Touhid was one of my classmates during my e-Learning training at CICC, Japan in 2004. Together with other friends we had some great outings together while we were there. Since we left CICC, I’ve met some of the others during my travels:
- Yudi in Jakarta
- Mr Hiep & Mr Binh in Hanoi
- Siriwan in Bangkok
- Liang in Beijing.
Apart from meeting them there, Mr Hiep, Siriwan and Yudi had visited Kuala Lumpur and we had some time together too.
Last Thursday was Touhid’s turn to visit Kuala Lumpur. It was not really a visit. Touhid and his family were on their way back to Gold Coast (he is a PhD student in Brisbane) from his homeland, Bangladesh. They arrived via MAS at 7.30am, and they were going to take the 9.40pm Air Asia flight to Gold Coast.
So, I took the day off and went to KLIA to fetch them. Rosaline, Touhid’s missus is a charming lady. Rohn (the son) was shy but Anna (the daughter) is really a smart girl. I’ll tell you why later.
After leaving KLIA, our first destination was the LCCT to “dump” a couple of huge baggage at the “Baggage Storage” service. I could not send them back to LCCT later that day, so we thought it would be better to keep the bigger bags at LCCT so that it would be more convenient for Touhid and family to find their way back to LCCT from down town KL.
We then drove into Putrajaya. The obvious stop was the Putrajaya mosque. Despite being still early (about 9am), it was already very bright and hot, as can bee seen here:

We then stopped at McD (along the NKVE) for brunch before heading towards Genting Highlands.
It was my first time on the Genting cable car, and Touhid and I reminisced on our trip to Hakone (Japan) where we took a couple of cable cars, trains, and a river cruise - all in one day!
Here’s one shot as we went up to the top:

We only had less than 1 hour at the top, and since the outdoor theme park only offers day-passes, we had to give it a miss.
We then went to the Indoor Theme Park, and found out that we could buy RM8 tickets for single. Not to disappoint his kids, Touhid bought a couple of tickets:

His son insisted on the Ferries Wheel:

While Touhid took the ride, I looked around. The indoor park has changed a lot since the last time I was here (almost 10 years ago!).
I was surprised to see some gondolas:

On close examination only I noticed that they are mechanically operated, and the “Italians” in black and while shirt are just dummies:

Ah , well… I’ll wait for my real gondola ride in Venice - one day.. one day…
In the mean time, Touhid managed to get his kids another ride on the Merry-go-round before we had to head towards the cable car station.
We agreed that the signage in Genting can be improved a lot. Many a time we followed the signage only to come to a point where there was no more signage to our destination. We were grateful to Anna for being very observant and quick to retrack our paths! A smart 9-yr old girl she surely is!
We took our cable car ride down at 2pm. The first part of the ride was covered with clouds and the kids were so excited (actually, adults too!) to be “in” the clouds.
I finally left Touhid and family at KLCC (that’s the no.1 destination for Anna) at 3.30pm and headed back to Shah Alam. I had some other commitments to attend to hence I could not be with them any longer.
As I was saying goodbye to them, Rosaline handed over this little container to me:

When I was at a traffic light (getting into Jalan Sultan Ismail), I opened up the container and was pleasantly surprised to see the contents:

It’s a set of pearl necklace and earrings! Thank you Rosaline, I love them.
Soon we had to leave,