Week one in KL

More temp house hunting...

We haven't even gotten to the permanent house hunting yet. That starts Saturday. That is what I am really excited for.

Pics of driving through the streets...

Hanging out in the hotel with "buh-buh-buff" (that's what Andrew calls Joseph)



Going out for my birthday...
We arrived in KL on my birthday and were totally jet lagged so we waited until the weekend to go out.

Walking to the restaurant we encountered this madness...

Since we've already tried food from Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong (Cantonese), Taiwan, and Indonesia (it's ALL amazing, seriously), I picked Korean BBQ for my birthday dinner. It was once again amazing. Do you think they give you enough free appetizers (note the nine white bowls in the pic below)? Most of them were veggies so they were pretty light. One of the bowls is full of kimchi.

The waitress could tell we had no idea what we were doing so she had to teach us. Basically you order the raw meat (either plain or marinated). Then she brings it and grills it on the round grill on our table.

After the meat is cooked she serves it to us. She had to teach us that you eat it inside a lettuce leaf and add sauce, onions, etc. You wrap it up and eat it.

Pics walking back from dinner.

Good thing the random storm troopers were still going strong.


So one thing interesting about our hotel is the flower arrangements aren't in vases, they are placed in strange artsy ways as installation art. I think my artsy sister Heather would really appreciate them. This pic is for you Heather. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY too!


On Saturday we walked to the Petronas Towers and the KLCC park. Here you see Mike walking with the stroller. There isn't much traffic since it is early and a weekend.

The sidewalks aren't very good for walking. They don't have lower areas for when you cross the street so you basically have to lift your stroller up and down all the time. Very frustrating. And they suddenly end sometimes leaving you to have to walk in the street until they start again.

As we approached our destination we saw this movie add. The main guy is an angry Asian driving a motorcycle away from a bunch of people including a zombie monster. The title is "Hantu Kalimah Balik Rumah." Anyone want to come see it with us?

The mall at the bottom of the Petronas towers (Suria KLCC if you care to know the name) also was decorated for Diwali, or Deepavali as they call it here.

Another mall shot. We have learned that Malaysian's favorite past time is shopping.

We stopped in to pick up some diapers. I just HAD to take a pic of the diaper options, including "Mamy Poko" and "Scoobe Dry." How awesome is that. We ended up with Huggies Ultra which are still pretty stiff but we hear they are the best of the bunch.


Family pic outside the towers to the lake and the park beyond...

Once we walked further into the park we turned around and took a family pic with the Petronas towers.

More pics of the park...

The KLCC park has the most gigantic system of playground equipment we've ever seen. It goes on forever and is on several terraced levels.

This is the cutest little family.






On the other side of the playground area is a big splash pool for the kids.





Here are the moms and the dads watching their kids in the pool.

The weather was hot and Joseph wasn't very happy so we ended up taking off all of his clothes and carrying him around.


We picked up Nandos on the way home. If you have ever lived in London you know and appreciate Nandos as the best Portuguese chicken ever. How awesome that they have a Nandos in KL across from our hotel.

We also picked up some birthday treats for me: chocolate cake and cheesecake. Mike was skeptical that somewhere in Asia would have sweet dessert options, but we tested the chocolate cake and it was amazing. This place also sold fondant cakes and they were really pretty. That made me happy to know they have stuff to make fondant with, so I will bring all my cake making supplies so I can make cakes here.
Side note: They were trying to convince us to buy the chocolate and Durian cake! We declined but it got my mom interested in trying Durian...
Here is a pool outing with dada. I can't quite remember which day since all the days are blending together at this point.



This is the kids pool and behind them is the big pool.
Here we are celebrating my birthday with our little desserts.
Sunday we went to church. Here is the church building. It looks like the church bought a big home and converted it into a chapel. There is AC in the main room and the classrooms but no AC in the hallways. So basically you are freezing until you walk into the hall and then you are sweating. So funny.
Everyone at church was so so so so nice and friendly. I can't express how sweet everyone was. My mom says its the friendliest branch she's ever visited in her whole life. Our friend Hilary (who we have been corresponding with over email) invited us over for dinner afterward. Here she is giving Mike and my mom directions on how to walk to her house.
Here they are walking. I drove with Hilary who is doing such a good job learning to drive on the left side of the street. I can only imagine how hard that would be. Good job Hilary! I should have gotten a pic of you in action. You are amazing!


Dinner at Hilary's home with her guests.

Hilary also has a blond son named Andrew Michael. He is one year old. He is sitting between my mom and I in this pic. He looks a lot like Andrew when he was that age!
Walking around their complex after dinner.




Alright that is all for now. I have a bunch more pics from our latest adventures that I will post once I load them from my camera to the computer. There will be lots of detail about how amazing the food is here and all our favorite dishes, including Char Kway Teow.

Selamat Jalan.

We made it to Kuala Lumpur

Part 1: Getting to KL

Our flight left at 11:50pm on Monday night. My dad dropped us off at the airport with all 10 bags, three adults, two kids, and a double stroller. It looks like we way overpacked, but I'll tell you I still wish I had brought more swaddle blankets and PJs for the kids.


As we pulled up to the departures curb at LAX I think it hit me what we were about to undertake. I got really scared and decided I didn't want to get out of the car. But I did.

We boarded the plane and found our seats. Our group was scattered throughout the plane. Since I had to have a "bassinet" seat for Joseph I was at the front of the business class section and Mike and Andrew were further down in the middle. My poor mom sat in coach class (since Mike's company wasn't paying for her ticket) next to a window. I didn't get a picture of her. Here is Andrew.

Andrew did amazing on the flight. Since the seats laid flat, he fell asleep within an hour of take off and didn't wake up until two hours before we landed. What an amazing way to spend a 14 hour flight (for Mike that is. I was up with Joseph, more on that below). One thing we learned is that if you are going to sleep, you are supposed to put your seatbelt on over your blanket, so the flight attendants don't have to wake you up when they turn on the "fasten your seatbelt" sign.

Here I am with Joseph. He was pretty good and didn't cry really at all.

He went through cycles of feeding, awake, and asleep. He slept in the bassinet to my right. The one down side was that whenever the pilot decided to turn on the fasten your seatbelt sign, I had to pull him out and put him on my lap.
This was really frustrating because I would work so hard walking up and down the aisles to get him to sleep and then finally lay him down in the bassinet, only to have the pilot turn on the seatbelt sign, and I would have to pull him out and strap him to me and he most often would wake up. But other than that, things worked out okay.
So all the flight attendants on Cathay Air were really nice but this one was my favorite. She was so sweet and always made a big deal about Joseph when I walked him through the galley. She has a son born the exact same day as Joseph but a year older. She gave me a picture of him and he is the cutest little Japanese boy.

Here are the boys once we arrived in Hong Kong. Andrew is wearing his PJs since he soaked through his other outfit. He wore his PJs the whole rest of the time, including in the business lounge. It was awesome so see a little PJ'ed kid running around the business lounge with this big smile on his face.
We had to take a train to the connecting terminal for our flight from Hong Kong to KL. Andrew was really into the train.

The hong kong airport was awesome. I have never seen such huge tall windows and such a cool view of all the airplanes, towers and mountains. Since it was 5am it was pretty deserted so we had the place to ourselves.

We had a three hour layover so we headed to the Cathay business lounge. We had to convince them to let my mom in since she didn't have a business ticket and luckily they were nice. We heard they are pretty strict.
Here is Andrew and his dada relaxing.
This is where we ate breakfast (free!) and washed out Andrew's bottles and filled them with fresh milk. I got to take a shower also. That was an experience in and of itself. You get your own shower room and they provide all sorts of toiletries for you (toothbrush and paste, soap, shampoo, razor) but no deodorant. I had to ask for that separately. Mike explained that people don't really wear deodorant in Asia. I was really excited to read a fashion magazine in Hong Kong so Mike picked this for me out of the magazines they lay out. I was so dissappointed though because it was all in Chinese. All I could do was look at the pictures.
Yes, we changed the babies on the floor. It was a really clean corner though and far away from the other business travelers.
The lounge had hot breakfast. Mike was elated to find it was his favorite Asian breakfast from his time in Taiwan. I can't tell you how many times he's told me about how amazing this breakfast is. It was fried bread to dip in soy milk and dumplings. He set my expectations high but it was pretty good I have to admit.
Mike with his favorite breakfast.
So then we got on another plane from Hong Kong to KL. That went well--Andrew slept again the whole time--but Joseph was pretty fussy. However we made it and took two cabs to the hotel (we had too many bags to fit in one cab). Our driver left before Mike's driver so we got to the hotel first. I didn't want to check in without Mike so we hung out in the lobby taking minutes for a few minutes until Mike arrived.

These are my sweet boys who just traveled half way around the world and were still in a good mood, smiling and letting mom take pictures of them.



We got to the hotel room (two bedroom thank heavens) and luckily it wasn't as small as I was worried it would be. We are going to be at the hotel for a week while we find a good serviced apartment, and I was worried because have to fit my mom and two kids in one hotel room withot going crazy!
Andrew had a ball when we first got to our room. Here he is running around in the room he shares with my mom. Mike, Joseph and I sleep in the master bedroom.
Here is our make-shift diaper changing station. Joseph is loving life in this picture probably happy to be free of his travel clothes that he has been wearing for a day and a half.
When they brought the cribs in and put them in place, Andrew immediately wanted to be in his. Here he is jumping up and down like a little hyper two year old that has been cooped up for too long. I cannot adequately explain how enthusiastically he was jumping.
Another funny thing he wanted to do was put his monkey backpack on and run around the house. Then he saw our tub and wanted to get in. So in this picture Andrew has his backpack on playing in the tub. I wish you could see how big the smile was on his face. It was really cute.
The next day (Thurs) Mike and I went out with Ms. Dolly to find a suitable serviced apartment for the duration of our visit. Ms. Dolly (shown below) is who our relocation company hired to show us around the town and find us our temporary and permanent housing.


Here are some snapshots of us walking through some apartments.
One apartment in particular had a cool pool that overlooked the city. The round part is the kids pool.
I took some shots of Malaysia streets while we were driving around.


Happy Deepavali. The Hindi festival of lights is this weekend. All of the buildings and malls here are decorated with peacocks and colorful rice art on the floor. Notice the floor--it looks like a rug but really it is thousands of colored pieces of rice arranged in a pattern.








Our hotel is across from the Pavilion mall which is one of the nice malls in Asia. I have never seen such a big Prada store, Coach store, Juicy store, Mont Blanc store, etc. and I grew up going to South Coast Plaza!
There is this KL landmark fountain outside the mall that Andrew loves. When we need to get out of the hotel we will cross the street and go look at the fountain. That sounds like it is easy to get to, but really crossing the street here is like taking your life in your hands. No one stops so you have to weave through the cars and it is so scary.


Here I am in the front of our hotel. You can see the mall across the street with the gigantic PRADA store.
Andrew and grandma in front of the fountain.
We went last night (thursday night) and there were tons of people there. I love this shot because it shows the diversity of the people here. Everyone at the mall was young and way stylish. Everyone also stops and stares at us and our big stroller. Most usually smile and point to the kids. One lady stopped and rubbed Joseph's hands and head and I had to get out the baby wipes to wipe him down afterward. Everyone thinks the boys are cute.


We watched the beginning of a fashion show from the 6th floor looking down. As it turns out it is Malaysian International Fashion week this week.

They had live music in this one section of the mall. They also were selling ming dynasty vases. It was all a little too high class for us.
We picked up some authentic Malaysian food and had a big dinner feast. Here is my mom opening all the take away boxes. BTW, it is "take away" here, not take out.
This picture was taken this morning. The sun is rising in this picture. We have been getting up really early (or should I say the boys are getting up really early). I think by tomorrow we may finally get over our jet lag.

Sorry for the long post! I will post more when I get another minute. Right now I have to go down to the pool for free internet. See you soon and we love and miss you all!

Ready to go

Flight leaves at 11:50pm. We are now at LAX ready to depart for the first leg -- 14.5 hrs to hong kong






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