So many people have raved to me about Kuala Lumpur, so when Marina, our travel agent, proposed it as our South-East Asia homebase, I picked it over Bangkok. We have a great AirBnB that is only a 5 min walk from the famous Petronas towers – a giant (and I mean, GIANT) shopping mall with a huge garden/park/playground. On this first visit we only have 2 nights, one full day to spend here. On this first night, we have dinner at the food court in the mall which has a great reputation. We opt for Indian, which is delicious and we happily tuck into our dhal and naan, rava masala dosa for Vyas. Now that we have arrived in SEA, I need to dial up my vigilance on the nut front for Nilay, with plants and cashews sprinkled on every food. Despite several reassurances that our food is nut free, Nilay soon complains of an itchy tongue. A mega dose of Feniallerg drops later, everyone begs for a fruit smoothie for dessert, and so we stroll down the escalator with our American super sized cups of juice. Three floors down, Nilay confirms his nut reaction by throwing up his dhal and his smoothie right at the bottom of the beautiful escalator. Great. He throws up several more times on the short walk home, so much so that I’m starting to wonder if this really is “just” an allergic reaction, or possibly a stomach bug. The night is easy though, and, after a failed attempt to find a decent breakfast spot on this January 27th, Chinese New Year, we settle in for another mall meal. Today is our only day here in town and we just roam around, explore the playground – where Nilay gives us a very impressive demonstration of his monkey bar skills over 25m of rings (!! – I barely manage 5…) – and after lunch head to the Petronas oil company funded STEM science museum in the mall. I love science museums and I figure this will be a few hours of air-conditioned entertainment in the sweltering heat of the city. Well, was I surprised. And annoyed with myself for not having come here first thing in the morning. Petrosains (pronounced Metro-science 🤣) is absolutely FANTASTIC!! Not in the super sophisticated Seattle Science Museum league but perfectly designed for kids the age of ours, with tons of fabulous hands-on exhibits. Every room is a live exhibit of STEM education at its best, with 2-3 short live experiments scattered around each room, where educators explain different physics or chemistry concepts. The first room we enter, the space room has space simulations, educational videos, photo ops and more. There is a “table-football” with Mars rovers explaining how its sensors and charging station work, a demonstration of how water does not soak up into a washcloth due to (lack of) gravity on the space station, a tunnel that simulates the storms on Jupiter almost blowing our hair off our heads and much more. And this is just room one. As we pass through the Geotime Diorama explaining everything from tsunamis to the intercontinental shifts, followed by the Nano Molecular room we get to my absolute favorite part: Sparkz. Essentially 150m2 of hands on puzzles, robo-games and more. The kids and I run around like overexcited chickens, wanting to try out every little thing but getting stuck already on puzzle one for over 20min before finally solving it 🤯 Almost 2 hours fly by without us even noticing and the museum is about to close. We haven’t even gotten to the last 2 rooms yet! We might have to reconsider or plans to skip KL on our way out to Bali, just to spend a full day here…!
