'm writing this I'm remembering just how cold it was! We sat in a cafe and enjoyed a good couple of hours catching up and drinking hot drinks! After this quick stop it was down to see Claire near Oxford.

Cruising. I think I took this when we decided to splash out on the M6 toll, hardly a car in sight!

Claire has a lovely little house and we are very jealous and looking forward to a time when we have something similar of our own. It's in a small quiet village and about a zillion worlds away from Hong Kong life! I lived with Claire at uni and on several occasions when we were bored of engineering (surely not!?) we went to attempt to play golf. This now seems to be a theme and the last time we visited her we ended up at the driving range. Stephen had been desperate to play golf the whole time we were back but due to the snow it wasn't happening. Fortunately it wasn't so bad down south and lucky for Stephen he got to have a few hits/whacks/drives with Claire's top of the range (read bashed up very old clubs, bought for a few quid) - all good fun.

Skillz

Then it was time for The Best Chinese In The World. Seriously, we may live in (kinda) China but you cannot beat the Peking Rendez-vous in Haddenham. I mean, it's even open on a lunchtime!

On Monday morning we then got the train to the big smoke. (We were going to drive but we worked out the train would only cost marginally more once you factor in parking and petrol so why not!). Stephen lived in London for 6 months last year and I spent most weekends down there so it was cool to go back. We met our friends Mark and Sarah (aka The Crazies) at the station (can't remember which, Waterloo maybe?) and off we went to the pub, naturally. We had pie and beer and a relatively civilised evening, fab.

Sunshine, but still cold.

Last time I was here was after I'd stayed at Claire's and we'd got the early train in on Saturday morning to go to the velodrome and watch some olympic track cycling, happy memories!

On Wednesday we left Mark and Sarah's flat and took a train even further south to Uckfield, to go see our lovely friend Jenny. We had a couple of hours to mooch round London before that so I suggested a trip to Loop (I'm never normally that impressed but having been removed from pretty yarn living in Hong Kong I treated myself to a skein of Uncommon Thread sock yarn :-) ). The way to convince Stephen to let me go to Loop is to remind him of it's close proximity to The Breakfast Club. We first had this one Saturday morning last summer after we'd been to collect our wedding rings (dawwww) and it was amazings! Pancakes with all the crispy bacon, winning!

We arrived in Uckfield before Jenny finished work and enjoyed a good cuppa with her mum and little girl while we waited for her to get home. We then had a great chilled out evening eating burgers and catching up on the gossip.

The Shard (obligatory picture given I was at London Bridge station, still don't much like it).

Leaving London

It snowed again! (only a very little bit, but still).

Arrival at Uckfield.

In Leeds I left Stephen home alone with my folks for the evening and went out with my fab knitting chums. We ate curry, we drank, we knit, it was brill!

Happy times! (Soz Rach, I think you'd gone home by the time the camera came out!)

On Friday Stephen and I went into Leeds again to buy a few last bits to take back to HK and take the opportunity to have a few cheeky afternoon drinks in our favourite bars. Stephens family then came over in the evening and we had Harpos - the best pizza in Leeds (apart from Salvos) and a few drinks in the local.

Finally, on Saturday it was time to leave - sadface! We went to Weegmans in the morning to satisfy our sausage roll cravings and popped in to see my grandma. Then it was time to drive over to Manchester airport, with a quick stop in the John Lewis cafe to say bye bye to Stephen's folks.

We dropped the hire car off, checked in and off we flew to Frankfurt. We had a super quick stopover but I managed to find the time for a quick McDonalds (I had deep fried McPrawns!). Stephens brother and sister fly to Germany regularly and scared us with stories of Lufthansa meal offerings (sauerkraut featuring prominently) so we thought we best get something. I'm pleased to report that whilst the western meal looked questionable the asian option of noodles was really quite nice!

Sausage rolls in the sunshine

The temperature finally hit double figures as we were driving to the airport!

Frankfurt - Hong Kong, I believe this is a new Boeing 747-8.

And that's that! We had the best time seeing everyone and are looking forward to doing it all again at Christmas :-)

Hong Kong Inflatables

For some unknown reason there's a selection of inflatables at West Kowloon Cultural District at the minute (site of Beertopia), I think it's supposed to be art or something. Either way it provided us with some free entertainment for half an hour on a sunny Saturday.

The first installation you encounter is called 'Complex Pile'....

Just why?? 

Close up

Closer up, with all the fine details. Don't get it! 

Next up, an inflatable pig. I think you could have gone inside this but I didn't realise that at the time. 

Giant half buried cockroach.... again, no idea.

Impressive, but I'm still not sure I understand! 

Stonehenge I did like, a lot. It was a big bouncy castle base too, bonus.

Enjoying the bouncy castle element! 

'Complex Pile' in front of the ICC (tallest building in HK, where we had Christmas dinner) 

View from the exhibition across the harbour.

And as if that wasn't enough inflatables for one day, the giant duck was also in town!! This is also in the name of art - the artist Florentijin Hofman claims it is a 'happiness inducing sculpture that gives people a break from their daily routines'. I can buy this, I think it's ace, I also like to think he swam there himself.

DUCK!

Me + duck :)

There's some great pictures of him arriving in HK online, I'd paste them here but am too lazy to credit them to the correct sources. He did have an unfortunate incident though and the poor thing deflated. This led to lots of jokes about him getting avian flu and/or various other diseases due to the air and harbour pollution! Fortunately he's now back to full health and will sit in the harbour for another couple of weeks :)

Asian Escapes #3 - Phuket

Soz - appears I'm a pretty rubbish blogger lately, not sure why - working and playing too hard possibly!

(Asian escape #1 was Macau and #2 was Bangkok, should you be at all interested.)

So... Phuket... it was brill! I'd say much more our scene than Bangkok, mainly in that there's nothing much to do apart from laze about eating and drinking compared to Bangkok where we felt guilty for not visiting temples and historic sites.

We flew Thai airways this time - the plane was all funky bright colours, they served good food and had a much better entertainment system than we expected. We arrived at our hotel and in true thai hospitality were greeted with a nice cold towel and fresh fruit cocktail while we checked in. We were a little early so they asked if we'd mind waiting by the pool with a (free) drink while they got our room ready, not really no! The lady returned about twenty minutes later to say that they were in fact upgrading us to a suite for the night, sadly not for the whole 4 nights.

This is in fact a mocktail, not a cocktail 

Cute bunny flannel things 

Enormous bed 

Massive couch and tv area 

Hot tub!!! (not quite as good as it looked... it was full of cold water which we emptied, then realised it would take about 10 hours to refill with hot water so decided to save the polar bears and not bother).

The suite looks pretty nice right? Not so much after we sat out on the balcony in the evening having a drink when a cockroach fell on Stephens head - ACK! We swiftly ran inside to find the place had been overrun with flying ants, cue a call to reception asking if they had any bug spray we could borrow. Crisis averted and we got on with our evening, also learnt our lesson and bought bug repellent, bug killer and bug candles for the following day!

We went for a walk along the beach on the first day:

Pretty decent non? 

Grabbing a bite to eat at the other end of the beach - tom yum / thai basil noodles / thai prawn crackers 

That was about as far as our exploration of Phuket (specifically Kata and Karon) went to be honest, the following days were spent playing obscene amounts of candy crush relaxing and reading by the pool, bliss. I like Thailand a lot from what I've seen so far, this may be a function of the fact that food and drink is so good but also so cheap! We were eating at the top restaurants on tripadvisor for only a few quid a meal, similar for cocktails with beer much cheaper.

Frozen margarita number 1 of several 

Tasty food 

Gorgeous view from the suite 

Our view for most of the days 

View from the standard room

Went for a walk to the next village one night but gave up halfway, a bit pleased with my sunset snap en route though!

Standard 

Stephen discovered the banana pancake cart:

They're very popular, perfect walking home after a few beers snack. 

This man has banana chopping skillz! (40 baht is approx. £1). 

Doesn't look much but pancake full of freshly cooked banana is surprisingly tasty.

We spent an enjoyable hour one evening at Dinopark Minigolf. I'd like to claim I won (the score card says so..) but there may have been a small element of cheating involved. I know I know, only cheating myself....

Brontesaurus? 

Stephen + dino chums (unimpressed face likely related to the fact I was doubling his scores on the score card...)

We spent another evening at a bar with a FlowRider. The last project I worked on in the UK had one of these in a leisure centre up near Durham... not sure the idea is quite as appealing as sat watching outdoors late at night whilst drinking Pina Coladas in Thailand but you never know! Either way, it's great entertainment - we got to see a good mix of pros and beginners, I'd love to have a go but not sure I'm brave enough to try in public!?

Flowrider

And finally, a last day treat of lunch by the pool - shame I only discovered how good the hotel food was on the last day!

Prawns on crispy noodles plus favourite mango sticky rice, yum.

I did warn you it was mainly food and drink! Asian escape #4 coming soon - it's buddhas birthday on Friday so we're using our day off wisely and flying to Kuala Lumpur for a long weekend, can't wait.