As London continued to show us how cold winter could get, we escaped some of the chill by heading on a short trip to Malaysia. This was bliss - everyday ranged around 30+ degree Celsius and our pasty skin had a fighting chance of regaining the colour it held when we were in Melbourne. Travelling from London to Asia is normally not a 'short trip and involves longer than a weekend trip. However, when work schedules get in the way, we had to make do with just a few days to celebrate the wedding of our friends: Ben and Weekin.
Olie the Groomsman
Olie had an important role as one of the groomsmen. We had each separately known Ben during high school and university. He was also within the group of friends that contributed in us meeting as a couple; and delivered an interesting and unforgettable (due to the photo evidence) speech at our engagement party. Therefore as part of his groomsman duties, Olie volunteered for 'pay-back' and helped out with some of the speeches at the wedding.
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| Olie on a night out |
Olie headed to Kuala Lumpur about five days before Mei to assist with the very important activity - the Stag Night. And all we know of what happened, is this photo of Ben dressed out and ready to head out for a night on the town.
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| Ben ready to hit the town |
And with Mei only heading to Malaysia on the day before the wedding, Olie had fun engaging in retail therapy, eating all our favourite street foods at the Jalan Alor hawker market and catching up with the other boys and girls that had flown in from Australia for the wedding.
Mei Arrives
Due to work commitments, Mei had to treat the trip to Malaysia like any other weekend city break, flying out of Heathrow on a Friday and flying back home on a Tuesday afternoon. This took a rather hefty toll with jet lag from the 13 hour flight to KL and 14 hour flight back to London.
On arrival in KL, Mei met up with everyone at the hotel in Bukit Bintang for breakfast and then headed straight for an excursion in shoe shopping, since Olie had bought a nice empty new suitcase that was just asking to be filled up with new purchases. A necessary side trip was also required to the hawkers market for some soup noodles. The shopping centres were also brimming with Chinese New Year decorations.
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| Chinese New Year decorations |
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| Shopping centres full of red, gold and pink |
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| Shaved ice Malaysian dessert |
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| Mango jelly with 'popping' beads |
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| Angry Birdhouse |
Wedding Resort, Cyberjaya
On Saturday afternoon, we took a maxi cab to the wedding resort in Cyberjaya where we settled into our little chalets and started to relax. The latter part was only possible for Mei once she had bug sprayed the room and turned on the electronic mosquito repellent. Within 30 minutes, she had been bitten a dozen times - one of the bad points on visiting Malaysia. A dip in the pool acted to cool things down and after a drink at the resort bar and dinner at the onsite Italian restaurant, there was plenty of time to catch up with sleep, as Mei had been wide awake for over 36 hours.
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| The Resort |
Wedding Day
The Wedding Day started with a nice buffet breakfast, another swim in the pool and general relaxing before the ceremony at 5pm. The weather held up nicely for the big moment, and the bride looked amazing in her white dress and then red one for the reception.
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| First minutes as a married couple |
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| Inside the reception |
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| After Ben and Weekin's wedding ceremony |
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| Next to the pool |
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| The boys reunion- Hung, Tim, Linddon, Amit, Olie |
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| Mei, Em, Sop, Wai |
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| Olie, Mei, Em, Amit |
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| Olie, Sop and Amit |
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| Like two peas in a pod |
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| Congratulations! |
Wedding Reception
The reception was held at an on-site restaurant and included a buffet dinner with lot of local specialties - including satay, that was enough for us to miss authentic Malaysian food. The rest of the night was spent catching up with friends, belting out the traditional Malaysian 'yum sing' and encouraged by the Bride, discovering a preference for Chivas and Green Tea. The night ended with a much anticipated 'dunk' of the Groom into the swimming pool. But like all good friends, the boys had to help him out and by the end of the night there were about a dozen of them swimming around at close to 2am, including the Groom's father.
Catch up with Relatives
The short trip also meant that there wasn't a lot of time available to catch up with relatives or eat all the Malaysian foods on our to-do list. We did catch up with two of Mei's cousins for a quick lunch at Mid Valley eating bak kuh teh and a night out at the Beer Factory in PJ, where Guinness and two towers holding 3L of Tiger beer were consumed over a short period of time - definitely one way to keep the body hydrated in the hot tropical climate!
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| Tarry and Olie with the 3L tower of Tiger |
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| McDonalds Ayam Goreng - spicy fried chicken! |
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| Fish ball soup - Hawker style |
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| Satay - miss this food already! |
Air Asia X
We stayed overnight at Mei's cousin Tarry's apartment and caught the shuttle bus to the LCCT airport. We flew back to London with Air Asia X - which did offer some great service for a 'budget' airline. Sadly, the company announced shortly afterwards that from March 2012 they would cease all flights from London to Kuala Lumpur - so no more super cheap flights.
And before we knew it, we were back in London and Olie had just two days to get organised for a work trip to Seattle with a stop over in New York.
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