EE & S Adventures

We started with a very early 4.15 awakening at our Melbourne Airport Hotel.  Planning our arrival at Melbourne airport a full three hours before our flight was driven more by the overbooked hotel airport shuttle than our usual abundance of caution or the dire warnings of the tourist industry at the start of the holiday season.  We did share the shuttle with a bunch of footy players from Deniliquin on their end of season Gold Coast Trip.  The boys were no doubt disappointed that the group of women netballers they spotted at the bus drop off headed our way to the International check in and not Domestic. Our flight was about half an hour late taking off.  Even sitting over the wing, we had some fantastic views of the Southern Alps on the way in.  Deplaning featured a novel experience where the door opened and customs sent in a load of arrival forms to be distributed.  We then had to complete the forms on the tarmac before we could get off the plane.  A ...

On our last (non travel day) of our adventures we choose to take a trip to the Royal Selangor factory in the KL suburbs.  Royal Selangor are the worlds most famous producers of pewter.  They are a Malaysian institution, probably an Australian equivalent would be Akubra as an iconic brand. The worlds largest Pewter tankard Royal Selangor offer a free shuttle bus with hotel pick up and drop off.  This makes the factory a very cost effective tourist attraction.  Unless of course you buy Pewter and pay for a signature experience which we of course did. But first the free tour which was quite interesting and informative.  The guide was thankfully brief in his explanations and stories as we moved quickly through the factory museum and on to watching craftsmen and women at work.  We even had a go at stamping a pattern in pewter which is not as easy as it looks. After our tour we partook of our experience where we got to hammer out our own pewter bowl...

Our second visit to a butterfly park on this trip (after Magic Wings ) got off to a bad start.  The KL Butterfly Park must be the only tourist attraction in the whole of Malaysia that only accepts cash.  Even stalls at the KL central market prefer plastic.  Since we walked to the park, I (Eric) enjoyed an extra 3km of walking to find an ATM. The park wasn't quite up to the standard of Magic Wings, nevertheless their was a fair flock of exotic butterflies for us to enjoy.  We spent a good hour wandering around the subtropical enclosure taking photos when butterflies settled on flowers and feeder tables and Samuel. As well as butterflies, the park also featured a large display of dead insects - primarily ferocious looking giant beetles which we didn't linger around or photograph.  Lets stick to the butterflies... After the Butterfly Park it was a short walk to the Bird Park.  This was a much larger and more commercial attraction ...