First Halloween in KL

Obviously, Halloween this year was affected by covid.  School was still online, and the embassy did its best to create an outdoors, socially distanced celebration for the kids.  Thankfully, Vivian and Elena were both sure about what they wanted their costumes to be early on, which gave us plenty of time to get everything purchased and ready.  Vivian wanted to be classic Rogue, and Elena wanted to be Arrietty from The Borrowers and the more recent The Secret World of Arrietty.  Jeff has new glasses, which Vivian says make him look like Tony Stark, so he decided to go for it.

He received many compliments, and put a lot of effort into his look.  Vivian also spent time getting her hair JUST right.  While the color was already there, her curls tend to have a mind of their own, but we spent some time at the hair salon taming them, and the results were great.

My friend with sewing skills helped with a bag for Elena and detaching the gloves for Viv, and I used Etsy for the other props.  Both girls were thrilled with their costumes.

Once they were home from school and costumed up, it was off to the embassy.  The different offices had set up great displays in the parking lot around the embassy.  One of the best was an Alice in Wonderland themed display.

There were also Avengers,

Hawaii (where you had to "fish" for your candy),

Pirates of the Caribbean, with games, 

and a creepy doll's house.  Elena had no problem taking her picture with the doll.

Vivian is not in any of the pictures, because she spotted some of her teenage friends and immediately wandered off, while I stayed with Elena and her friend.  When we got to the "kidnapper van" with the free candy sign and the bloody hand prints, Elena was understandably hesitant.  Jeff and I were very proud of her instincts, but told her that in this particular case, it was okay to approach the van.

In the upstairs restaurant area, there was a "haunted house" which was not too scary for the younger ones.  There was also "blood" (aka red wine) for the parents who had made it that far.

Next, we went downstairs where there was a farm themed area, complete with a rabbit that felt the need to pee on Elena.  Luckily, there was a bathroom nearby where she could wash up.  She still loves the fuzzy animals, no matter what.

We finally found Vivian again.  She had been looping through the actually scary Marine haunted house with her friends.  We took her over to the Sweeney Todd themed area our friend had helped set up, and she got in the barber's seat.

Elena went for the touch and feel boxes.

There were some other areas we didn't get photos of, but the most important part is that the girls had a great time.  We were chatting with some of our friends about it, and one demanded to see a picture of what I had worn, so Jeff took this photo.

It's a t-shirt from the Loki show which has timeline variants, but honestly, at this point, the scariest thing we can think of is another covid variant, so it seemed like an appropriate Halloween costume.  

Elena continued to party the night away in the Hawaiian lei she got from one of the office areas. 

Seri Hening also had its own trick or treat event that people could sign up for.  Vivian went out with her friends, but I kept Elena home, half because she hasn't been vaccinated yet and half because she already had plenty of candy.  She loves Spirited Away though, so we had to get a photo with her and one of Vivi's friends who dressed up as a character from the movie.

We're not quite back to a fully "normal" Halloween yet, but it's definitely progress from last year.

Islamic Arts Museum

I am very lucky to have children who love going to museums, so everyone was on board for a trip to the Islamic Arts Museum.  I had thought of it as a rainy day option, but with the heat in KL, everyone was fine with an indoor activity after the previous morning spent outside at the Bird Park.  

The museum is directly across the street from the National Mosque of Malaysia, which has a large, free parking lot, so we parked there and headed across the street to the museum.  We had seen it from our window at the hotel,

and it was a lot of fun to look back the other direction.

The building itself is a work of art, and there were so many interesting decorative touches.

We were the only people in the museum for most of our visit, which was nice, but we were disappointed to find out that they weren't doing the audio guides, which the girls usually really enjoy.  The first display was about the history of coins in the Islamic world, and we all found it really interesting, although Jeff was the only one who wanted to read every single board.

The girls and I were more interested in the inverted dome on the ceiling.

Jeff got a picture of us with it.

There were also several lovely traditional domes in the various display rooms.

The display cases had all kinds of artifacts from Islamic empires around the world.

Elena was thrilled to find a book about chess.

We found another beautiful dome,

and a covering that used to hang in front of the door to the Kaaba in Mecca.

Viv wandered at her own pace, but Elena was especially interested in trying to decipher the different kinds of Arabic script.  We found a great explainer for her.

They also had a section with miniature versions of famous Islamic buildings.  I figured these might be as close as the girls got to some of the real things. 

We found more coins upstairs.

One of our favorite sections though was on the Ottoman Empire.

Vivi found a pin with a white ostrich feather that she really liked.

But we weren't sure about the practicality of some of the outfits on display.

After exploring for two hours, we were pretty hungry.  Luckily, the museum has a restaurant on site that serves Middle Eastern food and has a kids menu.  As with the museum, we were the only people in it for most of our lunch.  It was a lovely place.

We had tickets for complimentary juices that came with our museum tickets, so that was a nice treat.

Elena got chicken nuggets and fries, which she kindly shared with the rest of us.

The "Mediterranean" pizza was a bit of a disappointment.

But Viv enjoyed her chicken shwarma that looked like it had been put in a panini press.

The clear winner though was Jeff who enjoyed his shish taouk. 

After lunch, we walked around the gift shop to digest.  They had some really beautiful things.  Elena got a bookmark, Vivian got a framed ceramic tile, and Jeff and I got a magnet for the fridge collection.

We were feeling very pleased with our outing when we walked out of the museum to see the parking lot across the street COMPLETELY full and closed off.  Forget double parking, there were cars parked in what would be the road part of the parking lot.  The gates were closed and more cars were parked in front of the gates.  From the loudspeaker inside the minaret, we could hear the sounds of a Friday service.  We had inadvertently parked our car in the parking lot of the largest mosque in the city on the holy day.  Jeff and I were both a bit upset with ourselves, because we've both lived in Muslim countries before and we ought to have known better, but we really weren't thinking about it.

The guard in front of the museum took pity on us and reassured us that the parking lot would empty out in about an hour when services were over.  Since the hotel was just a five minute ride away, we decided to get a Grab back to the hotel and come back for the car later.

After the girls were done with their afternoon cooking class, Vivian came back with me in another Grab.  When we got to the parking lot, it was as empty as it had been when we first parked there, and there was our car, just sitting and waiting for us patiently.  It was a good lesson learned, since we really enjoyed the museum and will definitely go back when we have visitors to take there, but maybe not on a Friday.

KL Bird Park

One of the highlights of our Chinatown staycation was a trip to the KL Bird Park.  It's on the west side of the city, near Chinatown, so it was a quick drive over there in the morning, and there was plenty of free parking in front of the entrance when we got there.  We are definitely fans of arriving early.  There are fewer people and less heat.

The coolest part about the Bird Park is that there is a huge area where the birds can roam freely.  It's covered by a net so large that we could see it from our hotel room.  It definitely took a little getting used to at first, because near the entrance, the birds were still on the other side of the fence.

But then you walked through another gate, and you were in it with them.

And they were walking around like they owned the place.  At first, we tried to stay out of their way as much as possible, but then we realized they were completely used to people, and they didn't mind us at all.

There were tons of beautiful peacocks everywhere.

The pelicans seemed to prefer sitting on the bridges.

We expected the birds to fly off when we crossed, but they just stayed put as we walked by single file.  Elena and I let Jeff and Viv go first.

There were also lizards wandering free, so we needed to be on the lookout for them as well.

One of the highlights was a lovely waterfall area.

As we were leaving, we saw that the waterfall made a rainbow.

There were also some education areas where the girls enjoyed learning more about birds, and we all enjoyed the air conditioning.

They especially liked the part with the little chicks.

But really, the main fun was to walk around and spot different kinds of birds.

We also happened upon a feeding time, so there were some real life demonstrations of how birds don't have teeth but still manage to eat fish.

We even got to help with the animal feeding ourselves.  Near one of the ostrich enclosures, there was a feeding station with a basket of leafy greens to feed them.  There was also a cage to protect the humans from overly enthusiastic ostriches.  At Safari World in Bangkok, there is a sign near the ostriches that says don't get too close or they may peck out your eyes, so we have a rational level of caution around ostriches.  The girls had also just learned that an ostrich's legs are strong enough to kick a lion to death, so they weren't so sure about getting any closer.

I felt it was my parental duty to go first, so I headed in while Jeff hung back "to take pictures".  When I successfully fed the ostrich a couple leaves, Elena's love of animals won out, and she came and joined me.

At the exit, there was a restaurant, so we decided it was feeding time for us as well.  The girls gave the spaghetti with bolognese two thumbs up.

We managed to avoid any gift shop purchases, since the only thing that really interested them were stuffed birds, and we have a bunch of those already.

We left just as the day was getting really hot and the parking lot was getting crowded and headed back to the hotel for pool time and cooking class.  It was a wonderful morning outing for our bird loving family.