Kuala Lumpur has a “Hop On Hop Off Bus” that goes to all the main tourist attractions. It costs 38 Ringgits and the ticket lasts 1 day where you can get off and back at any of the stops along the way.
Today the plan was to see the Butterfly Park, the Bird Park and Central Market. The bus stops at all these places so we decided to give it a go. The one down side of the bus is that it takes a very indirect route from the city so it can stop at all the interesting places along the way. This means that we got on at KLCC and got off at the Butterfly Park, but the trip took about an hour! We did get to see a lot of the touristy things along the way though.
We arrived at the Butterfly Park, bought our 20 Ringgit tickets and we all prepared our cameras. On our last trip to Japan, Sarma and I were always spending the extra time fiddling with our cameras to get the best photos we could, but this time Amy has a dSLR too so Anthony and Amy were also happy to take their time with some photography and the Butterfly Park is great fun for this.
As we walked into the park we saw lots of small winding tracks with sprinklers and water fountains everywhere to keep the air moist. Anthony’s camera fogged up straight away. From a glance the place doesn’t look that big, but once you start walking through you see just how many insects are around. You then realize that they’ve done a pretty good job. You’re not allowed to bring tripod’s into the park which is unfortunate because there are a lot of times where my hand was just too shaky to get a nice crisp image, but I’m still happy with some of my photos.
After spending a fair amount of time getting photos of insects, we walked towards the Bird Park and stopped at the Horn Bill Restaurant for some lunch. Unfortunately as we walked in, all we could here was someone throwing up, but we were hungry and the place didn’t look too dodgy so we went in anyway. I ordered a burger which was really nice, but it didn’t come with tomato sauce. There was however a bottle of tomato sauce and a bottle of chili sauce on the table, but it was a little weird. It was “Maggi Sos Tomato”. As everything has odd spelling in Malaysia, we eventually realized that is wasn’t SOS as in “Save Our Souls”, but a contraction of the word “sauce”, lol. I looked at the ingredients and it also contained vinegar, which was odd at first, but pretty tasty.
We proceeded to the Bird Park and at the first gate there was an enclosure with lovebirds. Some other tourists had just finished so they gave us their remaining bird food and we spent a fair bit of time feeding the lovebirds when we had the whole park in front of us. They were really gentle taking the food from us, so I suppose the constant flow of tourists have trained them well.
The park is made up of large walk-in netted aviaries where the birds are free to roam around. There are a lot of random birds walking around including some big peacocks that sometimes open up their feathers and block the walkways for tourists.
There are also some designated areas too, like a Flamingo Park and a big river area where the birds can go to catch fish.
The last stop in the bird park was the photo booth. They have a small stage with about 20 exotic looking birds including owls, parrots, eagles and hawks. For about 10 Ringgits you can choose 2 birds to get your photos with.
After the Bird Park we got a taxi to Central Market to meet Sarma. We took a look around at some souvenir shops and Anthony and Amy bought some traditional Malaysian masks and we headed to the food court for a cold drink while we waited for Sarma.
From here we went to Petaling street (aka China Town) for some Hawker Stall dinner. I got a “Pataya Fried Rice” dish where they wrap the fried rice in an omelet.
After dinner we all went back to our hotel to show Sarma our fancy upgraded room. We discussed Sarma staying over for a couple of nights as there was a spare bed. The weekend would be easy and he could come on the tours with us and the weekdays would make his commute to work a bit more convenient.
As Sarma had work the next day, he had to make his way home a bit earlier because he lives about an hour outside of KL so then we went down to the pool. We all just sat on the edge of the pool with our legs hanging in the water. It was quiet and the weather was nice so it was a good way to end a busy day. We ended up getting some drinks and lounging around for about 2 hours before going back up to the room to get some sleep.