After our Komodo Island boat trip, we flew from Labuan Bajo to Bali, where we spent 24 hours recharging and relaxing after our big boat adventure. The next day, we took off to Kuala Lumpur, where we would be meeting my parents for a few days before embarking on the European leg of our adventure!
The flight from Bali to KL was very empty, so we had the whole row to ourselves! We landed in KL around 3 pm, and took a taxi to our Airbnb to check in. This time around in KL, we would be staying right in the city centre, near the Twin Towers.
We arrived, settled in, and went out in search for food. There was a cheeky Nandos at the mall, so we had some delicious chicken for dinner. Around 8 pm, my parents arrived at the Airbnb in KL! Tired from our travel day, we had an early night relaxing at home.
The next day, after a nice breakfast of coffee and croissants, we went out to explore the city! We first walked to Chinatown, where my parents got their first taste of just how hot Kuala Lumpur could be. After some time outside, we needed a break from the heat so we ducked into a noodle store (with AC) and a big bowl of noodles while milking the AC for as long as we could.
Saz’s phone case had been slowly falling apart for weeks now, so she also was able to pick up a new phone case & phone screen in Chinatown (basically a new phone right?).
Coincidentally, my cousin Brandon was also in Kuala Lumpur, so we decided to all meet up at the KL Butterfly Park. It took us a while to walk there (and Google maps led us astray) but it was definitely worth the visit!
The butterfly gardens were amazing!! There were so many different species of beautiful and colourful butterflies, and we stayed in the sanctuary for well over an hour enjoying the beautiful and colourful gardens. A butterfly even climbed into my hand and just chilled with me for over 10 minutes!
After the gardens, we headed back to the Airbnb for a little siesta. We went out to a Brazilian steakhouse for dinner, and enjoyed some quality family time all evening.
The next day, we decided to try the Hop On Hop Off bus tour of Kuala Lumpur. We had enjoyed similar bus tours in many different cities, such as London and Chicago, so we were excited to see what KL had to offer. Unfortunately, we miscalculated how hot it would be on the top deck of the bus, and our energy slowly zapped out of us as we sat under the beating sun.
We had planned to stay on the bus for 1 whole lap to see all the sights and then get off where we wanted to explore, but we ended up being too tired and grumpy from the heat to want to walk around anywhere afterwards. The stops they chose for the tour were also a bit odd, many of which were in semi-ugly industrial areas. Nonetheless, it was a good way to see the city and learn some more information about the history of Kuala Lumpur.
That afternoon, we went to the cinema to watch the new Little Mermaid movie. It was great! It far exceeded all of our expectations. Plus it was wonderful to spend uninterrupted AC time…which quickly changed when we got home and realised that the AC in our Airbnb was broken. The owners said that they would find a technician to come in the next day to fix it, and provided us with a separate apartment with working AC to sleep in.
Unfortunately, the next morning nobody showed up to fix the AC. After contacting the owners, they said that all the technicians were booked out and the earliest somebody could come would be the next afternoon. We hadn’t made any plans for the day because we needed to be well rested for our big mission… TAYLOR SWIFT TICKETS WERE GOING ON SALE FOR THE ARGENTINA SHOW AT 9 PM!! Brandon came over again to hang out, and throughout the day our apartment just kept getting progressively hotter.
For dinner, we went to Din Tai Fung and had a Baskin Robbins ice cream for dessert to fuel up for The Great War – buying Eras Tour tickets..
That evening at 9 pm, we got into the online queue, and started the long wait. The minutes turned to hours and we waited up watching and waiting until 3 am, still barely having moved in the queue. Taylor also announced that she had added an extra show in Buenos Aires due to demand, so we were hopeful that we could get tickets. We decided to go to sleep for a few hours, and set an alarm at 7 am to see if any progress was made. Saz woke up at 7 am to a message that she was 15 minutes away from getting in!!! We had a moment of happiness.. that was instantly snatched away when all 3 Argentinian shows sold out just 15 minutes before we were able to get into the site. We were devastated!!!
To cheer ourselves up after our devastating morning, we went to the mall for some retail therapy. We spent the afternoon at the mall, where we picked up some fresh clothes, sneakers, swim suits, and a day pack for the next leg of our journey. We had dinner at a local curry place, and then went home for a rooftop pool swim! The water was chilly, but we enjoyed the time in the pool and steam room overlooking the Twin Towers!
After our evening swim, we re-organised and re-packed our bags. We packed up a bag of clothes that we no longer needed for my parents to take back to Taiwan, and enjoyed a last bit of family time.
The next morning, my parents left bright and early at 5 am, while our flight wasn’t until 9 pm. Luckily, due to the whole broken AC debacle, the Airbnb owner agreed to let us have a late check out and leave our bags with them for the day.
An old friend from high school who lives in Kuala Lumpur now, Celine, had seen that I was in town and messaged me on Instagram to meet up! She picked us up and took us to an amazing local Curry Mee restaurant. We hadn’t seen each other since graduation 10 years ago, so it was amazing to catch up for a few hours and chat about life and friends from HS.
After lunch, Celine dropped us off back at the Twin Towers, and we did some more last minute shopping for snacks. Just as we were planning on walking back to our Airbnb across the street, the skies opened up and it started POURING! It was less than a 3 minute walk to our door, but we were already wearing our plane clothes with all of our stuff packed up so we didn’t want to be sitting in wet clothes for a redeye flight. We decided to call our Grab to the airport from the mall and just have him swing around to our Airbnb to pick up our bags. Unfortunately, our driver was a passive aggressive clown who kept telling us how inconvenient it was for him to have to “go around the block” and kept asking how much extra he could charge us for the inconvenience (we said 0 lol).
After a horrendously trafficky and passive aggressive ride to the airport, we finally arrived. We had been stressed because the traffic to the airport took much longer than expected, but luckily security, check in, and immigration was all really fast.
We arrived at our gate and settled in for our long journey to Copenhagen!
It was amazing and relaxing to have some family time in Kuala Lumpur, and we will see my parents again in about a month when they join us in Europe for the summer!