Our Asian Adventure - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Two years ago we decided to swap a yearly family holiday to Europe in exchange for a big adventure every two years. This January we travelled to Malaysia and Thailand with our 3 and 1 year old sons, Eli and Jake. The plan was to keep it simple and let the pace be dictated by the boys. With ten days in Malaysia we had quick two day stop in Kuala Lumpur before flying north to the island of Langkawi. We booked our trip with Trailfinders and definitely found they got us the best value on flights and hotels.
We had the pleasure of staying in the amazing St. Regis Hotel, which despite being primarily a business hotel we (particularly the boys) were treated like guests of honour. We were allocated a butler for our stay, who we have to admit we didn’t use, but he delighted the boys with surprise treats everyday. Jake was obsessed with the stunning “horse” located in the dining room, little did he know it was a specially commissioned piece of work by world renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero!
The St. Regis is a hotel we would never have normally booked but through trailfinders it was surprisingly affordable. On our arrival day the boys were tired after the journey so to everyone’s delight we spent the afternoon in the rooftop pool.
Although the hotel is located next to Kuala Lumpur’s KL Sentral train station, we chose to travel around by taxis, which are plentiful, low cost and allowed us to go exactly where we needed to without having a 1 year old dictate the walking pace!
Kuala Lumpur is a very clean, easy going city but with only one full day, our main aim was to visit the iconic Petronas Twin Towers and enjoy the area around them. While they are now ‘only’ the 7th tallest building in the world, it remains the tallest twin building in the world. The design is based on Islamic culture and when viewed from above the towers are the shape of the Islamic 8-pointed star. Interestingly, we found Malaysia to be a very multicultural country where all religions are recognised and celebrated with public holidays. A little known fact about the towers is that they are actually the home of Batman! Boom the kids are interested!
After over an hour in the humidity and heat, we regretted not bringing the kid’s swim suits to let them play in the water park. We walked to the aquarium located beside the towers. With a shark tunnel, large turtles and interactive pools it was a definitive winner. For anyone who would like to shop there is a huge mall in the base of the towers and restaurants line the plaza around the lake. Without planning to we ended up spending the whole day in this part of town. It was a stress free start to our trip.
Kuala Lumpur can often be written off as a ‘bland’ city but we highly enjoyed it as a stopover and we couldn’t recommend the St. Regis enough; we would love to stay there again!