We say our fond farewells to Banana Garden Villa and this time it’s for real. 41 nights in total over three visits have been wonderful. It also marks out last night in Vietnam with the next stop, one night in KL airport.
We’re going posh for the airport hotel. You can tell it’s posh when we spot a fridge in reception just for cold towels, the TV remote control comes with its own leather folder – yes, seriously – and there’s a keypad to switch on lights and close the curtains.
So, what to do? It’s already 5pm as we have an early flight the next day. One option would be a budget challenging £20 and half an hour train ride away (not including a manic golf buggy ride to and from the airport station) to the centre of KL. The other option is to enjoy an evening in the luxury hotel with its remarkably good value food & drink.
So, we do the central KL option. This allows us to hit one of our favourite foodie places, Sushi Zanmai, get some essentials (i.e. fizzy sweets) from Mr DIY and blow out on a big bottle of gorgeous Oudh Lush shower gel. All of which are handily located at the central train station mall. We also see, from a distance, all the KL big towers one last time. Do we regret doing this? Not one bit.
A lovely & luxurious way to finish our time in Japan and south east Asia. Next stop is the cheap, unassuming, rainy & freezing cold of Dubai for three nights – errr, not on all those counts.
We get the train from KL to Penang, well, a taxi, a train, a ferry and another taxi. We’ve been here a couple of times before and loved Georgetown; the history, sites, museums and food.
This time we’re staying in two places in Georgetown. Our first week is a couple of km north of the centre in Gurney. We blow out a budget challenging £56pn on what was described as ‘a penthouse’. As soon as we arrived, we knew that it was the right decision and we quickly wish we’d booked longer.
Having travelled around a bit, it’s a rare thing that accommodation actually ‘works’. There’s normally something wrong with it. This might be something simple but annoying, like lights that can’t be turned off from bed or a lack of wardrobe space (often we scream internally to ourselves to ask whether the owner has ever tried staying there themselves). Or it might be something more fundamental: it’s not entirely clean, things leak or don’t work, air conditioning is poor, or it’s in what feels like a dodgy area. This accommodation ‘works’ in every aspect and we love the view of the mountains, the cityscape, and the temples from the vast balcony.
Our apartment also happens to be beside two shopping malls, including one we visited numerous times when we were here last, the Paragon Gurney. Within that there’s a Sushi Zanmai, our favourite food chain in Malaysia. We consume a lot of sushi, five times in eight nights, enjoy the lot and seem to have tried a good percentage of their entire menu. And their menu is vast. And cheap. By now you may guess, dear readers, that it was not a coincidence that the apartment we chose was near the Paragon Gurney and Sushi Zanmai.
Happily there are many other things to see and do. Within five minutes walk is a Thai temple, a Burmese temple, and a Malaysian Mosque. In the blazing sun, the Thai temple in particular shines bright. The dragons guarding the doors sparkle, the gold leaf on the roofs glistens, and pagoda glows. It’s stunning, although 33C and 90% humidity challenge us.
We also had a day out at Entopia. This is a living museum dedicated to butterflies and other insects, but it’s the butterflies that are the star attraction. Walking around, trying desperately not to step on the winged wonders, it’s pretty damn spectacular. The best part is stopping still and being are lucky enough to catch a gap in the many visitors. Lovely.
Paragon Gurney also has a cinema. In fact, it has eight screens and now even an iMax. We go twice. Once to see the incredibly silly, but good fun, Minecraft movie, the other to see Howl’s Moving Castle, a classic Studio Ghibli. At just over £2 a go, it’s a bargain. The cinema also seems to have moved on from the spicy crab flavour popcorn we encountered in 2017 and onto a more classic caramel. Our nasal senses very much appreciate this change.
So, it’s back to the apartment and to the free show that happens most nights. Thunder cracks and lightning illuminate the sky and forks strike. Often without any rain. Spectacular.
Moving from the bucolic pace of Hoi An to Malaysia’s capital megacity was always going to be a contrast. We’ve been here before but, every time, we forget just how utterly car-dominated it is. It’s one of those places that’s so big that what looks like a trip round the corner on a map is actually an hour’s walk. Pavements, even on major roads, are intermittent at best, stopping suddenly at inopportune moments. It’s hot, humid, and very, very busy.
The view from our flat is spectacular. We can see the KL Tower, the Petronas Towers, even the new mega tower that looks like an 80s mobile brick phone, with dozens of high rises in between. When the inevitable lightning storm strikes, it’s drama all round.
To a passing visitor in the city centre, Kuala Lumpur seems like nothing so much as a collection of shopping centres connected by dual carriageways. The malls are a welcome break from the oppressive weather and are social hubs for many. People come here to eat, hang out, go to the cinema; some even contain amusement parks. But they are set up for cars and taxis – so they are completely disconnected from the city itself. It’s an odd way to spend tourist time.
On our first night, we seek out the nearest Sushi Zanmai – something we’ve been looking forward to all trip. Decent sushi at a price that means a slap up meal for two will still get you change out of £25. It is, of course, in a shopping centre.
We’re only here for a few days before we head north to Penang. We know from previous visits that there’s a real, touchable Kuala Lumpur there somewhere. When we return, this time for a full week, we’ll get out and visit some places that are in the open air – or that at least have windows!
