Asia Trip Continued...Malaysia

Monday morning Brett had to head to the office to work all day. We enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel. Sue came and picked Allden and I up at the hotel and gave us a tour of Penang. She is my age and works here at Intel. We had a great time hanging out together. She took me to the Botanical Gardens, it was very warm and humid but beautiful! There were little monkeys running around everywhere and it was so very green! Allden liked the monkeys. Then we tried some coconut water-the guy takes a whole coconut and chops it in half then pours all the juice into a little bag and you drink it. Then we went to Gurney Plaza for lunch. We ate at a nice little restaurant, it was very good and the waiters really liked Allden. The gurney Plaza is right on the coast, Sue told me when the Tsunami hit in 2006 all the cars that were parked in the basement of the parking garage were under water. After lunch we went to a big Budhist Temple, inside was a huge sleeping Budha and several other displays with Budha and statue’s etc. I don’t know much about the religion but it was neat to see their temple. While we were standing outside one of the temples Allden suddenly became famous as one lady takes him out of my arms to take a picture. Then a crowd is gathered around and he is being passed from one Asian to the next with people snapping photos as fast as they can. He took it pretty well but he was starting to get quite worried so Sue rescued him and we left. I should start charging money to take a photo with Allden, I guess it’s because there are no blue eyed blonde haired cutie’s here. Then we took a driving tour around the city and saw the old Fort with cannon’s pointing out to sea, it looked like the old fort’s we had seen in England. Then she drove me through a section of town called little India. Here they sell all the Indian attire and spices and snacks, it was quite interesting. Sue is Indian so she explained to me a little about her culture. Malaysia has a good mix of many different cultures and religions here, many people are Muslim so the women are always fully covered, I would think it would be very hot! We picked up Brett and Jose after work and went to dinner together at a nice Italian restaurant. I’m not so great at trying all different kinds of food. Then we walked through the night market. This is where they sell all the “fakes” purses and watches and sunglasses even DVD’s that just came out to theatre. The police are really starting to crack down on the DVD guys in fact they came and arrested those guys and took their stuff away the very next night.
Tuesday Brett went to the office again and Allden and I relaxed at the hotel. We have a nice view from our room with the green golf course, city and the ocean.This is a picture of the jungle walk we went on at the hotel.

It is a very nice hotel with a nice swimming pool and pond with fish- that was Allden’s favorite to go look at all the fish. In the evening we went to a German restaurant and then went shopping at the market, Sue helped us barter for a few things and it was fun shopping I just wish we had more time.
Wednesday was our last day in Malaysia. Brett went to work while I packed up and hung out at the hotel, we flew out in the afternoon to Kuala Lumpur. This is the capital of Malaysia. We stayed one night there in a nice hotel right by the Petronas Towers. The Towers are really beautiful and well lit up at night, so we walked around and enjoyed the night life. Everywhere in Asia has a lot of night life so we have been out late every night. We tried Persian food for dinner, it was pretty good. If we had more time we would have explored more and gone to the market here.

Thursday we spent the morning in Kuala Lumpur and tried to go up to the top of the Petronas Towers to walk along the sky bridge, it’s free to go up- that’s the problem. So there was a super huge line and they were giving out tickets to go in the afternoon and we had to fly out. We opted to go to the KL Tower instead. This is the 4th largest communication tower in the world. You take an elevator to the top and walk around the observation deck. You get a very good view of the city and even better you can see the Petronas Towers. We enjoyed the views and then headed down the elevator. There were some guys playing musical instruments, Allden loves music and decided he wanted to get down and dance, soon Allden became the center of attention and the cameras were turned to him. He makes a lot of people smile and gets a lot of attention here. We headed back to the hotel to check out and head to the airport. This is the view from the top floor of our hotel....We took a taxi where the taxi driver told us a few more interesting facts about the country. Corn in a cup is a treat here!They have a fruit here called Durian, there are signs at the hotel and airport that say no durian so I asked why. It’s a fruit that is very smelly and can stink up an area very quickly and smell for days. He said if someone brought durian into his taxi it would take 10 days for the smell to go away. I did smell it at the market and it is pretty bad. He also said they don’t send it to other country’s because it is only good for about 3 days and then it is bad. They also have palm trees everywhere he said they harvest the little fruits off them for the palm oil. There are many things that are made with palm oil. Anyways we arrived at the airport the low cost terminal to fly air asia. We had to wait in long lines and had to pay extra for our luggage. The long lines to check in and then passport control took forever and we thought we were going to miss our flight. Luckily our flight was delayed 30 minutes so they hadn’t even started boarding when we got to our gate. We took a 4 hour flight to Macau.