KL Bird Park

Today we checked out the "World's Largest Free-flight Walk-in Aviary" at the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. Robin and I navigated from our apartment in Mont Kiara to the KL Bird Park (Taman = Park, Burung = Bird), getting lost only once - but recovering quickly. The Bird Park is set in a large park area with an Orchid Park, Butterfly Garden, a National Mosque, and several museums. We will be back to explore this area again! Also for this adventure, we came armed with our utility bills and were quickly granted the discounted Malaysian resident rate. Yeah!

The kids all had a blast feeding the birds. They left Hansel and Gretel style trails of bird feed to entice the birds follow us around. Here are a bunch of pictures. FYI - Ostriches are huge.

For lunch, we popped into the Bird Pack cafe, but at RM14 (~$4.66 USD) for a kid's meal, we deemed the place too pricey. We had seen a hawker stand area on the way into the park, so we back tracked. Unfortunately, we were foiled by Ramadan fasting -- the stands were closed. Thank you Google maps for showing us that we were just across the river from Chinatown. A quick drive over and we were at the Central Market. Out of all the food stands in the Market, the kids wanted hot dogs and chicken nuggets! (Robin and I ate samosas - different stand.) We did have the most amazing dessert, "putu bambu". It's a flour and rice flour cake mixed up and steamed cooked in pieces of bamboo then served covered in fresh shaved coconut. Oh so good.

Check out more about the bird park at http://www.klbirdpark.com/index.cfm

By the way, we made it home with no wrong turns. Mike Pohl - please thank the international Google maps team. The navigation rocks!

Monday Just Isn't the Same without Little H

First - our big news: Success! Internet installed at our apartment. This is huge.

Now on to the real topic of the post: Monday night. For ~10 years, Brian and I have gone to Little Havana in Federal Hill (nearly) every Monday night for 1/2 priced sandwiches and 1/2 priced beer. Shout out to all our Little H friends over the years... we're thinking of you and missing you so much. So Brian and I want to establish a similar tradition here. Really, who wants to cook on a Monday? So we're looking for a bar walking distance from our apartment. Tonight we tried 'Backyard'. Verdict = No. The food was pretty good and okay priced. And the beer was also good (for Malaysia) and okay priced. However, the walk is just a bit too far. (Also for several long blocks the sidewalk is missing manhole covers over the storm drains. Yikes.) Check out the pic of Tyler enjoying the bar. (Jacob = note the Skylanders on the table.) However, the evening did have a very Little Havana-ish element: good friends. Nico and Isabel joined us out for great conversation and a lot of laughter. On our walk back to the apartment, Nico, Isabel, and I detoured to the hawker stands to pick up Isabel's lunch for tomorrow. (As it's Ramadan, in some areas of town, most of the shops are closed during fasting hours. It's best to pack lunch right now.) Of course, we also enjoyed a couple small Tigers while waiting for her food.


So something we haven't yet spent too much time writing about is KL's amazing food. Mayaugust commented about the chicken in the window. So I took a pic for you all. There is any kind of food here. Violet and Tyler wish to inform you that the self serve fro yo is excellent. We'll try to take some pictures of our food so you get an idea of what we are eating.

Speaking of eating, after Violet said 'Mom, remember in Baltimore when you'd open the cupboard and have food? Can we please have that here? Soon?', Brian and I decided a major grocery trip was in our near future. So yesterday afternoon we were off to Tesco (think Super Walmart). Good news. We found a true locals shop (even if it's a British chain). We were the only people in the store speaking English. We were also purchasing a Sam's club-sized cart of groceries while inline behind 12 people just buying eggs (and air fresheners as they were on the blue light special. We bought 3.). As it was Sunday afternoon, the place was packed. Shopping took soooo long as I had to spend time on each item identifying the correct product among 50 similar ones -- all with Asian writing. Tesco has an entire aisle of ramen noodle soup. What's a girl to do?

Today the kids and I visited Garden International School where both kids will attend in the fall. We walked down the hill to school from our apartment. It was only about a 15 minute walk. Very do-able. I'm going to enjoy our walks to school. It's hard to judge a school when school is out of session. There was a great deal of construction. It's also a very large school -- Tyler's grade has 7 classes! However, everyone we meet speaks very highly of Garden International School and they gave us a wonderful little book called 'Where We're From: A Celebration of Our Multi-cultural Community'. But I do miss Park right now.

Eating frozen yogurt after visiting GIS.

“Mom, The Monkeys Woke Me Up” – Pulau Redang

We just returned from Pulau Redang where we spent three days on a PUGSOM faculty retreat. ‘Pulau’ is Malay for island. Pulau Redang, just off Malaysia’s east coast, is about a one hour plane ride from KL. Our adventure began with an early morning taxi ride to the airport followed by another taxi ride to a ferry. (Side note: Mary’s totally enjoying the phonetic spelling of western words translated into Malay. taxi = ‘teksi’, sauce = ‘sos’, ice cream = ‘aiskrem’)

Picture in your mind your image of tropical paradise. That’s Pulau Redang. We stayed at a small resort, Wisana – PUGSOM faculty and families (19 people) filled nearly every room – steps from the softest white sand beach and clear blue, blue ocean surrounded by a colorful coral reef. The only way in and out of the resort is by boat. We filled the days scuba diving, swimming, napping, reading, snorkeling (the kids found Nemo in an anemone!), playing games, eating great food, climbing gorgeous rock formations, and getting to know the wonderful PUGSOM faculty and their families. And yes, one morning, monkeys woke Violet and Tyler up as they jumped on the roof to get to the coconut trees in front of our villa. Near the end of our visit, our wonderful resort host took us on a hike up the cliffs behind the resort for a spectacular view of the island.

Tyler and Brian enjoying a nap!

These are the monkeys that woke Violet up.

A huge thank you to Charlie for planning the adventure, finding this resort, and hiring a spectacular group of people!

Striking Oil!

Brian’s busy with work, so I’m going to let you know all about my day with the kids and Brian will catch you up later.

Tuesday was great. Big news – I got us a phone AND set up internet installation! Unfortunately, internet will not be installed for about 3 more weeks. Ug.

Robin, the kids, and I were joined by Nico, another PUGSOM faculty spouse, for our day’s adventures. After Nico’s (very nearly) perfect navigation of us all to Kuala Lumpur Center City and the (completely) perfect navigation into and around the giant mall to Maxis, the cell store, the kids are calling Nico ‘Mr. GPS’. We ate lunch in the mall’s food court. You all know that I’m no fan of shopping malls, but I’ve become a huge fan of the Malaysian malls’ food courts. For those who may have been worried about my picky eater, Tyler now requests ‘my favorite Chinese chicken – the one hanging in the window’ for EVERY meal.

Kuala Lumpur Center City (KLCC) is home to the Petronas Towers and KLCC Park. While the plan was to do phone, lunch, then time in the park, a tropical rain storm came through and park time was out. Fortunately, the KLCC mall is also home to a science center. (http://www.petrosains.com.my/) Yeah! Afternoon salvaged. The Petrosains Science Center has two entry fees, one for Malaysian residents and one for visitors. After explaining that we just moved here (‘do you have your resident visas?’ ‘not yet’), we showed our newly acquired Maxis cell service thus gaining us access to the science center for the much discounted rate. Yeah, again! The science center was a riot. The sponsorship by Petronsains, the oil company, is not masked in the least, with all science around oil production. There is even a scaled down slice of an oil platform for kiddie exploration. Pat Smith – we were thinking of you!

After a stressful drive back to Mont Kiara (you will hear a recurring theme that driving here is stressful), we all headed out to the hawker stalls in nearby Desa Sri Haratamas, the neighborhood right next to Mont Kiara. Here's how the hawker area works: we sit in an open air area on plastic tables. One vendor comes over to take your drink order (‘tiger beer?’ ‘after that drive, yes, please!’) while you then walk around and order from a number of food stalls. The food arrives at the table a few minutes later hot, fresh, and delicious. Here’s a pic of Violet sleepy, enjoying her fresh OJ, and our oversized Tiger beer. Now that I have a phone, I’ll take more pictures - I promise!

Lots of Love!

Getting Life Started

While I'm posting on Wednesday - we wrote this on Monday...

We are (mostly) over the jet lag and starting to get life started.

We spent Sunday afternoon the other family with kids who joined the PUGSOM team this week. Ethan, Robin, A, and J have been on the ground in Malaysia a whole week and already have a car, household goods, and internet. This makes them long timers compared to us. Our four kids get along great and Robin and Mary have laughed a great deal at the many similarities of these two big sister-little brother pairs.

Yesterday was Brian’s first day of work. Lots of orientation and stuff. (Yes, you can tell that Mary’s writing this entry!)

Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Mary and the kids attempted to establish a morning routine. Mary’s teaching the kids to swim and we have carved out the early morning for reading/writing time. We met up with Robin and the kids for the afternoon. In retrospect, we accomplished surprisingly little on the ‘to do’ list; however, we have appropriately realized that determining and then finding a location must rank in our daily accomplishments. Many thanks to Robin for doing all the driving… especially with Mary in the front passenger’s seat (on the left side of the car) squirming and shrieking ‘Ahh… we almost side swiped that (fill in the blank: parked car, person, street pole, fruit stand)’. Please note that with Robin’s skilled driving, we did not hit anything.

Robin and the kids also invited us over to their home and pool in Desa Parkcity, a neighborhood west of Mont Kiara (where we live). Love their club! The kids are looking forward to inviting themselves back over.

Still don’t have internet at home. Prior to scheduling installation from the better internet/TV/phone service provider, we are required to have a local phone contact number and a local bank. Oh, but first we need to email the internet provider with my passport copy and contact information. This is rather turning into chicken and egg.

We're Alive!

We made it!

Overall, we’d have to say things went off without a hitch. We left NYC in style on Thursday morning in a limo arranged by Brian’s dad. 

We boarded a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong and hunkered down for a 16 hour flight. This plane was designed for kids. Unlimited movies on demand (Tyler watched ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ 3 times), all the noodle soup you can eat, lots of pudding and ice cream, and best of all, enough space to build a “bunk bed.” (One kid lays on the floor in front of the seats and the other lays on the seats). Since Violet is the oldest (and the biggest) she got to have the top bunk.

Before we knew it we were in Hong Kong for a 2 hour layover and then boarded another Cathay Pacific flight to Kuala Lumpur. This time Violet had the bottom “bunk” which worked out fine until the guy in the seat in front of her dumped an entire Tiger beer on her head. Not exactly the way we wanted to sample our first Southeast Asian beer!

We arrived in KL around 9 pm and once we cleared immigration and customs (by the way, easiest clearance ever), Shah from Perdana picked us up in the official Perdana van and took us to our new apartment in Mont Kiara.

It was delightful to see Charlie waiting for us – and he invited us for dinner in his apartment (a bottle of wine for us and scrambled eggs for the kiddoes).

The new apartment is great. The kids love their new bunk bed (a real one, not like on the airplane), we have a great view of the city, and the facilities are simply amazing. The wrap around pool is better then any resort we’ve ever stayed at, and there is a waterslide just for kids (we know it’s just for kids since the security guards have kicked Brian off of it twice already).

We’ve only been here 48 hours but have already had some amazing food including Malaysian laksa soup, great Korean bbq, really good sushi and intensely spicy Indian food. Charlie introduced Mary to her new favorite breakfast, Kuey Teow, a thick, fried noodle dish which she has had every morning so far! Tyler has made it 2 days without a chicken nugget although he did spot Charlie’s peanut butter so he knows that it’s available in Malaysia. 

We spent most of yesterday shopping to set up basic provisions in the apartment before our (delayed) household goods arrive in early August. We are grateful to Nicole for taking Mary and a nearly-comatose, jetlagged Violet out for shopping. Note Ikea in Malaysia looks just like Ikea anywhere else. Violet was delighted that the ice cream cones at Ikea are 1 ringgit (~33 cents).

We don’t yet have internet in our apartment, but it’s coming in the next week or two and then we will be able to be closer in touch. Thanks again to everyone who helped make our last weeks in the U.S. phenomenal.  

Thinking of you all,

Brian, Mary, Violet and Tyler

We're Leavin' On a Jet Plane...

The Pohl-Garibaldi clan is flying out tomorrow morning from JFK! We go JFK to Hong Kong (16 long hours). We layover in Hong Kong and then it's another 3.5 hours to Kuala Lumpur. Carry on bags are packed with books, electronic devices (still charging), craft projects, playing cards, and more electronic devices.

Danny, Jamie, Kathy, and Dan hosted a wonderful Garibaldi going away party yesterday, complete with Italian food galore (mmmm...eggplant parm, ziti, lasagna, chicken parm, meatballs, sausage and peppers, antipasto). And yes, Allison H., Mary did eat the eggplant for breakfast this morning.

The family joined in for a cousins vs. uncles backyard baseball extravaganza. Tyler would like everyone to know that the cousins kicked butt. Also, several of Brian's dear friends made their way out to Long Island from Manhattan and Brooklyn to join in the celebration! Thank you all so, so much. (A special thanks to Jamal who put aside his vegetarian leanings and had some of Mama Garibaldi's meatsauce!)

 

Check out the cake! Love it!

We'll send news when we get settled in KL. All our best,

Brian, Mary, Violet and Tyler