Travel Memories Tuesday - Kung Hei Fat Choy

Kung Hei Fat Choy - Happy Chinese New Year! This weekend I went along to Chinese New Year Celebrations in Wellington with a group of friends and it reminded me of the time I was in Kuala Lumpur for Chinese New Year. My trip had been planned around my cousins wedding in Phuket, so it was just a happy coincidence that I was around for Chinese New Year.

So many buildings around the city were decorated and they looked amazing - so much red, so many lanterns!

I loved that there whilst there were huge decorations in the malls there were also simple red lanterns everywhere - including just in trees along the foot path. There was a real festival feeling in the city, it was just awesome.

Although the Wellington celebrations weren't quite as dramatic last weekend - I still had a pretty fun afternoon watching the parade in the sunshine and eating delicious food. Here's a few photos, I always love the Chinese New Year Parade. The Chinese dragons are always so much fun.  

I hope the year of the horse is a good year for you!

The final days of my time in Kuala Lumpur

Time for another holiday post - I just wanted to share a few more of my photos from Kuala Lumpur.

Here's a few photos from the central market - the maxi dress I am wearing may look familiar to some of you. It's the gingham maxi I made just for the trip! I am pretty proud of it, but unfortunately there's not much need for a breezy maxi frock in Wellington. I'm totally going to wear it when we travel to Samoa later this year (perhaps I'll even make more for that trip).

We also visited a city called "Putrajaya" which sounded great in the brochures but turned out to be a little boring and weird. The city is the administrative centre of Malaysia and it has the feel of a purpose built city without a lot of soul. I did get to visit another mosque though - which meant another chance to rock a gown.







We also visited this rainforest which is right in the centre of KL - near KL tower. It was pretty amazing seeing a forest in the middle of a major city and it was even better because there were monkeys!








We found this cute little shrine out on the street, near a car park - isn't it amazing. I love finding this type of thing when I'm travelling.

It was Chinese New Year whilst I was KL, so it seemed that a dragons were everywhere!!

Finally lets finish off with doughnuts - Lisa and Aaris were very excited to find Krispy Kreme in KL. I thought they looked kind of cute, especially the happy face ones.

KL - Day Two!

Hello World! I haven't really been blogging much lately - this is due to a lack of internet connectivity. The wifi in the hotel seems to be working well right now, so I thought I'd take the time to sit down and write a post and let you all know a little bit about what I've been up to.

On my second day in Kuala Lumpur I was flying to Phuket in the evening, but that didn't mean I couldn't do lots of things in the morning before my flight.

First of all I decided to go to the top of "Menara Tower" also known as "KL Tower" - I love visiting tall buildings whenever I travel to new cities and it can be difficult to get tickets to the Petronas Towers (they only issue 500 a day) so I decided I would check out KL tower instead.

I took a lot of photos at the top of the tower - I loved the view - especially seeing swimming pools on top of a lot of the buildings, I thought that was pretty fun and I can see why apartments would need swimming pools on the top floor in the KL heat!


As part of the ticket price for the tower, you also got entrance to a "Malaysian Village" which was a collection of traditional Malaysian houses. I actually really liked the exhibit, it was well set up and it gave you a small view of the diversity of Malaysia.

Also as part of the ticket price you could choose one other "activity" at the tower - I've found that with a lot of towers I've visited that they fill up the area with other activities for tourists, most of which are lame (just for the record, if you go to Tokyo Tower - don't bother with the wax works museum). At KL tower I bought the "budget" ticket which meant I could go to the top of the tower, the Malaysian village and one other activity for "free". I choose the mini zoo they had at the tower. To be completely honest, parts of the zoo were pretty sad. I thought the monkeys cages were way too small and they also had a LOT of rabbits together, it looked like too many rabbits for one space. Also I thought the aviary was too small. But most of the reptiles seemed to be kept in conditions that were ok, but then I don't know too much about reptiles.

The snake in the picture below was HUGE - he was 7 metres long and weighed 120 kilos - much, much bigger than me. The man at the zoo said I could have my photo taken with the snake if I wanted (for a small fee) but I politely declined.

After visiting KL tower, I decided to check out the Malaysian Visitor Centre, the main reason for this was to check out the old colonial building it was located in. It was also an added bonus that the building was decorated for Chinese New Year.

The giant shoe was advertising a "Shoe Festival" that KL is having in April, I can think of a few friends that would like to attend that festival!

Once I finished at the Malaysian Tourist Centre it was lunch time and I was pretty close to the Petronas Towers, so I decided I would go to the mall inside and find a place to eat. It was also the chance to take more photos!






Last of all - as I was walking back to my hotel I stumbled across a temple and even more Chinese New Year decorations, so I took a few photos. When I arrived back it was time to head to the airport and make my way to Phuket. I will post more pictures soon xoxo