Long weekend in Kuala Lumpur - few toddler activities

Few weeks back we wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday Monday, and travelled to Kuala Lumpur for 4 days. We decided to fly with the Royal Brunei Airlines as they had a sale on, and for once it was quite nice to have everything included: 30kgs of luggage each, and meals and drinks. And their flight schedule is much better from Brunei than their counterpart Air Asia. Especially coming back you can still enjoy a full day in the city.


We stayed in Marriott Renaissance, again because of some vouchers we had. It doesn't come up very high on Tripadvisor's listing but at least our room was fairly modern and spacious (important with a toddler!) with excellent views to the Petronas towers. It is a short walking distance from these twin towers, handy for shopping and park, too. Their pool area is one of the biggest in the city centre, and their pool bbq was great quality (entertainment not so....) The downside is the breakfast mayhem, but I guess the hotel cannot choose its guests. The quality was fine, and the selection great, just the other customers made the experience fairly stressful.

As a destination for a long weekend Kuala Lumpur is excellent as it is cheaper than Singapore but offers as many quality restaurants and funky bars. As a shopping destination it offers choice from high end malls to China Town's fake market. And it has a wide variety of activities for children, too.

From the kids' activities we chose the aquarium and the Bird park. Aquaria in KLCC showcases over 5,000 species from a variety of ecosystems, including Malaysian Deep Forest. That was especially interesting as there are several species that we can spot too, although some of them I wouldn't want to come across on our boat or especially off it! The highlight of the aquarium is the Ocenarium, a 90-meter transparent tunnel where rays, sharks, turtles and a variety of other fish seem to fly over you at a touching distance. Tourists can also pay extra to swim amidst these beasts and to feed them. It is worth checking when the feeding times are to make the experience even more memorable. We didn't know that there is no where to grab a snack or a coffee in the aquarium and thus missed the shark feeding as we couldn't hang around for an extra hour waiting for it. So plan accordingly!

Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, situated in the Lake Gardens, is the world's largest free-flight walk-in aviary. According to their website it is home for over 200 species (and we managed to stay poo-free!). The free-flight aviary is unique and enables tourists to observe the birds in their natural habitat. Don't miss the bird shows with park's own fleet of talented birds and sample local delights in the Hornbill restaurant. Park's hornbills will be keen to share the meal with you! I love the colourful hornbills, far too rarely seen in Bandar, and this park gave us an excellent opportunity to view them and even have our photo taken with one of the posers!

Malaysian capital is also famous for its malls - we didn't do much shopping this time but it was just nice to wander around the KLCC and see people, use the clean toilets (well done, KL) and grab a coffee and cake in Harrods. (You've been in Brunei too long when you think a mall is an excellent tourist attraction!) It has got some good eateries amongst the chains, so choose carefully (or see Time Out Malaysia). The children's playground with a splash park is an excellent way of combining shopping and toddler entertainment. Handily, you can purchase a variety of Apple products (other brands available...) whilst your offspring swings. To buddying fashionistas, fear not, the mall is full of high end fashion as well as make up and jewellery. To UK high street fans I'd recommend the Pavillion Mall instead, although some brands have made it here too.

Great views for a play ground

There are some excellent attractions for older kids too, such as KidZania and the recently opened Sunway Lagoon with Malls and hotels but we deemed these a bit old for our 3-year-old. You can only do so much in one weekend!