kuala lumpur

We've arrived safe and sound in Kuala Lumpur. Our 12.5 hour flight was uneventful... perhaps too uneventful! We arrived at 7am local time, and a few bad movies were no substitute for sleep on the flight, which had left at 10:50am London time. We were met at the airport by Philip Ng, the father of our Wimbledon friend from church Fiona. He drove us to KL from the airport (c. 1hr) and gave us a car tour of the city and we got some food prior to taking us to our hotel to check in. He then dropped us at the bird park we wanted to visit today, which was on his way home.

We're staying in the Hotel Corus for one night only. I'm being amused by the fact that while the guests in the usual rooms (floors 2-9) push a button in the lift, we have a key to allow access to our “Executive Suite” floor! Decided not to pay the RM2/minute (c. NZ$1/minute) for broadband in the room, and found I could access two open wireless networks from our excellent-view-appointed "Executive Suite" veranda! From there we can see one of the two Petronus Towers (the other is directly behind that one). Debates about what constitutes a tower aside, these remain the second (and third) tallest buildings in the world, and they're just around the corner.

Tomorrow we'll tour KL some more and perhaps head out of the city to a nature reserve nearby. In the evening, we'll catch a train out to nearby Klang, where Fiona's family live. We'll be staying with her aunt there, who lives next door to her parents, and we'll attend their church on Sunday. As we're seeing them again we've been able to leave our main packs with Fiona's Dad, keeping just our daypacks for the days we're in KL, which is great.

Completing the absolutely fabulous hospitality they've already extended us, on Sunday afternoon he'll be dropping us back to the airport where we'll fly on to Sydney. That's only an 8 hour flight, and only a 3 hour timezone change, which we're looking forward to. At 5:46pm, we're struggling to keep going here today, but know that we need to hang out a little longer before crashing or we'll face jetlag threemorrow.