the ultimate city: kuala lumpur, malaysia and all of its wonderfilled wonders

It's a sure sign of how very American-treat filled our time in Kuala Lumpur was when the very first picture from this final leg of our adventure features my very first caramel macchiato in two years.

But day-am.  It was so good. I simply reveled inside that sweet, warm liquid for a solid thirty minutes.

Which sounds semi-sexual.

Which it kind of was?

And then we were doing this:

I have basically one thing to say about this trip. Toph and I have taken dozens of adventures together- giant, huge ones (like four weeks straight trekking across the largest landmass in he world), and tiny, blip-like ones (like day adventures to the town where we were married)- and we are pretty damn good at managing all that comes with adventuring.  We know when the other is about to lose their shit because the said other is hungry, or their feet hurt, or they are sick of the company.

We also know some things can never be predicted.  Like, for example, transportation.

And man, did transportation and all of its glorious possible hang ups follow us around this trip.  As in, nearly every single transportation system was met with some sort of frustration.  A cost ten times what every travel website said.  A non-existent option that we had been told was in existence not five minutes beforehand.

Or, a gigantic thunderstorm just as we approached Kuala Lumpur from the Cameron Highlands, that had us and dozens of others waiting out the taxi drivers and their waiting out the rain.

Which mainly looked like a good two hours waiting in a line, with Chris getting increasingly frustrated, until we finally hopped on the subway/skytrain, which we should have done all along, it seems?

And I won't tell you about the tiniest hotel room ever imagined that we ended up in that night.  Seriously, so small that there was room for one person to stand- the other had to be inside the bathroom (standing room only, as well) or on the bed.

But we slept well, and got a bit of late start the next day, so it must have been a nice bed, anyway.

Despite our grandest intentions, our first stop was lunch (so, you know how 'early' we woke up.)  And after his grandest intentions, Chris relented and we ended up doing this:

Outback steakhouse.  Which was, honestly...

TOTALLY WORTH IT.

And sadly, after months of rice, and small spoonfuls of food on top of giant bowls of rice, and no money to buy a lot of food, we reached this point:

We could not finish it.  It was honestly, sort of devastating and elating?  Because, I'm not so silly (much, anymore) as to stuff myself so full that I couldn't walk.

(But, I wanted to.  If I'm being honest.)

And walk we did.

Our destination? These bad boys:

The Petronas Towers.  At one point in time, the tallest buildings in the world.

Honestly, an amazing feat of steel and glass.  It was incredibly difficult to get a good photo of the entire building in one shot.  Trying to do so with a person was nearly impossible.  But we tried- we're nothing if not stubborn.

After getting nice and sweaty in the heat, we walked back through one of the air-conditioned, indoor walkways that are scattered throughout KL:

And ended up in a real, live, giant MALL.

We didn't plan on it but we had to take advantage of it.  So, we did.

In my case, that meant entertaining myself with a (Chris') camera while he went to get me a surprise:

Said surprise? A chocolate shake!

After languishing away in the mall for an hour or so, we traversed to our originally planned next stop: the National Mosque.

Initially, we arrived smack dab in the middle of a period of time wherein non-muslim tourists are not allowed to enter.  So we chilled and took in the scenery until we could don our appropriate clothing and enter.

We had never been inside of a mosque before, though we've visited many a Christian churches, dozens of Buddhist temples, and a smattering of synagogues.  It was really interesting to see the open space where they worship Allah, and hear about the emphasis placed on each member's ability to commune directly with the higher power, with no need for an intermediary.  Thus, there are no images of God/a god anywhere in the mosque, as this would directly contradict their belief in speaking directly to him/her/it, and would represent a false idol worship.

After taking in the mosque, we headed back to the mall for a very American evening: dinner (chicken nuggets) and a movie (Oblivion with Tom Cruise)!

Afterwards, we wandered through the walkways, pausing to take in the Petronas Towers at night:

and capture the amazing comfort of air conditioned paths one more time:

before ending up back where we started: our hotel and its street, famous for the late night food that becomes available:

We settled in for a good sleep, and drifted off.

The next morning, we packed our bags, got some Subway, and headed back to the KL airport for our return flight.

We had some remaining Malaysian money, and had to find something to spend it on.  So, of course, I coerced Chris into this:

I don't think either of were prepared to end one of the best trips we've had.  We loved experiencing what felt like the best of the ocean, mountains, and cities throughout Thailand and Malaysia.

But we were also excited to head back to Cambodia for the next adventure: the rituals and traditions of Khmer New Year with our host family.

So we took our seats and our requisite picture:

And landed in Phnom Penh a short couple of hours later.  Cambodia welcomed us back with a relatively cool evening, and then a magnificent rainstorm that left us and our unlucky tuk tuk driver completely and utterly soaked by them time we pulled up to our house later that evening.

We dried off, unpacked, and fell right back into our daily routines in the 'bode.  And all was well.