Life Is A Road Trip: Week Two - Adelaide to Perth to Kuala Lumpur

Saturday, December 11th to Tuesday, December 14th. While cruising on the Yangtze River in 2009, we meet John and Bill who live in Perth. John was kind enough to serve as our personal tour guide while we were in Perth. Unfortunately, Bill was travelling. John loves his city and is very proud of all it is. Perth is the capital of Western Australia and is the most isolated capital city in the world. It is on the Swan River near the coast of the Indian Ocean. The city is booming thanks to the mining industries. The skyline is filled with cranes reaching into the brilliant blue sky to build even taller buildings. The temperatures soared to almost 100 degrees. We spent four nights at the Ridges Hotel in the downtown area.

On Saturday, John showed us around the city and its surrounding parks. He drove us to the Swan River Valley, which is one of the many wonderful wine regions of Australia. We tasted wines at Houghton Winery and then had a wonderful tapas style lunch at another winery. For dessert, we visited a chocolate factory which made the best dark chocolate. John is quite the collector and I took a picture of him with his beloved koala bears. He is also an abstract artist as you can see by the following sculpture of a man locked in city life.

John and his bears

John's sculpture - City Head

Toasting life in Oz

Perth Bell Tower

Ringing the bells

Izzy and friend

One of the highlights of our trip to Perth was a visit to Fremantle. Affectionately known by locals as Freo, Fremantle was originally Perth's access port for ships bringing supplies when Perth was just a colony. Today Fremantle is a seaside city with a vibrant atmosphere. Most of us remember when Fremantle won America’s cup in 1983 and hosted the race in 1987. Izzy would definitely consider jobs in Fremantle or Perth.

Breathometer in Perth Casino

Christmas Angel in Perth

Baselton - Longest Pier in Southern Hemisphere

Australian Christmas Tree

Near Lighthouse at Leeuwin

Lighthouse at Leeuwin - where Indian and Southern Oceans meet

Pirate cow

Monday, December 13. We took a tour to Margaret River, another remarkable wine region of Australia. We saw the longest pier in the Southern Hemisphere and went to the southwest corner of Australia where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean.

Tuesday, December 14. We tried to get organized for our journey out of Australia. I even washed clothes at the Backpackers Hostel. After almost 20 months living the dream in Australia, we had our final glass of fine Australia wine and a wonderful lunch at Kings Street Cafe in downtown Perth. At 4:30 in the afternoon we boarded our Malaysian Airlines 5 1/2 hour, 2600 mile flight to Kuala Lumpur. We arrived late at night and checked in for four nights at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. When we opened the drapes to our room at around midnight we were treated to a spectacular view of the twin towers all aglow with light.

View from our room at night

Wednesday, December 15. We took a morning city tour - saw King's Palace, National Mosque, city gardens. KL is a vibrant modern city of 2 million. The country is 70% Muslim, but the city is alive with Christmas decorations and Christmas music. I think the Christmas celebration here is because of all the mega-shopping malls. The mall next to our hotel is one of the largest we have ever seen. Most of the Muslin women wear head scarves, but we have only seen two full burkas. The children are darling with big brown eyes. Everyone is very friendly. All the signs are in English - the mall could be anywhere in the US since most of the stores are familiar names to us. English is compulsory and the literacy rate is 97%. We had Raj as our guide for two days. He was very informative and well-traveled. All of the tours arranged by this hotel are private - most of the time we were by ourselves in a nice air-conditioned van.

War Memorial designed by American who did sculpture of Iwo Jima

With Indian wedding couple

At a Mosque

KL City

Old section of KL

Twin towers

In the afternoon we took the Fireflies and Kuala Selangor tour which included dinner at a local Malay restaurant on the river watching the sun set. We saw hundreds of monkeys and thousands of fireflies while we paddled down the river in a sampan. The drive was in the country past the palm oil plantations.

Flying Monkey

Monkey and baby eating long bean

Muslim women and baby

Wild monkey and sampan ride to see fireflies

Thursday, December 16th. We took an all day tour to the Elephant Conservation Park. Raj's nephew, Rajan, who is 16 came with us. It was a beautiful drive through the jungle. 70% of Malaysia is covered in rain forest. One of the strangest things in the city are the toilets. Of course, there are the eastern style squat toilets as well as the western style, but there is no toilet paper. Instead there is a strange water hose sprayer thing that you are supposed to use. The floors of all the stalls are wet because of this sprayer. You can see a picture below.We also stopped at a Deer Park. In the evening we had dinner at the top of the KL tower in the revolving restaurant. The international buffet dinner was wonderful and the views were spectacular.

Toilet with sprayer and NO toilet paper

Jo and Rajan with jack fruit which is very sweet

Rubber running out of rubber tree

Izzy being attacked by deer

Izzy and his new best friend

Sun bear dancing

Izzy petting Sun Bear

Rajan and Izzy riding elephant

Stick Insect in jungle

Friday, December 17th. Today we hiked in the rainforest that surrounds the city and saw lots of weird bugs and strange lizards. It was very hot and humid, but very beautiful. The most interesting thing is the way the tall trees form a canopy at the top of the rain forest. The leaves of each tree keep a distance from the next tree – you can see this in the lace structure in one of the pictures below. National Geographic recently did a story on this phenomenon. We love the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and we would highly recommend it. This is one of the best hotels in the city and we got a rate of $260 per night which includes a huge buffet breakfast with more food than you can imagine plus the fantastic view of the twin towers. There are even two bathrobes – a terry cloth one and a Japanese style one. All of the staff are very friendly and many of them call us by our names.