KLCC Park

On our last morning we wandered around the park between the convention center and the mall. Quite a nice little park. Shelley spotted the giant carpenter bees visiting the flowers on a trellis. These were definitely the largest I've seen, about 1.5 inches long, fat, with colorful iridescent wings. The trick was that the only time they stopped moving was when they crawled inside the flowers, at which point you could only get butt shots. I did manage to catch one just as it was leaving a flower.





There have been so many flowers around that I'm started to take them for granted. Wait till I get home to Saskatchewan winter!



And there were views of the towers, of course:



And reflections of the towers:



And then I was lost trying to capture all the reflections. (Shelley found some shade and waited patiently.) I often substantially adjust the contrast and color, but since they're just abstract I don't feel guilty about it.

Sometimes it's the color that stands out (this was the reflection of a sunlit green bush)



Sometimes it's not the color at all, but the pattern of the light and shadow:



And sometimes it's both the color and the pattern:





The conditions seemed to be just right for reflections - interesting shapes and colors around the water (buildings, trees, etc.) with enough movement in the water to make shapes but not so much that the water got rough. Moving around and adjusting the angle and zoom give you infinite choices.

See all 21 photos as a slideshow or overview

Thirty8 and the Chocolate Box

One night we went across the street to the Hyatt and ate at Thirty8 - which is, not surprisingly, on the 38th floor with great views of the Petronas Towers.



One of the highlights was the delicious "Chocolate Box for Two" desert which came in a box made of chocolate and contained raspberry & dark chocolate mousse, crispy meringue, mixed berry granita, and chocolate pearls. Here's the deconstruction:

Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Garden

The butterfly garden is close to the bird park and we originally thought we'd visit both in one trip, but we should have known I would need more time than that to take photos :-) Especially when the afternoon rain starts here shortly after lunch.

The butterfly garden is fairly small but the layout is a bit of a maze so you feel like you can wander for quite a while. Thankfully it was pretty quiet here except for a brief interval when we were invaded by a school group of teenagers who came, giggled, took many selfies, and left. I'm not sure they noticed the butterflies. When did everyone get these sticks for taking selfies? I feel behind the times (again).

These butterflies didn't seem quite as cooperative as at Key West. A lot of them refused to sit still for long enough to have their picture taken. But if you spend enough time ... (Shelley found a bench to sit and read her book.) One approach is to find a good spot and wait for them to come to you.

There were so many kinds of butterflies and I took almost 300 photos so even picking out the "good" ones there are a lot. Here are a sample. Check out the full set if you're a butterfly fan.

The "dead leaf" butterflies are very cool. They inside of the wings is often brighter than the outside.



In addition to the butterflies there were dragonflies:



and frogs in the pond:



See all 37 photos as a slideshow or overview

Kuala Lumpur Bird Park

We spent the morning at the KL Bird Park and really enjoyed. It's a large area with tons of birds, some in cages but many roaming free or in walk in aviaries - great for photography. We had the place almost to ourselves for the first hour or two and even then it never got too crowded.

Just inside the entrance we were greeted by these guys who were busy eating their corn on the cob. Many of the other birds had papaya.



We enjoyed feeding these ones (milk & honey) although their claws were a little sharp and there was some squabbling between the different kinds of birds over who got to feed!



There were quite a few ponds and some of them were full of fish.



I was on the lookout for lizards but I was expecting small ones, not this two foot monitor lizard which was out sunning on a wall but ran up a tree when it saw us. I realized that it might be hard for small lizards to survive with so many birds that would be happy to snack on them.



At first we thought this oriole had caught a lizard but looking closer we saw it had a large praying mantis. The oriole repeatedly whacked the mantis against the branch, presumably making sure it was good and dead before swallowing it!



There were monkeys running around the park, presumably wild. They had a good source of food in robbing the bird feeders.



At first I thought this was a Wood duck but it turned out to be a Mandarin duck, an asian bird that is closely related.



We also visited the aquarium, which is right across from our hotel in the conference center / mall. It wasn't bad, but not nearly as good as the bird park.

See all 23 photos as a slideshow or overview

Calcutta to Kuala Lumpur

We took an overnight flight to Kuala Lumpur. It was the first time we'd used Air Asia, a low cost airline here. It worked out fine. I had paid a few dollars extra to sit in the exit row and Shelley and I ended up being able to take over 3 seats each which meant we got a little more sleep (for me anyway) than otherwise. I still can't say I'm a fan of overnight flights. The flight left at 0:45 and was about four hours, but there was a time difference so we arrived around 7:30am. Immigration, baggage claim, and customs were all quick and easy thankfully. We stopped for coffee in the airport before braving the transit system, although it turned out to be simple also. The airport express train took us into town to KL Sentral and from there we took a taxi to our hotel (The convention center Impiana)

We were planning to take the train from KL to Singapore and it turned out we could buy tickets at KL Sentral. We thought we had it cased. Except the trains were all full - multiple trains per day and we checked a day either side. So much for the that plan. When we got to the hotel and got internet we had no problem finding a flight instead. We went with Air Asia again since we knew it. It seems backwards to me that there is no shortage of flights, but the trains are all full (it seemed the same in India). Theoretically it should be easy to add cars to trains to accommodate more passengers. And presumably cheaper to run trains with extra capacity than airplanes. Maybe they've gotten into a misdirected efficiency mode where they measure their effectiveness by how full the trains are (rather than how many people get satisfied).

By the time our room was available all we wanted to do was have a nap! We did wander around the area a little bit. It seems even more shopping oriented than Hong Kong. Huge endless malls. Yuck.

Our hotel restaurant got good reviews so that was an easy choice for our first night. As well as good food it turned out to have great views of the city night skyline, including the Petronas Twin Towers.





And of course, once I had my camera out I couldn't resist a few more artsy shots.