above: garden gates to our kampung house

Sunday, 17 May  Kuala Lumpur (later)

The mid morning rain wasn't the only unusual weather today - I don't think the mercury went over 25 degrees!.  That's what KL's minimum usually is.  Year round, the daily temperatures are reasonably steady, with a minimum of about 23 degrees to a max of around 34/35.  So people looked a bit cold today - they weren't equipped to deal with 25 degrees in the afternoon.

Our accommodation this time is a bit out of the ordinary as well.

On our frequent trips to KL we generally stay in hotels. This time, for something a little different, we have a "kampung" house, a traditional Malay village house, only two train stops from the ultra modern Petronas Towers. It's in Kampong Datuk Keramat, in a suburb called Damai, and on a preliminary look, you'd have to say it probably is KL's close-to-the-city version of Redfern.  Just waiting to be gentrified!

The house is tiny, and it is quaint, if cramped.  There's a 'strangler' fig growing through the bathroom wall - the floor has been tiled around it.  

In the courtyard, there are five water features, the sound of which might just drive DB mad. But the house has aircon and wifi (two essentials)!   We are using only the ground floor - there's no one else upstairs while we're here.

The complex has only a small street frontage, but behind that, it widens to an impressive degree.  On the other side of the courtyard there's a main house which looks very comfortable but still very traditional, and here we have this little B&B cottage which we've rented for a few nights through the AirBnB website, plus another cottage they're working on. 

The owner's family live on-site in the main house - I think they might be antique or second hand dealers, and have used some of their stock to equip this tiny two-story cottage. Dave says it's a bit of a comedown from the Marriott!

The suburb, being very traditional, is mainly Muslim.  The mosque must be nearby - we can hear the call-to-prayer very clearly over the sound of the courtyard fountains.

(next morning)

This place has loads of charm, but I have to say the charm doesn't quite make up for the cramped conditions.  It will almost certainly be back to a conventional hotel next time as the conditions are really quite basic (well, what did I expect from a Malay 'village' house?), but our bed was good, though only about half the size of that at the Marriott. We slept well (and didn't hear the dawn call-to-prayer).. Maybe the sound of the water flowing through the fountains outside our room had a soothing effect.

Tomorrow: a lunch date with a nephew