We had so much fun in Malaysia, I don’t think this will be our last trip there. We barely scratched the surface and didn’t even really leave KL. There were so many great options to visit and see, but in the time we had we had to make some tough decisions on what we wanted to do.
For me, I always pick temples and mosques and historical spots, Mark is more about making sure we eat good food, and Alex is down for anything fun!
After not seeing as much as I had hoped of the first mosque, I took the boys to another mosque, and I’m really glad that we did. We were so welcomed at the 2nd mosque, there was a guide who showed us around, and he really enjoyed his job. The architecture of the buildings was absolutely beautiful, it had a charming Turkish look to things.
This is one of the main entrances to the prayer room- the arches are so beautiful, the details put into everything really show up in person.
How could you not love this building? The roof is gorgeous, I admit though I missed most of the conversations being had with our guide, I was too busy taking pictures and wandering off.
I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves.
This was our guide, he took us into the prayer room and we sat down and had some conversations about Islam. Islam isn’t a religion I had known much about before, so it was interesting to hear. This was not at all a requirement of the tour, he asked us if we were interested- had we said no, he would have skipped this section.
We were actually invited to sit in on a prayer session ( in the back in a dedicated visitor section).
Again, kids get it the easiest, Alex got to go in just how he was. Mark got a lovely robe to wear to cover his shorts, and I wore my hajib again (although this time I didn’t have the nice ladies outside to help me with it, so it’s a little wonky).
After the mosque, we went back to the hotel had a bit of a swim break and then walked over to Petronas towers. On our way, I saw this giant moth on the building, I made Mark put his hand there for some size perspective. I’ve never seen a moth that size anywhere in the wild.
Obligatory holding up the towers picture. Next to the towers was a park with a great playground. Alex got a chance to run around and swing until he felt sick.
The next day, our last full day in KL, we started off the day at a Chinese Temple, Thean Hou- You would think that we would be tired of Chinese things, but there is nothing like this in China that we have seen yet.
This temple is a popular place to get married- and I can see why, it’s very pretty here.
I’ve seen such beautiful flowers in Southeast Asia, someday I’d like to have a garden or greenhouse with all my favorites in it.
The artwork around the temple was worth the drive alone. I liked seeing the iconography that I’m used to from home presented in a new way.
Despite the fact that this temple was only built in 1987, there is an old feel to it- something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Alex told me the story of the two guys on the doors below, they are the Door Gods, pictures of deities posted on the door outside and inside the house or building. They are expected to keep ghosts away, to protect the family and to bring peace and good fortune.
This is where you put your incense offerings.
Alex did some of his own joss sticks, they were hard to light though.
He took it very seriously, I give him a lot of credit for being so mature and respectful of other people’s cultures and religions.
Even the ceiling tiles were cool, I wanted to lay on the floor and just stare at this for a while, but I thought that would be too weird …. even for me.
Charming details everywhere you looked on the temple grounds, I’m sure these happy critters represent something, although I’m not sure what.
At first I thought this was a peacock, but Alex pointed out to me that it is in fact a Chinese phoenix. I really like this phoenix, I’d like to have a version of this in my house somewhere.
And we couldn’t have a Chinese temple without some dragons. On every corner of the roof there was either a dragon or a phoenix. The blue one below was my favorite dragon, his colors were so bright, the picture doesn’t really show how bright blue he really is.
On the side of the hill next to the temple, in the landscaping, is a giant Chinese chess board. Alex has been learning about this at school with his friends, and was explaining to us how the game is played.
My guys range from extremely patient to not having it at all on pictures (although Mark has gotten much more patient with me since I started the blog). One thing I love about this picture, is seeing so much of Mark in Alex, the lean, the half smile, the “are we done yet?” attitude.
The strings of yellow lanterns just look so festive and happy, we both mentioned how much we wish that more places looked like this back in Haining.
In a garden in the front of the temple, they had statues of the 12 animals of the zodiac. This Dragon fountain was my personal favorite, I have never been a dragon person- but this temple may have changed my mind.
This same day, Mark had found an awesome adventure for us, I can’t remember how he heard about it though. We went on a firefly excursion, the company picked us up in KL, brought us and two very nice Korean girls out into the country outside the city. First we stopped at a light house.
And right there, was the first monkey. For those of you who don’t know, I got my bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and primate studies was my favorite. So I was so ridiculously excited to see a monkey.
We don’t get many family photos because it’s usually just the three of us, and one of us needs to be the photographer. This one was taken by our fantastic tour guide, the one downside was that to get the lighthouse in the picture, we had to face the sun… which is why we’re all squinty.
Just down the road from the lighthouse, and in fact at the lighthouse we bought food specifically for this purpose, we went to meet and feed the monkeys. Now, these are wild monkeys, but are used to being feed. We were told to avoid the little brown monkeys as they can be aggressive, but it’s also kind of unavoidable as they are cheeky, thieving monkeys.
At first there weren’t very many monkeys down, the guide told us that there had been a dog around earlier which scared them up the power tower.
Alex was so excited to feed them and make friends, these are silvery langurs, and were very friendly for the right treats.
Unfortunately, there were bus loads of people doing this same activity with us, so it was a bit of competition for the monkeys’ attention.
Again, I have to commend Alex, I don’t think I could have been that chill around monkeys when I was 9. He waited patiently for monkeys to come to him, didn’t push or complain when other people “stole” his monkey’s attention. I love my adventure buddy…
I couldn’t believe how much interaction we had with the monkeys, and how much we all enjoyed it.
This polite little guy was getting impatient waiting for Alex to pull the treats out of his bag. We had green beans, bananas, yams, some kind of leaves, and a small bag of peanuts… the peanuts were the favorites.
At this point, my camera died, and I had to take the rest of the pictures with Mark’s phone. I don’t remember why not my phone, maybe it was dead too?
Everyone had monkeys on their back… and Mark commented today as I’m writing this that he remembers the weight and feel of them jumping onto your back, and can see where that expression came from.
I wanted to show in this picture, these are some spoiled monkeys…. forget your stinking green beans, they would throw them down on the bench here. I assume they come back for them later, or maybe the mean brown monkeys eat them. If you look at the bottom of the fence right behind the second monkey’s head, you can see the brown monkeys a little. I didn’t get any pictures of the brown monkeys, I thought I had, but I think that’s when the battery went out.
Like with most animals, Mark was the favorite (at least out of our group of three) I don’t know how they know, or what makes him so special to them, but whatever it is- he’s got it.
This guy decided Mark was taking too long to pick something out of the bag, so he would just take a peek and get something himself. Maybe something good at the very very bottom.
Alex absolutely loved having the monkey on him, pure joy!
There is a lot of Mark in Alex, especially his love of animals, whenever a new monkey came to be his friend, he just laughed and beamed. It reminds me of when he was little (I think around 2) and at the Zoo in Fresno by my sister’s house, he got to feed the giraffes, and there was so much happiness in that moment.
Mark almost continuously had a friend, one would hop off and another would jump up and take it’s place. You can see in the background how many monkeys there were, and this wasn’t even all of them, not by a long shot. But with so many tourists, the monkeys were able to be picky and only eat what they liked most.
I think this lasted for about 30 minutes, we honestly could have stayed longer, but we had dinner to get to before the fireflies.
The poor Korean girls we were with, one had so many mosquito bites on her legs, and they were really red and swelling. We gave them our mosquito repellent bracelets and shared bug spray since we were going on the river after dinner and it would only get worse from there.
Dinner was ok, nothing fancy but not bad either.
After dinner we went straight to the line for the fireflies. Because our guide got us there early, we were fairly close to the front, maybe 10 people ahead of us, and Mark got to wander off to find some kittens he had seen on our walk in from the parking lot.
We doused ourselves in bug spray and waited for it to get dark. A group that came after us bought a small bug spray at the gift shop, and barely sprayed one person before it ran out. We let them share ours too, I felt a little silly earlier in the day packing all that, but it ended up helping us and other people out so it worked out just fine.
I don’t have an pictures, but the firefly ride was great. We got into our little boat, and the guide quietly paddled us down one side of the river, stopping a few times to let us see the fireflies up close, and he even caught one for us to hold and release. It looked like Christmas with all the flashing fireflies- I’ve borrowed this picture from Tripadvisor, same place we were at, and it really did look like this.
It was a really fun experience. After that, we head back to shore and back to the van. The Korean girls bought Alex a firefly key chain as a thank you for the bug bracelets, they were very nice girls.
And that was it… we had to go home the next morning. But we had an amazing time, and I think all three of us would be happy to go back to Malaysia- even with all the bumps getting there!
I want to give a little shout out to one of my favorite readers, so Ceci, thanks for being you- hopefully one day you can join one of our adventures!
Traveling Expat Family 