Day 13: KK to Rasa Ria

Packing light for long-distance travel

We tried to sleep in this morning, but as always on the days when you can sleep in, you don't.  We were in fact woken up by the sound of bag pipes?!  I thought Matt had put some of his weird music on, but he could hear them too.

We mulled around the flat for a while and then tried to decide what to do for breakfast.  We hadn't found any good bakeries around for buns, and NOTHING opens until 10am, so options were limited. I was not going to have fried chicken again.  We reluctantly decided that we should go to McDonalds around the corner - it was open 24 hours. 

Just as we were getting ready to go, I noticed a huge Malaysian flag being held by soldiers and carried down the road.  Hummm, then a huge Sabah flag passed us by.  Then more military music and more marching soldiers, people in other uniforms and children.  Was this the big Merdeka parade (Merdeka = National Day - this year Malaysia is celebrating 60 years of independence) it did seem very early in the morning - it was only just 8am. The parade went on and on and on.  Would you practise something this big in full 2 days before the event?  We weren't sure.  Anyway, after watching it for a while we went down and walked to McDonalds.  Wow, it was fiercely hot this morning, it was barely 8am and the temperature in our reckoning was over 30 already.  We ended up walking amongst the groups who had been marching.  I looked at a group of girls and realised they were in girl guide uniform, I asked if I was right and was told yes.  We then chatted all the way to McDonalds, luckily I picked on a girl who could speak really good English and had visited London.  Such a shame we didn't have any scout badges on us from Ingleton (we did have some in Japan last year and I gave them back)

Happy with her lunch

Anyway we got to McDonalds just before a marching group descended on them and got in our orders of non halal sausage mcmuffins served by a Muslim (how does that work?).  We then returned to the flat to continue packing and squeezing everything in our cases - space is getting tight, we think a new bag will have to be bought in KL to accommodate everything before we fly out.   Matt and Tom then went for a swim in the pool whilst I went in search of beer, pop and crisps to buy ready for our luxury hotel (we figure that we will get massively hit if we were to buy these at the hotel)

Then an hour's down time at the flat before handing back the keys to the flat and heading to the Marie Celeste shopping mall opposite us for a fantastic Japanese lunch.  Full bento for me, curry and rice for the boy and ebi tendon for Matt, all amazing and very authentic, they have 2 Japanese chefs, which helps.  We then got a taxi to the Rasa Ria.  Now I had been trying to get hold of the hotel to find out about their shuttle bus to and fro KK, but they were slow in answering and we got a bit annoyed with them.  When they finally got back to me, they told me it was 39RM per person.  We had a quick look on Grab (an Uber like taxi app)  and found they would do it for 39RM all in.  We went for Grab and had a very pleasant experience, they turned up about 2 minutes after the booking and drove the very long way to the resort through a torrential downpour, the rain hurtled down.  We actually felt sorry for the driver, who took loads of care, but of course it took ages in the rain and floods.

The view from our balcony

As we arrived we got a welcome gong and musical accompaniment.  Then the hard sell to upgrade (don't think so, this place cost us enough as it is!) and we were allowed in.  Now neither of us have ever stayed somewhere like this and at first we felt quite lost, especially as it was still raining.  We promised Tom a go in the swimming pool as soon as it stopped, but it never stopped, not until it got dark.  We had a quick look around, it is all very nice, lots of activities going on, the shop was reasonably priced, except for canned beer which was exceedingly expensive, so we did well to bring ours with us (and there is an empty fridge in the room which will come in very handy).  Restaurants are basically priced as they would be back home - money will not stretch here like it has been, but we have only spent 50% of the money we brought with us as everything has been much cheaper than expected (the difference between eating as a local rather than as a tourist, and of course we have had a free tea and beer and crisps for tea last night).  We found a games room where we tried to have a game of pool - Tom's ability isn't great...

Cheers!

We registered Tom as a child for children's activities - there is mocktail-making tomorrow and a nature detective thing happening on Thursday as well as other things. This took us ages as we couldn't find the children's area - we got to it eventually, miles away from the pool.  We didn't get to the beach as it was so miserable, hopefully tomorrow we will.  We then went back to our room, had a cheeky beer and played Uno (Tom won almost every game - how did he do it?).  We then got dressed and headed to the games room again - this time to play table tennis, which he picked up really quickly this time.  We only ever seem to play it on holiday, today he started off badly but finished really really well, very impressed.  We then went in search of tea, we enquired about the buffet, it was 158RM per person (50% off for Tom).  A little too much for our liking - we had had a big lunch, so then we went in search for the Italian, we searched and we search and we searched. We couldn't find it, so we asked and were directed.  OMG it was miles away, this place is enormous.  We sat down and got very attentive service - glass being refilled every 5 mins, we all got 2 appetisers FOC as tasters, and all enjoyed our meals: spaghetti in tomato sauce for Tom, gnocchi and Gorgonzola for me and lamb shank for Matt.  We then walked back to our room via the gardens, except we couldn't see much and got a little lost trying to find our way around.  Hopefully tomorrow we will have no rain and be able to work out how this place works - we are yet to find a map of the place.

Tell you what though, you could easily come here, sit in the 'bubble' of the hotel, do some activities and go home and say, oh yes I've been to Malaysia.  They haven't though, haven't seen one headscarf since I've been here.  There is no-where to walk to - the driveway here is long and to walk it would be too much in the heat, so there would be no interaction at all with the Malaysians except workers at the resort whom I guess are all very well selected.  Travelling is pretty much all about interaction and trying to experience a country as it is, using their transport etc etc, a holiday though, that's different I guess...