Base Jumping from Menara KL, Anyone?

To start out the weekend, we headed to the Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Park, a delightful area within the Lake Gardens in which ~5,000 butterflies flutter among tropical plants and ferns. Some of the butterflies are huge, others fly really fast. This all made me wish I'd paid more attention when the kids learned about butterflies at Park (but we were humming "fuzzy fuzzy caterpillar; crawling, crawling by...")

Violet carried around a flower and actually enticed a butterfly to eat out of her hand - check out the picture! Super cool. My favorite area of the park was on the walk out where there were (in the air conditioning) pretty amazing displays of insects (alive and dead), moths (dead), and butterflies (dead). We were able to identify a number of the giant critters we saw during our trip to Taman Negara.

The butterfly eating from Violet's flower!

Love this beetle's description....

On Saturday night Brian, Nicole, Isabel, and Nico attended the Good Vibes festival to see Modest Mouse and Smashing Pumpkins. The place was not packed and they were able to get up nice and close to the stage to re-live 1998 (albeit, this time with earplugs and legal access to beer - oh, no crowd surfing either).

 

On Sunday, we wanted to do a beach day. KL lies near the Melaka Straights, one of the world's most important shipping lanes connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. There is little beach right here. Port Dickson, about an hour drive from us is a locals' beach town. Most of the beaches are drive-up and by many accounts are not particularly nice. One beach area, however, got good reviews on line, so we decided to check it out. To get there we had to park at the bottom of a hill and walk the 1 kilometer road to the Cape Rachado lighthouse, built in the late 1800s. From there, we found a path that took us down a set of long, steep steps to several small beautiful deserted beaches. While the water is not super clear (it's no Palau Radang...), the sand was soft and there were shells, coral, and cool rock formations. We stayed for hours - until the rising tide nearly covered the beach. The coolest part - we saw no one else that day. On the way back to KL, we stopped off and had dinner with Charlie, Anne, and Nicole at the Fierce Curry House. So good!

Pause for some Malay words: To pluralize a word in Malay, you repeat the word. Kanak is child. Kanak-kanak is children. And you say the consecutive words pretty fast. Fakta is "fact" in English. Fakta-faka are "facts". And check out the "Bas Sekolah".

Okay - so Camp Wiener/Pohl was back in session on Tuesday. We went to Menara KL (KL Tower), the world's 5th largest telecommunications tower. We can see it from our apartment balcony. I'm glad we did this after we'd explored KL because it was fun to look for places we'd visited from way high up. Menara KL also has a cultural village that showcases traditional regional building styles around Malaysia. It was okay. The entrance fee for Menara KL is pretty high - this is the first place that refused us the resident's price. Not sure if we'll do this one again.

US sports teams salute the Malaysia flag.
(Yes - the Malaysian flag is very similar to the US flag!)

No thank you. Joe Deal?

Pusat Sains Negara (The National Science Center), however, is worthy of repeat. Mostly because the price is right (one adult, three kids = RM7, ~$2.33), it's super close to the house (just one exit on the Sprint Highway, no tolls), there are some interesting indoor areas (think A/C), and we had yet to explore the lovely outdoor grounds. I took Violet, Tyler, and A - J was not feeling well - for the morning. The kids enjoyed the exhibits and even watched a science show in Malay (which was cool until they realized they were not getting any of the jokes -- nor the science explanations -- nor really anything at all). At the show, again, in all Malay, the staff member kept having this huge Malaysia school group yell (in English) "I love science". The Pusat Sains Negara has a great splash pool outdoor water area. Unfortunately, the sun was blisteringly hot and I neglected to pack sunscreen. I let the kids get their clothes nice and wet, but they couldn't really play. Bummer. Next time, kids.

We're planning a trip to Ipoh this weekend. So until then, I leave you with this public service announcement from our local gas station... Don't talk or text while you pump gas! No means no.