On Aunty Duty

Back in October my nephew Lukah turned the big EIGHT, and as I'm a believer in less "stuff" and more experiences I asked my brother Josh if Lukah would like to come to Wellington for a weekend, rather than receive more "stuff". Josh thought he'd like to come and with that I booked some tickets with Air NZ for Lukah to come and stay with us in the big city.

Rich and I had a few ideas of where we would like to take Lukah, but on the bus in from the airport he told us very proudly about the Wellington Cable Car as he had been learning about it at school.

So no surprises what our first stop was? We also took him to the cable car museum which is pretty great for kids as it includes some old cable cars to climb up onto and also its free which always helps.

After exploring the Wellington Botanical Gardens for a bit (as its what's at the top of the cable car) we headed back to the city for some lunch. We were originally going to take Lukah to Te Papa next, but in the ended decided to that it had been a pretty big day for him already so opted for the Wellington Museum instead. It's a much smaller city museum rather than being the national museum like Te Papa. We also knew there was a new exhibition called The Attic which was going to have all kinds of interesting things on display (the idea being its a bit like your nana's attic and its full of all kinds of interesting and random things).

 Both of these lions were at one stage residents of Wellington Zoo, Lukah wasn't so keen on the guy on the right. You can definitely see how taxidermy has improved over time.

There was an whole area devoted to UFO sightings in New Zealand - that was my favourite part by far. Maybe its because Rich and I have been re-watching X-Files recently.

This exhibition was pretty popular, its the costumes and some of the props from What we do in the Shadows. If you haven't seen it yet you should probably go and and see it immediately as its HILARIOUS (and made in Wellington).

The museum had a lot of fun interactive displays where you could listen to music or someone telling a story which was pretty fun for kids.

After the museum we decided to walk Lukah to the park so he could play, but on the way there Lukah spotted a lady who was selling rides on a bunch of electronic cars. I think the electronic car was probably the highlight of the day!

On Saturday I took Lukah to the zoo with our friends Andrew and Laura and their son Sam. This is something we had planned to do before Lukah even arrived. The day was a little bit wet and miserable - but he still had a really good time (and I obviously always love the zoo).

The only bad thing about the zoo was the hospital - when we bought our tickets we were told that there was going to be an animal check up on a Tui and Lukah really wanted to go and watch as he said Tui are his favourite birds. Long story short, the Tui was really sick and had lead poisoning and I had to explain to Lukah what euthanize meant. I think I'm going to stay away from the hospital zoo from now on, but at least they managed to save these cute penguins which seemed to cheer up both Lukah and me and bit!

There was also plenty of time spend hanging out at our house, watching Spongebob and kids movies and eating home made pizza (thanks Rich!) over the weekend. There was also plenty of being spoiled by Trees and Rich - including a giant Kiwi shaped doughnut at the airport.

It was really fun having Lukah stay with us - he was so well behaved and just a fun guy to have around. Hopefully he can come and stay again soon!

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