The Big Move to Malaysia

We have arrived in KL finally after some extended packing and farewelling from Hanoi. Sumo and Ally came for a visit to Vietnam for our last 3 weeks and not sure if it was their influence of holiday ‘lax’ time or our ability to procrastinate, but either way we went to Hoi An for a 5 day beach holiday less than a week before we moved to a beach!

The first thing which hit me in KL was how quiet and clean everything here is. Granted I have seen only the airport, a hire car, a swanky hotel and 1 Utama shopping centre but having said this everything is calm, there are queues and it is bright and white. The second thing which kind of freaked me out was how fast we were travelling. We were doing 110km/hr on the freeway and being overtaken. Trev was driving telling me he was doing the speed limit and I was sitting in the back with the kids not even noticing the cars and trucks racing past just having that fair ride experience of far out this is fast. The Honda Wave did a regular speed of about 30km/hr with no traffic around in Hanoi! (Oxymoron that last statement as Hanoi rarely had no traffic around) This reverse culture shock is not as bad as Trev and my return from Qingtian to Melbourne where we chose to walk everywhere.

I did not think we had been roughing it in Vietnam at all and our home was very comfy. Little Claire however is suffering from her first culture shock. Examples of this include her seeing a nice plush rug in the foyer of the hotel and saying “I sleep on that bed” and squeals of delight when seeing her booster car seat for the first time with a 5 point harness “click clack”, a far cry from her metal seat on the front of the motor bike with instructions to put her hands on the dash and don’t move. Tom on the other hand is taking it all in his stride as so far this trip has meant lots of rides on various forms of transport.

This afternoon we make the trip across to Kuantan, which is set to be home for the next few months and fingers crossed longer if we enjoy.