Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I'm writing lying on a beach recuperating from Mum's visit! We had a great 2 weeks, but no time for blogging and not enough sleep (old people dont need as much sleep, eh mants?), so we'll be catching up on both over the next few days...

Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in KL the day before Mum's arrival to get our bearings, do a little admin (fix my phone and do some laundry) and generally prepare ourselves... Before we knew it, it was time to get to the airport to await her arrival.

As an aside, Mum once let my brother, Christian, set up sky internet for her. The next day, she was calling the helpline to deal with a fault and explaining that her username: 'Psychomantis4' was not of her choosing... Mantis has stuck as her nickname and the whole incident goes down as one of my brother's finer moments!

The 'Mantis Bloor' sign went unnoticed, both due to her excitement at seeing our faces and her dodgy eyes.

We decided to get her straight into backpacking mode, so took the bus into KL rather than a taxi. She was on good form considering the flight, but we were all ready for bed by the time we made it to the hotel. After a decent (though too short for my liking) sleep, we were ready to go and explore. There was no plan so we took her for a nice breakfast where we decided on a plan for the next week. Having done a little booking, we set off to the bird park, which was a Grandad recommendation. It's a huge aviary that you can walk through, dotted right in the middle of KL city; we had fun and saw lots, we even had time for a fruit stop and mum's first try of mangosteens... They were a hit. With all the birds we saw at least we wouldnt be too disappointed if we didn't manage to see much in the jungle...

Next up, we headed to the Indian area for a curry and a mango lassie.

We decided to have a treat and went to the Heli Lounge for a sunset cocktail or 2... The place is pretty impressive, essentially just some tables and chairs on the helipad atop a skyscraper, looking out over the KL skyline of the Petronas Towers. It was a great evening and Mum was definitely in the holiday spirit!

On our way back, we stopped off at the Pavilion (big posh shopping centre) food court for some breakfast supplies and a spot of supper. Thai green curry, proper Ribena and beef fried rice. Mantis was starting to flag by this point, but we had to eat... We jumped on the free bus back to our hotel and got our heads down ready for our trip to the jungle the next day...