malaysia, truly asia

Why we haven't opted to stopover for a night in Asia en route to Melbourne/London before is beyond me. Stopping in Kuala Lumpur after a 12 and a half hour flight from London was heaven sent. Giving ourselves a chance to stretch our legs and have a decent night's sleep was such a luxury particuarly in Asia, where our money seemed to go so much further than anywhere in Europe.

In London people often stop to smile at Nate and say hello but in Malaysia, everyone was stopping, smiling at him, cooing and wanting to hold him and give him sweets. His fair skin and hair seemed to be a magnet for the Malaysian people. The children all wanted to know his name and one girl in particular who we met at the park couldn't quite believe that his name was so short. Her name was a four barelled name, the only one I remember being 'Krishna' and so when I responded with 'Nate' she looked at me and paused as if she was waiting for me to finish by listing more names. I added 'Parker' for her but she didn't seemed to be satisfied with that either. She also wanted to know my name, and the name of 'Uncle'.

On our first day in KL, having flown overnight with little sleep, we stopped at our hotel for a short nap and then took a taxi down to Chinatown for lunch where we sampled the local delights. The heat and humidity was incredibly oppressive and after an hour or two of wandering aimlessly around Chinatown and a local park we were absolutely exhausted and headed back to the hotel to laze around in the pool.

The following day we went shopping at the Petronas Towers and then back to the pool until moments before our taxi picked us up to take us back to the airport. Being in Asia, with the extreme heat, foreign smells, sights and sounds we truly felt that we on the other side of the world, but with another 7 and a half hours to go we weren't quite there yet.