... home again, home again, jiggety jig!

We did our normal city trick in KL. Namely, begin with an outline plan, start walking, change plans a couple of times and by the end of the day we have covered a lot of ground and seen most of what we wanted to see. Of course finding street side snacks and cafes en route is par for the course. We decided not to join the hordes in going up the Petronas Towers, once the tallest building in the world but rather the Menara KL Tower, the 5th largest communications tower in the world, figuring that at least we'd have something impressive to look at from 300m up in the sky. It gave us a good idea of the layout of the city too. At the bottom of the tower they have set up a zip line (about 30 m up and 70 m long) which Becca wanted to go on, so she did...not once but twice! She was very brave and loved it. After the tower the hunt was on for coffee to have with our doughnuts we'd bought from a street vendor. Moving into the business district that wasn't too hard to find. We then headed off to Chinatown with a little, well more than little, detour into Little India as we got a bit lost for a while. In Chinatown we also walked through the Central Market which was nicely done even for us non-shoppers. We then wasted some time trying to find a bus to the Butterfly Park. The public transport system in KL is very disjointed with bits belonging to different companies and no real co-ordination at all. Needless to say, we gave up and just walked there. It was a toss up between the limestone caves on the outskirts of the city or the butterflies in the Lake Gardens precinct: the butterflies prevailed.

Another longish walk back to catch the monorail back to Bukit Bintang where we were staying. We ended up in the Pavilion, a massive shopping centre that makes Hyde Park and Sandton shopping centres look a bit "provincial", on the hunt for supper. Its food court was extensive and we were spoilt for choice. All types of Asian and western cuisines were catered for.

The next morning we again bought our joghurt and juices from Carrefours to supplement the fruit and toast provided by our guesthouse. Packed our bags and started our long homeward trek. This consisted of: monorail to KL Sentral, catch airport bus to KLIA, fly to Hong Kong, transfer to HK departures and then wait 6 hrs for our late night flight to JNB.

Our flights both arrived at their destinations early so we landed at OR Tambo just after 6 o clock yesterday morning. By the time we'd fetched bags, cleared immigration and customs and had a nice cup of coffee, our friend Jane had arrived through the chilly morning mist to pick us up. Hooray!

Now it is just the jet lag to deal with and re-acclimatising to winter...brrrrrr!
Oh yes ...and also hopefully start planning another trip! Who knows when and who knows where to? But what we do know is that there is loads more to see and experience in this beautiful world of ours.

For now, the bushcats rest!

Pulau Perhentian

Can't believe it's the 5th July already! Two more sleeps in Malaysia, one on the plane and we are home.
To business: The Perhentian islands were magic. We caught our Air Asia flights, first to KL and then on to Kota Bahru, just south of the Thai border in a pretty strongly Muslim area of Malaysia. We spent the night at Crystal Lodge, nothing much to write home about, and got some food around the corner. We tried murtabak, a griddle bread, from a street vendor which was quite tasty. While we were eating teriyaki chicken and chips elsewhere, the heavens opened and there was an almighty storm. Luckily we didn't get too soaked running back to the hotel. Next morning we caught a taxi (yep, splashing out as the public transport to our next port of call is a bit convoluted) to Kuala Besut where we were to catch the 10 am ferry to Bubbles Dive Resort on Perhentian Besar. A 35 min or so ride in a motorboat found us deposited on the beach in front of Bubbles, our home for the next 3 nights. It was great, a real desert island getaway. The snorkelling off the beach in front was good. We saw a couple of black tipped reef sharks and lots of colourful fish and many clams. They run a turtle conservation NGO (ecoteer) from Bubbles so we went to talks by the resident marine biologist on coral and turtles. We met some of the "turtle girls", volunteers who do turtle watch during the night, research and beach clean-ups. Nice! Rebecca was also able to do some crafty stuff with Lucy (the house keeping supervisor from England) and some of the other staff members. She painted, modelled clay turtles and they made a board game. While she was occupied doing that we got some snorkelling in. We also did a half day snorkelling tour around the island where we got to swim with turtles and snorkel the Coral Garden which was beautiful. We also snorkelled at Shark Point where Kaz and BW saw a shark which was apt! Weather was mostly overcast (but hot) which saved us from getting too baked by the sun while snorkelling. Bubbles was also home to flying lemurs (Cynocephelus variegates) which we watched from the dining area at night. It flies from tree to tree with a batman-like cape. Quite amazing.

We retraced our steps this morning and arrived in KL at about 4:30 pm. We caught the Skybus to KL Sentral and then the monorail to Birkut Bintang where our guest house is. We walked around the corner to a road lined with Chinese foodstalls where we had a delicious meal of satay, sesame honey chicken, kai lan (greens in garlic) and pork. Tomorrow a day exploring KL.