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

Museum of World Religions and temples galore and bunnies!

Recently Rich and I spend a Sunday exploring some of Taipei with our friends Lisa and Aaris. We started with the Museum of World Reglions. This is a pretty amazing museum - the museum has a variety of displays which discuss the big religions of the world and every display contains items of religions important. I actually learnt a lot from this place - the displays were great and there was enough English in the displays to make for really interesting reading.








However, the best thing about the Museum was the minatures. They were incredible with such a high level of detail. But the best thing was each miniature had a camera installed inside which you could move around and see the inside of the minature on a tiny screen. Really impressive.






After the museum it was time for some lunch, our original plan had been to go to the Nougat Museum but that really wasn't going to work out so we decided to go to the Taipei Confucian Temple.

However on the way there we stopped off at this Buddhist temple where a flock of birds spent there time together - eating rice when it was thrown to them. These birds seriously acted as if they had a single conscienceness - they all seemed to fly in unison.


I've been to a lot of temples in my time in Asia but this was the first Confucian temple I had visited. They also had a market on which was kind of fun - I bought some bamboo juice - but it was pretty terrible and made my tongue feel kind of weird. At the entrance of the temple they had these four guys - I am assuming the are speak no evil, hear no evil, say no evil and do no evil. I just thought they were kind of cute.


Here's a few photo's from inside the temple - it was a little noisy this day as there was some kind of rotary youth event on as well as the markets. But it was still a great visit.








After the Confucian temple we decided to visit another temple - Bao Lin Temple. I think we all kind of knew it was in the area, but I didn't realise it was so close to the Confucian temple. A few weeks before this Rich and I visited the Longshan temple, it was great but it was so busy with worshippers. Bao Lin is just as beautiful as Longshan but much much quieter, but as every bit as interesting and beautiful as Longshan. It's one of the most amazing temples I have visited.



I rounded off this day out with a pretty awesome surprise, I have wanted a house rabbit for a number of years. But it has never really been practical for me to have one - we have lived in rented properties and I also never felt like I spent enough time at home to be a good pet owner.

When we were walking home back through the markets we saw a couple of women holding some bunnies - obviously these guys weren't used to living outside in a hutch. They we tame house bunnies. The women noticed me looking at the bunnies and asked if I would like to hold them! Which of course I wanted to do - so here's a few photo's of me with "Dumpling" and "Brown Bear".