Kuala Lampur

View of train station towers
see all photos »

Monday - A trip to the elephant sanctuary

There were no tours available but my hotel concierge managed to arrange a driver to take me.  I saw beautiful views of the Malaysian hills on the two hour drive out.  On the way we stopped at a place called a "deer park".  It was strangely like visiting someone's back yard.  A kid no older than 12 showed me around.  I got to feed Malay deer, monkeys, emus, and a mouse deer.  They also had a sun bear and they put honey in my palm for the bear to eat.  It seemed pretty tame, but I was still really nervous.

Elephants and towers

View of the Petronas Towers pedestrian bridge
see all photos »

After the deer park we went to the elephant sanctuary.  The visit starts with a video presentation that talks about the plight of the Malaysian elephant and a little bit about the sanctuary.  The rest of the schedule included watching the elephants have a bath, helping to feed them, taking an elephant ride, and swimming with them in the river.  We also got to pet the baby elephants which were really cute!  The only negative part was that the sanctuary was really crowded due to it being a school holiday.  It would have been nicer with just the normal smaller tourist crowd.  My driver was really nice about taking pictures for me so I have plenty of pictures of the experience.

View from the Petronas Towers
see all photos »

Tuesday - KL city tour

Beth arrived early morning on Tuesday.  We started by taking a walking tour of the colonial district.  We saw the famous train station which is beautiful with all of it's minaret towers.  We cut the tour short and decided to head over to see the Petronas Towers.  We found out that the visitor passes for the day (to the 41st floor overpass) were sold out, but the Accenture office in the towers (on the 66th floor) so we got to go up and have a good view anyway.  It's a beautiful building!  Afterward we went to find the KL tower in search of a late lunch at the rotating restaurant at the top.  It took us a while to figure out how to get in to the tower and we arrived too late for the lunch buffet so we just sat at a cafe at the base of the tower for a while.  Next we went back to the hotel to relax.  I spent some time at the pool while Beth napped.  We intended to go out for dinner but instead ended up just wandering across the street to a little outdoor place.