Christmas in Malaysia

Since we didn't have to meet Jen's Dad until after Christmas, we decided to spend about a week hanging out over Christmas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

With our numerous HiltonHonors points and our Diamond VIP status, we were able to score a phatty room on the executive floor of the KL Hilton. It was a beautiful room, with a great view of the city, a huge bathtub for Jen, a 42" flatscreen tv, and one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in. But the best part about it all was that we got free breakfast AND free drinks and snacks in the executive lounge everyday. So while we had planned to spend a good portion of our time in KL exploring the city, we actually spent most of it sucking down free booze and lazing around our room.

Jen particularly enjoyed the free wine, often taking a glass back down to the room for her bath.

When we did get out of the room, however, we were able to take in some of the tourist sites around KL and had a grand old time. The Petronas Towers, now the 2nd tallest building in the world (but tallest twin towers), were pretty impressive for a couple of geeky engineers.

We also went up the KL Tower which had panoramic views of the entire city as well as some wacky tourist exhibits encircling the bottom. The most surreal of which was the "Winter Park", which was essentially a whole bunch of plastic polar bears and penguins surrounded by fake cotton snow and Christmas decorations. We took an obligatory picture just to document the absurdity of it all.

I'm a little embarrassed to say, however, that we spent a good portion of our time 'exploring the city' inside the numerous malls. Partially because they were air conditioned, partially because that is where a lot of the restaurants are (see the previous entry), but mostly to be blown away by the sheer unabashed commercialism. I've never been in a mall with so many designer stores, nor one that sells $150,000 watches, nor one that has a BENTLEY dealership inside the mall. Ridiculous. Someone must be making a ton of money in Malaysia....

All in all, we had a great time in KL and it was the right balance of relaxation, luxury, and exploration to get us primed for our travels ahead.