Kuala Lumpur
Today we headed to the Berjaya Times Square and purchased 2 new GoPro batteries, both for about $41 CAD. They are knock off brand batteries but our original brand GoPro batteries were only a year old. They have expanded and are now JUNK. If you do get them pushed into the camera you will never get them out. After we left the camera shop Gary said “it sounds like a roller coaster in here.” WTF, there is a theme park inside this mall. The roller coaster looks to be a bit scarier than the mind bender in West Edmonton Mall! It hadn’t opened yet but the rails for the coaster were looking pretty gnarly! Not our cup of tea! Berja Times Square
We bought some fruit for lunch, a tall cup of pineapple, another of mango and one of dragon fruit. Total cost for lunch was 9 MYR or $2.65 CAD. We paid with a 100 MYR note which the guy refused because it was taped with scotch tape due to a 2 cm tear. The bill came repaired from the ATM in Kota Kinabalu. Who knew they were so picky with their cash?
After our lunch we walked back to the Swiss Garden Inn and relaxed reading.
After 7 pm we met our long time friend from Portugal and had dinner at the Grand Sky Restaurant on the Jalan Alor night street. We drank a few beer and got caught up on our past. It’s been over 3 years since we last saw each other in Porto, Portugal. He is currently travelling with his Mom on a 100 plus day trip. We had a great night and planned to see them the next night at an Indian restaurant nearby.
There is something about air travel that depletes you for day or so. Tomorrow we will do some touring in Kuala Lumpur, likely the Botanical Gardens including the Orchid Garden and Butterfly Park.
When tomorrow finally came we had a day of disappointment. The Orchid park was closed, the butterfly park was closed and we had paid a Grab to drive us to the closed venues. This is not the first time we have been led astray by Google. If Google says an establishment is open they may be closed. This could still be COVID fallout. There are a pile of closed businesses in Malaysia. We ended up at the National Museum which was great until several school groups showed up with busloads of screaming 6 year old kids. We caught a Grab back to the hotel through the gridlock traffic which is normal by 3:30 pm.
The bellman took a liking to us when we told him we were from Canada while checking in. He’s a great guy and said “don’t take pictures of the tree until tomorrow. There are gifts to go around the tree.” We showed him a picture of our back yard in Saskatoon from last winter with our neighbours huge fir tree covered in snow. He was impressed.