December 2nd 2008, Kuala Lumpur

Our Mature Gap Year Continues in Kuala Lumpur

Shopping in KL

Today was started with a swim by some members of the family (not me I was fast asleep).

Once we were all dressed and ready we headed out, I went off on my own to the local Starbucks to get online, post the blog and check emails etc.

While I was doing that Sofia got the kids something to eat and had a look around the Lot 10 Mall, Sasha found herself THE red shoes she wanted, they also bought some toiletries and Sofia found a nice silk scarf, then they joined me at Starbucks.

After everybody had checked their mail and Facebook we went off to the malls, which I have to say are very nice and although most of the products were as seen everywhere else in the world, there were some more local themed products. We went to the Low Yat Mall where we managed to find somebody to fix Sabastians PSP, while that was being done Sofia also got Basty some sandals and also a book in which he could write his journal, he was not happy about that idea, cue lots of sulking.

Plaza Low Yat, is geek heaven, cameras, computers, MP3s, TV’s as big as your house and accessories by the thousand covering 5 or 6 floors! We were also umming and ahhing about whether or not to buy an ultra small Asus Eee laptop. We are already carrying a couple of laptops (my sexy white Macbook and Sasha’s ugly great generic black PC box!) – but that does mean Sofia and Sabastian need to try to fight our laptops away from us – also it’s so small and light we could carry around all day and stop as and when we find a wifi area, carting even my Macbook around does get wearing after a while. I think I have a dent in my shoulder!

We hit a few more Malls, In Lot 10 we found a really cool bar to sprawl around in, Jackie Chan’s it’s got great big wide benches (bed depth) that you just loll on, when shopping Sasha found a polka dot bikini. We then collected the repaired PSP and headed back to the hotel for a rest, Sofia tried going to the pool but it was full of kids so she wrote her journal and had a shower instead.

I listened to one of my favorite podcasts – This Ain’t Iowa and then inflicted a couple of episodes of the American series Arrested Development on my family that I thoughtfully had on my hard drive for the days when the TV in the hotel was crap and as at this hotel 5 channels have to do – one of which seems to be the Malaysian Parliament in action a few others are in anything but English and the English language channel seems to show the same film all day and none of the channels seem to have the news! Which we would like for updates on the situation in Thailand.

We watched a great late afternoon Thunderstorm, masses of rain and lightening.

When that was done we were all up, changed and out for dinner to the street of hawker stalls and also showed the Kids a tank full of live frogs (soon to be some bodies dinner).

Sasha steered clear of anything exotic and had a fruit platter, Basty tucked into anything and everything, then said yuk, then ate it anyway. We then wandered around to a bar where we were stung a very hefty 43 Rm for two small beers and two cokes – a bloody rip-off! We should have realized why all the other bars in the area were pumping and this one was so quiet, we played some cards and then headed back as the Children were tired.