After a non-eventful smooth flight, we landed back in Kuala Lumpur and were told to go to carousel L for our luggage. We waited, and waited, and waited….. Then there was a new announcement to try carousel K instead. So we moved and Richard carried on watching the belt – by now pretty empty of all luggage – and I went on the hunt….. I found both our cases sitting alone in the middle of the floor having clearly been abandoned some time ago. Very frustrating… But hey ho, what can you do? At least they made it with us.
On arrival we found the car collection area and our names were on a list…but no driver! So we were expected but, of course, the luggage chaos had added a few hours to our arrival time. We found a travel agent supervisor who returned and said we were so delayed he had just been checking we had actually been on the plane LOL. He kindly summoned the driver and then we were off to Kuala Lumpur again.
The drive wasn’t too bad – and we arrived pretty quickly at the Melia hotel again – only stopping for one night. We checked in and found our room on the 11th floor and and then, having organised ourselves, we took a Grab car to the Petronas Towers and headed into the Kuala Lumpur Central mall to pick up some food – we had a Malay dish and it was lovely. Afterwards we headed to the back of the Towers for the water / light / music show. It didn’t disappoint but we were surprised by the modern music being played as we had expected it to be classical. But we sat on the steps overlooking the lake – along with a lot of other tourists – and enjoyed the show.
After the show – with numb bums from sitting on the concrete steps – we found a waterside bar with views so moved there and watched more shows in comfort with a glass in hand.
We bumped into a couple from Fiji who were surprised that we had been to Nadi their home town. We had a Bangladeshi server who was a law graduate. She said that there was different treatment to overseas visa holders in terms of housing / study / working rules etc. She was lovely and very efficient.
After the 10pm show had ended and the bar was now closing so we headed back to the Mall to find it was being locked up for the night. So gradually found our way back to the front to order another Grab for our return back to the hotel and so to bed.
Monday morning we had a leisurely start and were picked up at 11.00 am to go back to the airport for our next flight. We checked out post breakfast and the driver was already there…he recognised us as he had been the driver on our KL City Tour which we had done prior to our Borneo adventures. We had a good run to the airport, checked in early on the machines and dropped our bags off.
The flight was only one hour to Penang – our base for the next two weeks. Again we were treated to lots of water and peanuts LOL. We landed – picked up our luggage – and headed off to meet our driver. This was the quickest we had been through any of the airports so far.
We followed the driver’s instructions to the e-hailing area in the nearby car park. We told him we were in situ and he drove in to pick us up. We then drove to the Blue Mansion (the Cheong Fatt Tze) located in Georgetown, the capital of Penang. When we arrived there were numerous tours of the property going on – as it has historic significance – and were taken to our room which was lovely!
There was limited space to unpack – there was some hanging space and a safe but no shelves / drawers despite the huge space. So back to living out of our suitcase LOL. We then took ourselves off for a walk and found the Red Food Court just along the road before returning to the hotel and rested up having explored a bit of the hotel ourselves. Stunning place!
That evening we returned to the food court for dinner and looked at all the different cuisines / offerings before settling on a Chinese meal. I even found an alcohol outlet and, after a considerable wait, managed to pick up a couple of beers….
So that ends this blog – please return for the next instalment of our time in Penang shortly. Bye for now, Jan