EE & S Adventures

For many visitors to Kuala Lumpur, shopping is high on the list of things to do.  No wonder since the city boasts some of the largest and most modern Malls in the world.  Although this wasn't why we visited, we did end up spending a lot of time in a few of the big ones, perhaps it was a sign that we were longing for home and the familiarity of western style shopping.  Or it could be the post christmas sales!  Anyway we didn't buy a lot but we did spend a lot of time discovering why shopping centres can be a tourist attraction in themselves. Our local Mall was Pavilion.  With over 550 shops spread over about 8 floors it was comfortably bigger than anything in Australia.  The Mall includes plenty of kids options such as a Lego store and an interesting section "Tokyo Street" for smaller shops, a bit like a traditional outdoor market inside a Mall complex.  They also had a huge Star Wars display promoting the movie released over Christmas.  Eating a...

Kuala Lumpur was our final destination before returning to Australia.  It's a city with a pretty good standard of living (for south east Asia) and has a fair bit to offer the tourist, particularly if they like shopping. The city centre is dominated by the famous Petronas Towers, just a five minute walk from our apartment which was convenient for sightseeing.  We visited the towers a few times at day and at night.  There's a nice park just out the back with a large water playground for kids and a lit up fountain at night. In the base of the towers you can find one of KLs best malls (more about our Mall experiences later).

For our second week in the Maldives we stayed at another island resort, this one a 45 minute speedboat trip from Malé.  Meeru Island Resort and Spa was nice, though it was a big step down from Niyama in terms of luxury (and price). The resort was another full board extravaganza.  By now (after two weeks of cruising and a week of resort stay), the regular trip to the buffet was starting to elicit some groans.  The food was fantastic, especially the Indian options where some nice curries were dished up.  However returning to the table with our plates, portions were getting smaller and we seemed to all be more selective in choosing only those dishes we really wanted to eat rather than trying to sample a large range of goodies. We stayed in a comfortable cabin about 20 meters from the beach on the eastern side of the island with a large shallow lagoon immediately off the beach with one deep spot that proved great for snorkelling. So how did we spend our time?...

The Maldives is a very special country.  It's total land area is minute but it's spread over almost 100,000 square kilometres of ocean.   The best way of appreciating the geography is by taking a flight over the islands.  Fortunately we had two internal flights out of, and returning to, Malé where near perfect weather gave us a great view of islands and atolls to enjoy. One thing that can be seen in the Maldives from the air is island building in action.  If you want to open a resort and you aren't happy with the available islands, just build your own.  Sort of Magrathea lite. Not surprisingly the Maldives is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change.  When you also consider that tourism is by far their biggest industry, not surprisingly the country has a fairly strong environmental focus.

The Kids club at Niyama Resort might be on of the best in all the world.  Lets hear from Samuel... Niyama Kids club is the best. Its got every thing you could imagine. I liked it better than the theme parks at Orlando.   At the kids club there was a splash park, a pool table and a trampoline for example. They also take you on adventures and learning trips.  Some of the adventures included dolphin trips, sea kayaking, mocktail classes, Maldivian origami using coconut leaves and paper origami.  They also have cooking classes. I enjoyed the baking in their kitchen making two types of cupcakes on different occasions.  I made vanilla cakes dyed green and the classic chocolate cupcakes for the Niyama bake off and Niyama baking.  The cupcakes were lovely and all of our family enjoyed them.... I also did two Masterchef classes.  One was a mocktail making masterclass and the other was making my own chicken quesadillas at the Tribal restaurant. ...