Hi everyone, I hope all is well and you’re enjoying your summer holiday just as much as I am. For 3 weeks, I have been abroad on holiday and stayed in 3 countries. Those being Malaysia, Singapore and Bali. I felt that it was an amazing experience being able to embrace their culture and understand how people live. This is the first of a series of three blog posts about my holiday.

The first place we travelled to was Malaysia. Flying from London Gatwick airport gives you two options. You can choose to take a direct 14-hour flight from London Gatwick Airport to Malaysia, or you can fly to Dubai with a 7-hour journey, have a stopover, and then continue with another 7-hour flight to Malaysia. For my family we went with the second option as it was better personally as you could have a break from the plane and have a bit of a rest and stretch.

 At 2am in the morning, we landed in Malaysia. We ordered a taxi. It took us 1 hour to get to our place of residence where we were staying. After we got the keys to our room we were all hungry and decided to order a couple of shawarmas as our late dinner and very early breakfast. 

The next day, we all woke up late in the afternoon and exhausted and decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the shopping malls and local shops near us. Where our residence was, there were plenty of shopping malls and local street markets filled with delicious food. We decided to go into one of the shopping malls near us called the pavilion. It was huge, filled with all the popular designer brands. Such as Louis Vitton, Gucci and others. After exploring the Pavillion we left and explored the busy roads which led to more shopping malls. We ended up eating in one of the other malls called Lot 10 which had 4 floors with each floor being based on something different. The top two floors were for food, one floor for tech and the ground floor for clothes and hygiene. As it was late afternoon, we decided to have a late lunch at the Lot 10 shopping mall. We decided to eat a burger joint called Pasadena Burger. I ordered their double chicken burger which was extremely juicy and tender. Definitely met my expectations from what I saw about it online.

 After we finished our delicious lunch we exited the shopping malls and explored the nearby streets. We then stumbled upon a 7 eleven which I had never seen before as I live in the UK. Inside was just like an ordinary station but filled with more options for ready made food. They had shelves with pots of ramen and even a slushie machine where I got a mango slushie which was quite refreshing. We then went back to our residence and got changed into our swimming clothes and went to the pool on the highest floor in our residence. It was fun and not really that busy. Today was sort of the highlight of most of the days spent in the first week in Malaysia. 

However, in the last couple days of the first week we explored some key parts of Malaysia. That being the Batu caves which was alright as we climbed colourful steps into a mountain but then also trying to be cautious of not being attacked by the monkeys. Once we entered the cave, I was a bit disappointed as it was just a big dirty cave filled with people and lots of monkeys trying to take your belongings from you even if that means they will attack you. Overall, I thought it was not worth the time.

However, one place that was fantastic was the pink mosque. It was beautiful and how it shone in the sunlight standing out from everything. The Islamic calligraphy was outstanding and the inside was breathtaking. The dome from the inside was huge with the empty space and the calligraphy inside it being amazing.  Praying there was great, feeling the sunshines glaze on you will you pray and the air con inside making you feel just right when you pray. The outside was smooth concrete. Having no shoes on and walking on it with the heat was so relaxing and calming. Just when I thought our holiday was going slow, our first week in Malaysia had ended and it was time to go to Singapore tomorrow.