The Journey Begins

Thursday 9 October, 2008

Having tired of drilling himself in the obscenities listed in the Italian phrase book I bought at the airport, the wired child sits content for a couple of hours while we await the boarding call. Telstra & Optus (the twin rogues) try to charge $13.50 for an hour’s wireless access, so I keep my laptop in the bag and do the cryptic crossword.

Nasty flight but they all are. Met a German woman who told me Australians were the most insular people she’d met in her travels around the world, and that we treat migrants very badly. I managed to do a few yoga poses waiting for the toilets.

K.L. steamy in the rain when we arrived at about 10 p.m., but KLIA Ekspres to KL Sentral efficient and mercifully fast. Carriages complete with big screen LCD tv. Smelled good, clean; wasn’t like any train I was used to.

Le Meridien Hotel wonderful. The view of KL from our 35th floor room misty, floating, like a Chinese watercolour (if you blink out the traffic).

We walked across a tangled skein of highways and expressways to the Bird Park, just past the Lake Garden. There’s no easy way to get there from the hotel, except by taxi. We walked but I wondered if we would survive the ordeal, trekking through the subterranean delivery areas of the hotel, wondering if a truck or van might speed around the corner and wipe us out. Sprinting across four lanes of traffic, to boldly go where no pedestrians were ever mooted.

See our photos.