Meeting The Parents in Kuala Lumpur

Leaving Pangkor Island we spent a night in Lumut, the port town for ferries to and from the island, a small town with a pretty waterfront and a great selection of good, cheap restaurants.

Early the next morning we caught a bus to Kuala Lumpur, ready to be reunited with my mum and dad.

When they decided to come and meet us for Christmas they planned a “trip of a lifetime” to quote my mother, stopping in Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Koh Lanta, Krabi and finally Bangkok. At the time of planning me and Ric had no idea where we’d be around this time, we don’t like to plan so far in advance, but about two months ago we decided we couldn’t let my parents visit a country we hadn’t been to, and so we reshuffled our plans in order to meet them in Kuala Lumpur. Instead of my mum and dad meeting us on our trip, it turns out it’s us gate crashing their holiday! 

We checked into our dark, smelly, budget room and then walked around the corner to the five star luxury hotel where my dear parents had just arrived. Their wardrobe was bigger (and brighter) than our hotel room.

The Colonial District.

 Over the next few days we enjoyed catching up with them over endless good food and extortionately priced beers. I don’t know about culture shock but my dad was certainly suffering from beer-price shock after leaving his €1.50 pints in Spain to pay up to £8 a pint in Kuala Lumpur. Not that that stopped him from ordering them, of course.

Ric and I loved introducing my parents to hawker centre food culture, presenting them with dish after dish of all our favourites from Singapore and Malaysia: chicken rice, stewed pork ribs, won tons, char seiw, buk kut teh. They enjoyed the food so much that they weren’t even tempted to go to Burger King!

We all stayed in Bukit Bintang, a really vibrant busy area with more shops, bars and restaurants than in the whole of Huddersfield. It was a great area to walk around, the streets throbbing with people, the skyscrapers illuminating the otherwise grey sky, giant LED advertising screens and plenty of shopping centres to keep my mum in a healthy supply of handbags.

One shopping centre, Berjaya Times Square, is the joint biggest shopping centre in the world (its counterpart is somewhere in China). There’s a theme park inside the shopping centre, where we left Ric for a couple of hours looping around over our heads on a huge rollercoaster. (Unfortunately no one else was prepared to part with their lunch so he had to go and play alone.) 

Indoor rollercoaster, Berjaya Square.

Whilst we didn’t go up the Petronas Towers, former highest building in the world, we did walk around the gardens at their base. The two towers (connected via by the world’s highest sky bridge!) were particularly spectacular lit up at night, brighter than any other building in KL. We stopped to watch an impressive sound and light show in the fountains at the foot of the towers and walked back to my parent’s hotel via a pedestrian walkway that traverses Bukit Binting, zig-zagging high above the gridlocked roads of the capital.

My favourite experience during our four night stay in Kuala Lumpur was going up the KL Menara Tower for an extravagant buffet lunch in the 360° Atmosphere revolving restaurant, 421m above the ground, just 69m short of the mighty Petronas. The meal was beyond amazing, the best food in the world. Not the kind of food that I would usually associate with the word ‘buffet’.  It was nice that the food was all local Malay food. Even the desserts were divine (I should know, I had ten of them!). Food, wine, my parents and my boyfriend, and the ever changing view of Kuala Lumpur – it was a fantastic lunch! 

After four days it was time to say goodbye and the four of us shared a taxi to the airport to fly off to our separate destinations, Ric and I to Hat Yai and my parents to Phuket. We’ll be seeing them again soon though in Koh Lanta for Christmas. 

Watching a storm come in from the Menara Tower.

Pudding!

 We Stayed At…

Check Mate Inn: small musty room with no windows but a good shower and friendly service, not too bad for £13/night I suppose.

My Parents Stayed At…

Istana Hotel: really a world away from the Check Mate Inn. Shocking the difference £47 can make. Lucky for us, we spent so much time here (in the pool, in the lobby bar, in the dining room!) that the staff eventually thought we were guests too, and thanked us for our stay when we arrived with our backpacks ready to go to the airport!