Kuala Lumpur- Livy's perspective

As we are so far behind (not sure how that happened, must have been all the good times in Australia!) I have decided to cheat a little and just post Livy's Kuala Lumpur blog- pretty much sums up everything, except to add, it is a very cool city, I am so glad we came, even though it is uber modern there was still a sense of exoticness...and the food- DELISH! 3 days was a perfect amount of time...if you have a chance to do a stopover here totally do it...it will be worth your while!

Kuala Lumpur Livy's perspective

We left Hawaii and had to take 2 overnight planes to Kuala Lumpur.  First we had to take a plane to Japan. That left at around 6:00 and arrived at like 10:00 PM. Than it left at around 12:00 PM and arrived at about 4 in the mourning. When we got there our cab driver was waiting for us with another 45 minutes of  driving. It was not the most fun travel trip we have taken. We were all wide awake at this point because to us it was like 9 in the mourning. Me and my dad went to get some breakfast. Nothing was really open, accept a roti place. We got 4 egg roti and the total cost was about four dollars!!! We ate all of it in about 5 minutes! It was so good! We forced ourselves to sleep and at around 7 we were all up and ready. Our apartment was beautiful. It had to big bedrooms and a giant living and kitchen room. That morning we went to China town. Everything there is under 15 dollars! I got a new pair of pants and new sunglasses. The pants are the most comfortable pants in the world and the sunglasses work great.

Us in China Town

 After that we went to see the twin towers. They are the tallest twin towers in the world! It was really cool! There were big fountains in the front and sadly you couldn't go to the top.

The twin toweres

The fountains

Family selfie

We went into the mall that was four levels high. That was as high as we could get. 

that's us at the top

After that we we went to a waterfall. We had to do a bit of a hike to get there and along the way there were monkeys everywhere! There must have been over 100 monkeys in that 20 minute hike. They were very aggressive to. One of the male Alphas charged at my mom and Anneka. We found a stick to walk with, and they pretty much left us alone after that. When we got to the waterfall, it was beautiful. Me and Anneka went swimming in our clothes. \We did't have our bathing suits. 

The waterdall

A different part of the waterfall

i wanted to swim here but I felt a little uncomfortable because I did not have a bathing suit and swimming in my underwear was a little in appropriate (there were a lot of  muslum people there) so I swam in my dress.

The monkey mom and her baby

Me and my mom

I know it sounds weird but the day was already over. Sadly only one day left in Kuala Lumpur...

The next day we went to the Batu caves. It is an old temple that people still pray at. It was really cool. There was a giant statue of a god in the front. That was pretty incredible. 

The really cool statue

We hiked up 204 stairs to get to the top. When we got up there, it was so cool. There were statues everywhere. And you could hear people praying at different statues. 

you can see all the stairs

One of the praying areas

A different area for praying

 There were a lot of monkeys here to. A lot of them had baby's. They were so cute. These ones weren't so aggressive. They just kinda moved out of your way as you walked by. We bought a cool looking fruit to try and fed some to the monkeys. That was before we saw the "no feeding the monkey" sign. We had to were a sarong to cover up our legs. My family was good, but I was't. Mine kept falling down and I had to keep tying it around my wast, over and over again.

One of the young monkeys

Cool peacock  statue

One of the moms helping her baby's out

The Batu caves were really cool. When we got home, my dad said he was't feeling good. Me my mom and Anneka went to a bird park. There were so many types of birds there. Although, there wen't a lot of parrots. Maybe because it was the country's bird. We saw 2 peacocks fan there feather's ! It was so cool. There was one bird that had these very creepy red eyes. But it was still a pretty bird. There was the most huge Pelican you have ever seen there. It was huge! We saw a lot of owls and most of them were sleeping. 

A barn owl

The big pelican

The peacocks fanning out it's feathers

The creepy red eyed bird 

The pelican again

That night , we went to the most delicious place for dinner. I got pita bred and chicken curry, Anneka got a noodle dish, my dad got roti and my mom got a little bit of everything. It was my favorite meal on the trip so far. I'm not joking! That was the last thing we did in Kuala Lumpur. Next stop Sydney Australia. 

Hawaii!

Waikiki Beach

                                         
Hawaii the land of paradise! Johnny and I were here for our honeymoon 12 years ago and loved every moment of our 3 week stay. We always knew that we would stop here on our way to the other side of the world, we just didn't intend to only stay for 3 days. As many of you know we are on a pretty tight budget (let's face it we are also cheap as hell). We have always planned on stopping in Sydney to visit our good friends Nick and Kath (and family) and were shocked at the prices from Oahu to Sydney. We were warned, and we kept putting it off, but when the day came to book the flights we almost had a heart attack. We actually considered changing our whole itinerary and going to Australia in February, but that didn't really work for our hosts (or us really), so we tried to figure something else out. SkyScanner, has this great feature- you can type where you are and then select "can't decide", it will then break down different destinations. Once we typed in Oahu, we found we could all fly to Kuala Lumpur for $1300 CAD! We were sold (literally). We then quickly looked at flight options from KL to Sydney and found a flight for $1000 CAD.... decision made, we shortened our stay in Hawaii by 1 week, and added KL to our list. The only problem with this great deal? The flight time was terrible, leaving Oahu at 3 pm January 13, arriving 4 am January 15th (OHHHH my head...this time travel stuff totally messes with my brain.). We had booked Cancun to Oahu months ago on points, so we always knew that one would be bad...We flew at 6 am from Cancun, then landed in Houston, 1 hr layover, on to LA- 4 hr layover, then Oahu, landing at 7pm Oahu time. 18 hours total travel time... was totally the pits, but we were all troupers and made the best of it.

on our 4 hour layover in LA

Hawaii is everything we remembered, 

Waikiki Beach

 We decided to rent a car so we could explore the whole island, Oahu has so much to offer if you get out of Honolulu. First up Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. It's a beautiful state park only 15 minutes outside of Honolulu, gorgeous crescent shaped beach, tons of amazing fish.

After a few hours, we got in the car and very slowly made our way to the north shore...I say very slowly as we stopped often to explore the the coastline...it is pretty spectacular.

Diamond Head

                                                 

Koko head park

Waimanalo Beach

The east Shore is my favourite in Oahu, very lush with secluded little beaches around every turn..it reminds me of our favourite island Kauai.

Waimanalo Beach

Waimanalo Beach

Kahaluu Beach

Kahana Bay Beach Park

Kawela Bay-north shore

I am convinced in another life I was a surfer...I have always loved everything about surf culture and dream of riding the big waves like in the movies...unfortunately for me, I cannot surf, I have tried and failed miserably and wish I could tell you a success story. I had planned on taking a proper lesson from a real-life Hawaiian surfer (I did on our honeymoon and happy to say I was actually surfing), but sadly, the day we went to go surfing on the gentle waves of Waikiki beach, the waves were too small... too bad for us, we did not surf in Hawaii. BUT I did get to watch some of the most amazing surfers ride 18 ft waves at the Bonzai Pipeline, (apparently there were 40 ft waves coming the following Saturday but we would be gone by the). It was still so impressive to watch. The camera could not capture the true size of the waves. If you look close, you can see some surfers out there to give you an idea.

Banza Pipeline, beach was crowded with spectators watching

we left at sunset and enjoyed the beautiful views on the way home. 

                                                         

The next day we went for a hike to Manoa Falls, the falls themselves were pretty unimpressive, but the hike was great, just enough of an incline, but easy for the kids so there was no complaints. We then went to the beach, intending to surf (no go), we had some delicious food truck Hawaian shrimp and the famous shaved ice. Walked Waikiki and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the area. 

Manoa Falls

Moanoa Falls

Waikiki beach, our Aibnb was about 10 minute walk away.

We tried to get to bed early to prepare for the next day of hell travel. In the morning, we checked out of our hotel and just bummed around Waikiki, went to the sweet little aquarium close to Diamond head, showed the girls where we stayed when we were on our honeymoon and then headed to the airport to begin the next leg of our journey-

view from the area of Diamond Head 

the Aquarium in Honolulu

See you soon Kuala Lumpur!