I’m hoping to do some blog posts as we travel, partly because we don’t want to forget things and partly as we’ve been asked to keep family updated 😊 I’ll keep it ‘rambling diary’ style for now and then update it with pictures when we get home. I’m writing this whilst on a flight from Auckland to Queenstown, having just spent a few days in the North Island. But before that, we started our honeymoon at Heathrow, in the airport lounge (one of our wedding presents thank you!)

We enjoyed eggs Benedict and a glass (or 5) of prosecco before boarding our Malaysian Air plane. Seemed ok, with a fairly decent in-flight entertainment system however the service and food did let it down. They were quite unfriendly whilst serving breakfast and we probably wouldn’t choose them again.

We arrived in KL International at around 6:30am and proceeded to BK for breakfast as the plane food had been lacking! It gave us time to work out how best to get to the hotel though. It’s about an hour away from the centre so we looked at the train, bus and taxi options. Instead of Uber, they have Grab so we downloaded that as it was cheaper than an airport taxi, however it didn’t allow us to order a car. We then went to the Airport Taxi desk and ordered a budget taxi to our hotel. These are better than the metered taxis available as tolls and tips are included and it’s a set price. It cost us about £20 for the hour journey

I was complaining that the toll road was quite bumpy but it was nothing compared to the roads in the centre. They are doing lots of building work, including a new monorail line next to our hotel, so a lot of the local scenery was a construction site. We stayed in the Furama Bukit Bintang, a 4 star hotel costing around £30-40pn. Our room wasn’t ready when we arrived (it was only 9am) so we dropped our bags, changed clothes and headed outside. Our first lesson was that a zebra crossing doesn’t mean that cars will stop for you. If anything, they speed up in order to get past before you try and cross! We had several near misses outside the hotel.

There was a shopping mall (one of many) 10 mins walk so we stopped in there for a look around to kill some time waiting for our room. I love to look around foreign supermarkets so we had a good browse, discovering exotic items such as curry flavour Pringles! Ok…. There were more exotic items than this. We walked back to get into our room and it was a really big suite, with bedroom, bathroom and living room. The décor was a bit 90s coffee colours but it was nice and clean. We thought we’d check our Petronas Towers tickets and were glad we did as we were booked on the 6pm tour.

We walked down to another large mall called the Pavilion which was home to a number of recognisable brands, including Marks and Spencer (fancy a transfer Mum?). From there you can walk along a massive concourse (avoiding the dodgy drivers) all the way to the Petronas Towers which are situated in another… you’ve guessed it… Mall! It’s also right by the Aquarium and park. When it was time for our tour, we headed up in the lift with our group to the skybridge, which links the two towers although it’s not actually attached to them, so that it doesn’t break off if the towers move. We then moved up to the highest observation deck for a great view of the city. We’d purposefully booked a time to coincide with sunset, although the clouds did obscure most of it we still got some great photos! Then we went outside to the park to see the fountain/light show. We’d read that it would start at 8 and 9pm but the fountains were already on with rainbow lights. At 8pm the music started and it was a really nice show, although not quite as spectacular as Dubai or the Bellagio.

On our second day it was glorious sunshine when we woke up, at around midday! I put my suncream on as it was 32 degrees and we headed out for the day with the aim of exploring some of KL outside of the malls. As we got across the road the heavens opened (glad I had that suncream on…) and we got soaked to skin! The roads turned to rivers and we ran through to the mall where we had some lunch in the hope that the rain would clear. It didn’t. We ran back through the rain to the hotel and decided to visit the pool instead. It was outside, and had a glass front. The view of the building site wasn’t the most picturesque but we enjoyed a swim until we got kicked out due to the weather. Happy hour started in the hotel bar at 5pm so we had a few cocktails and listened to a guy singing and playing guitar. We were able to successfully order a Grab car and made our way to the Pavilion where we’d seen another happy hour sign. A few cocktails later and it was suddenly 3am and we’d been in a karaoke booth for 3 hours!! We walked home and set our alarms, determined to do some exploring on our last day.

After 2.5 hours sleep we headed down to breakfast and then checked out. The bus stop at Bukit Bintang was about 10 mins away and you could catch the ‘Hop on/off’ bus, or get a bus to Batu Caves which left at 10am or 2pm. It was Diwali on Sunday so we were a bit worried that it would be absolutely packed but for £7 return trip we couldn’t pass it up. It was an open top bus so we had good views of the city and it took about 30 mins to get to Batu. There’s an 18m gold statue, and multicoloured steps all the way up to the cave entrance. It was about 33 degrees, humid but very sunny and it was quite busy with Hindu families making their prayers. We started to go up the steps but I just freaked out a bit at the height and steepness and felt dizzy all of a sudden. I had to go and sit down, and persuade Bobbi to make the trip on his own. He took some amazing photos and had I realised how big and spacious it was up there once you got up the busy steps then I would have pushed myself to do it. Thankfully Bobbi took photos and videos for me to see. The bus then took us back at 12 and that’s all the time you need there really. We’d recommend the 10am rather than the 2pm as the traffic in KL is horrendous from 4pm.

We then walked a couple of streets to see Jalan Alor which is street food market. We hadn’t realised that it was mostly closed until the evening though, so we headed to the Japanese mall: Lot 10 which has a food court and reminded us of last year’s trip. The ramen and Asahi were very good! It was about time to head to the airport for our evening flight and we ordered a Grab again, which ended up being half the price of our taxi there. We boarded our flight and it was such an old plane! We’d booked the back row, thinking it would be easier to recline but there was no leg room at all! There wasn’t any for anyone else either and I think most people were uncomfortable. The food also got worse and evening meal was just in a cardboard box with plastic cutlery! Definitely our worst long haul flight, but doesn’t matter as we ended up in Auckland ready to start our NZ adventure!