Dana's Travelogue '17 to Malaysia Japan Vegas Part1 Kuala Lumpur

Dana's Travelogue '17 to Malaysia!

Well, we've skipped town again for another grand adventure. 

This journey is to Malaysia and Japan and...Vegas? Yep, Las Vegas, you heard right. 

I'd first like to thank Stephen for agreeing to house-sit for us while we are gone. We are going to visit Chris and Emma who used to do that for us. I'd also like to thank Chris and Emma who have kindly agreed to put us up while we visit Japan.  Although their ‘invitation’ was closer to this:

Emma:”So as the gal at the school is showing us the 3 bedroom apartment I mention that we had signed up for and budgeted for a 2 bedroom. She says, yes you did, our mistake, you can have the 3 bedroom for the price of the 2 bed..”

Me interrupting: “I claim dibs on bedroom 3 for Cherry Blossom Festival 2017!”

I don't know how long Chris will be there studying but I didn't want to miss this opportunity since I've been a big fan of Japanese art, food and culture since High School.  I went to George Washington in San Francisco just down Geary from Japantown and both of my besties in school, Amethyst and May are half Japanese, so the fascination began then.

I'd also like to thank all my supportive family and massage clients for putting up with yet another extended “sabbatical”! I think my arms are getting flabby already ;)

So, why Malaysia in front and Vegas at the end? The flight was $700 cheaper per person with the 6day layover in Malaysia than flying straight to Japan! And although we'd been to Singapore once before, we'd never been to Malaysia...bonus!

The festival’s timing put us right before a Rockabilly, Swing Dance, car show etc event that we'd signed up and paid for over a year ago. It just made sense to fly from Japan straight to the 20th annual Viva Las Vegas. Heck jet lag from Asia might help as I've heard all the real fun stuff starts after midnight!

Air travel can be trying, especially when on United. Our flight out of Sacramento was so delayed we missed the next leg. We boarded and then taxied back to the terminal after a while only to reboard an hour or so later. Once in SF, a nice couple offered to get us into the United lounge so we'd get help with the reroute. Ended up going to Hong Kong and spending the night, before traveling on to Malaysia a day late and a few more dollars short. Oh well. We were going to be staying in an airport hotel that night anyhow, just in Kuala Lumpur instead of more costly Hong Kong. 

We reached KL and took a taxi to Port Dixon and the Avillion Resort. It's lovely and Kim picked us a 'water chalet' which is very fun. The whole thing is on stilts over the water(which you can see from inside the bathroom!)

The resort is great, and has lots of fun stuff to see. Watched monkeys climbing the trees around the pool area and peacocks strutting about.  It has a gorgeous spa, which we definitely sampled, and at 4.5 Ringit to the dollar it only seemed right to get massages and foot treatments. Much of it is family or kid oriented, although we spent our fair share watching the cute bunnies in the petting area. 

We are taking advantage of a few warm tropical days to get us over jetlag. Then we head into the city of Kuala Lumpur and should be ready to tourist for real ;)

Kuala Lumpur reminds me of a smaller Bangkok of about 15 years ago. We stayed in a small hotel called the Anggun Boutique in the Bukit Bintang area. One street over was the ‘food street’. Every night it is packed with vendors and tables for the “restaurants”. I put that in quotes because it seemed more like cooperatives of street vendors got together and hired tables and servers...but when you look in you still see individual carts for the different foods.  My favorites were baby bok choy in garlic, battered fried sweet potato with plum powder and the satay!

Our first night in town happened to be Kuala Lumpur Swing’s weekly event. Or Kim planned it well. So we took a taxi across town to Sid’s British Pub and watched the end of the lesson and joined the dancing after. The world over and especially in the lindy world it's blissfully familiar...people coming together for the joy of the dance...and to birthday jam some poor sucker, followed by the shim sham!

One of the dancers, Wolf, found out that we'd taken a cab and appointed himself our driver so we wouldn't have to shell out for the return. Turns out he owns and runs the first and only board game store in all of KL! The drive went very quickly after that.  He also let us know there'd be a blues dance the next night at 9:30.

Unfortunately after a full day of touristic adventures and 8+ miles of walking in 90°+ weather it was out of the realm of possibilities. We'd walked around the Petaling street and Chinatown, Central market bazzar, Merdeka Square with all it's colonial buildings and then up and into the largest park in the City. We were both out cold before 10:15.

And going off to Japan the next day!