Welcome to KL

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia By

KL arrival

A quick $0 flight from Singapore and we are in Kuala Lumpur. We jump in a normal size Taxi with 2 suitcases in the front seat, 2 in the boot and 4 of us squished in the back. 45 minutes later we arrive in Damansara Perdana.

The weather is a constant 33C every day and the night's hardly ever less than 29C. It rain's some afternoon's, but the heat remains. I think I may have finally climatised though since I am contemplating jeans when visiting the shopping centre airconditioning.

The Curve Shopping Mall

Damansara Perdana is part of the Golden Triangle of Petaling Jaya, one of the most exclusive suburbs situated in the Klang Valley, at Selangor, Malaysia. It is about 15 minutes drive from the city centre. It is home to The Curve. A massive shopping mall composed of more than 250 retailers and restaurants. It also features a four star hotel named Royale Bintang, and is connected to Ikea, Ikano Power Centre, Tesco and e@Curve.

Honestly, it is massive and a great thing to have only 10 minutes walk away.

IMG_1912.jpg

Ikano Power Centre is another shopping mall, Tesco is a really huge hypermarket, the Curve has more shops then I’ve visited, plus a few indoor kids play lands and a sensory overload of restaurants. The e@Curve has a cinema, bowling alley and arcade.

Accommodation

Our apartment consists of 5 swimming pools and 3 playgrounds. It's an ideal place to have children and is super safe too. I will go more into the accommodation in a later blog once we leave KL for safety reasons.  I will also go into daycare shopping in this later blog. It’s so great having so many new people reading the blog, but I now must be mindful of my children’s safety and send out a huge thank you for your patience on this post. 

Where to hire a car 

On our second day here it was clear our kids were not going to make the walk to The Curve very often so we looked at hiring a car. A typical Google search came up with many places and then we stumbled across OLX. It’s a local directory/job search/anything search for Malaysia. On here we found housekeepers, chefs and a listing from Rental Van. Not only did they have the best prices, they had an option for a discount on those prices just by liking them on Facebook or Google+. The car was delivered that day and was brand new. We were the first customers. It’s much smaller than our Bali 7 seater, but it is adequate and cost us about AUD$400 for the month. That equates to less than $15 per day. A small amount for freedom.

Driving in Kuala Lumpur is so easy compared to Bali. Everyone obeys road rules, the roads are paved, there a lines on the road and traffic lights. Honestly it’s just like driving in Perth, except one problem: they have roads on top of roads. There is a freeway right near us that has 4 roads on top of each other and we have been lost several times trusting out GPS to get off the road, only to find it was the wrong road and we are on the top level instead of the bottom or the middle instead of the top, argh! Hopefully some experience will make us better because so far 2 trips to the city = 2 trips lost. KL = 2, Bender = 0.

Restaurants

We have visited some great restaurants at The Curve. Marche has a playground for kids. TGI Friday is deliciously American and provides drawing stuff and balloons for the kids. The Dragon Chinese restaurant was so authentic and delicious. Plus more.

When the kid’s have had a big day and we don’t feel like going out we found a service called Food Panda. They provide a list of restaurants that deliver to our apartment. We ordered, via their site, from an Italian restaurant: lasagna, chicken salad, minestrone soup & garlic bread for AUD$11.20. It arrived within 30 minutes and was yum. Very glad we found Food Panda and ready to try a few more of their yummy restaurants. We actually found better choice here then Room Service, which is a similar service. 

panda_cut_ns.png

A week in

So we are week in and Kuala Lumpur is so different to Bali. It is a city through and through. I love sitting in my living room many stories up and looking through my sliding doors and pass the balcony bars into the night at the thousands of city lights. They sparkle and tell a story of so many people out there doing something so different to what I am doing. However there is a certain longing for the nature of Ubud, the quiet, the chickens, the stray dogs.

At first I thought there was nothing to do here in KL, how wrong I was. Read our next blog post to see just how much there is to do. We have planned out our diary for the month and every free day is taken. It's going to be an exciting month here in KL, Malaysia.

Write Your Comment