The start of a new year

---

We left Canada in 2007 and landed in KL on January 1 2008. Somewhere over an ocean the new year arrived with no fanfare or celebrating as most of the occupants of the plane were blissfully (or should that be fitfully!) sleeping.

Accompanying me on this adventure were my parents, my husband and my two daughters who are six and nine years old. I'm took my kids to Malaysia to experience their heritage. This is odd as no one in our family is from Malaysia nor have they ever lived there. The closest would be the 8 months my dad spent in Singapore when he was in the air force. My family is from Sri Lanka, and I would dearly love to take my kids there. I'd like to go there myself as the only time I ever visited (after leaving when I was 15 months old) was when I was about 9 - the age of my oldest daughter. Unfortuately each time I start to make plans, some sort of internal unrest blows up (quite literally) and I end up backing out. Even during this trip to Malaysia, we heard news that there was a fatal bombing in Sri Lanka that killed several civilian bystanders. I feel like my kids can experience many things in Malaysia that I would have taken them to do in Sri Lanka, and as we no longer have close family living in Sri Lanka, maybe they won't miss out on much.

We started our trip in Kuala Lumpur. I found other blogs here very useful when I was planning our trip, so I'm going to include some information for others planning future trips, but keep in mind that my husband and I are in our 40's traveling with my parents who are in their 60's and my young children. My perceptions and requirments might be quite different from yours. We booked our KL hotel through Asiarooms.com well before we left. I was concerned about booking through a 3rd party over the internet, but there were no unpleasant surprises, other than not being able to extend our stay at the same rate which I'll discuss (rant about later). We stayed at the Pacific Regency which is located across a quiet street from the entrance to Menara KL (or KL tower) which is one of the tallest telecommunications towers in the world. This turned out to be a handy feature because this very visible landmark made it very easy to find our back to the hotel. The odd thing about the hotel is that it occupies the upper floors of a highrise whereas the lower floors are an office building. The hotels go from floor 7 (the lobby) straight to 23! It took us several days to figure out where all the missing floors were, and then it felt like we had discovered a whole new world - this is an experience that I had in several places in Malaysia. I'd be walking to what I thought was the end of a building, only to discover that it opened into an entirely new space that had a completely different character and style to the place I started out in.

The rooms at the hotel are clean and VERY spacious, in fact, the bathroom alone is the size of some hotel rooms I've stayed in! They also had a kitchenette which was the main reason I chose the hotel. I had a delightful massage in the spa which was how we discovered the rest of the building. My main complaint about the hotel was the front desk staff. While they were friendly and polite, they were extremely unhelpful. Their standard answer to any questions about how to get anywhere was "take a blue taxi" (these were the taxis that lined up outside the hotel). They would say this even if the place you were going was a 5 minute stroll away. As there were six people in our group we would have had to take 2 cabs and when I asked if there were other options, they just shrugged. They were also keen to push their limited selection of tours listed in their brochure even though you could walk down the street and book the same tours for 1/2 the price at a travel agent. They were also unhelpful when I wanted to extend our stay. Their rate was almost double what I paid through Asiarooms and their only suggestion was to contact the local Asiaroom rep who was just as unhelpful and claimed the extra night I wanted to stay was "high season" which was total BS. By the time the hotel I was feeling quite cranky.

---