Posted by Kanga.
I posted this to YouTube a while back, but hadn’t posted it here, until now. This is a daily ritual. Oliver doesn’t like it much when DaddyBird tries to do this, so it is my specialty, apparently. He usually likes to stretch toward and touch door hinges, light switches and other things at his new eye level, but, of course, not when the camera is rolling.
Just a few more pictures from the trip to Kuala Lumpur. There were motorcycles everywhere. We see them in Dubai, but mostly as delivery vehicles. In KL, they were clearly a personal vehicle of choice.
At intersections, the motorcycles collect at the front of the lanes and when the light turns green there is a roar as the crowd of motorcycles are the first to take off.
A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to go to a party at a villa on the Jumeirah Palm Island. Our friends Lara and Terry are on a one year adventure they are calling GranTourismo. They’ve combined their career as travel writers with HomeAway Holiday Rentals and are traveling around the world this year spending two weeks in each destination. Their first stop was in Dubai on the Palm, then to London, then to Marrakesh, then ???? If you like good pictures, good food, and good travel advice, you should follow their blog.
First let me say, our twitter friend Grace did a better job of documenting this party on her blog (than I am about to do). So, I recommend that you click here and read what she said and check out her pictures. Also, there is an entry by Terry detailing the food served and you can click here to read that. Extra points for those of you find us in the pictures on both the blogs.
Here are my pictures:
This is the villa on Frond E. It is a five bedroom home with a lovely kitchen, dining room, living room and den. (Five and a half bathrooms, by the way.)
This is the view toward the stem of the Palm.
This is the view toward the end of the fronds. It was atypically stormy. It didn’t actually rain, but was cool, cloudy and breezy.
There was a nearby cell phone tower disguised as a palm tree. Notice the fake dates hanging in the fake tree.
It was a beautiful evening with (in our opinion) perfect weather, good friends, and good food. We may never have another reason to go out onto the Palm, but at least we can say we’ve been there.
I tried to stand far enough back to get everyone in the picture.
[In DaddyBird’s defense, we started out sitting together, but as the group grew, he mingled. We ended up sitting next to each other. As for my birthday, I don’t know what we will do, yet.]
We are currently in the midst of the annual Dubai Shopping Festival. Last Saturday night, we were at a “tweet up” dinner at Al Mallah on Al Diyafah Street and this is the carnival (parade) that came by.
Yes, those are walking shopping bags and a drill team with shopping bags instead of pom-poms.
First, let me correct a slight faux pas in the previous post. DaddyBird did go to France, since he landed in Nice in order to get to Monaco, but Monaco is a separate country and not IN France. Some of you may remember that Grace Kelly was the Princess of Monaco. Silly me, I should have remembered.
Now, back to Kuala Lumpur for the flora. I’ll let them speak for themselves.
As you can see, the cats are being very helpful getting DaddyBird packed. Where is he going you ask? To Monaco, where else? And, yes, Oliver, Bert and I are left behind, green with envy. Okay, I’m the only one who is envious. Oliver and Bert are just freaked out.
This is a business trip. DaddyBird is representing Shufflegazine at a trade conference. Hopefully, he will have a little time to get out and about and take a few pictures for us.
I haven’t quite finished posting the pictures from KL, so there may be a mishmash of posts in the next week or so.
So, some ask if it was safe in KL. There are warnings about purse snatchers and pickpockets, but we did not see or experience any theft. DaddyBird walked through the neighborhood late at night and felt safe. 
I was concentrating on taking this picture and DaddyBird was wondering where I had wondered off to. I didn’t see him in the photo until later.
Apparently, Dubai is everywhere and you can’t escape it. This is an AirAsia advertisement in the central train station.
We were tempted to break our “no McDonalds” rule and have the double prosperity burger, but we ran out of time and were eating a lot of other food, as you have seen previously.
This is the banner ad for the messy burger (in Day 3 post). Notice that it is 90% pure meat. Not sure what the other 10% might be and I’m not asking.
Here we have an unauthorized use of Mickey. I’m not sure why he has green gloves on, but it is probably best not to think too hard about it.
Now, we get to a cultural difference item. There were normal public toilets with the bowl, tank, seat, etc., and there were squat toilets, basically a small basin in the floor that flushes over which one squats. The public toilets on the street were kind enough to have both and signage so you would know what you were getting. However, apparently some who are used to squatting attempt to do this with standard toilets — hence the need for this warning sign. (And, yes, this particular toilet had footprints on the seat.)
Our last sign was in the airport. I think there was supposed to be a comma or break in there somewhere. Ah, the importance of punctuation!
Living the Travel Channel 