16th Feb, 2016

I know, I know, where have I been, why no blog? Well the simple explanation is that trying to organise 9 Benns/Bennites is reminiscent of a school trip and takes quite a lot of time. Luckily everyone has been behaving (unlike one or two school trips I can recall) but it has been pretty full on, as I am sure you can appreciate now that you are familiar with the tight ship that is a Benn World Tour (reasonable rates available, especially for good mates like you!)

So we last left you in Jalan Alor, having enjoyed some street food after the bus tour of KL. So 16th Feb saw some of us (Caro, Nick and me) at the Petronas Twin Towers early with the rest, except Val, setting out a little later to meet up with Nick & Caro at Bukit Nanas nature park in the centre of the city and to go up the KL Tower (a telecommunication tower with a viewing platform).

I can only vouch for the first part, but I have invited bids from the rest to provide guest blogs, but nothing so far. The Twin Towers are very impressive and you do get a fantastic view of the city from the 86th floor. First though you go to the 41st floor to the walkway bridge that links the two towers. I hope the pics give you a flavour of it all, including a long-range shot of the swimming pool at our apartment block and the window cleaners some 75 floors up!

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and to some extent recovering. It was also, in hindsight a valuable restful preparation for what we suspected would be a riotous evening with two marvelous friends, Bash and Zee (Val was at school with Zee). It all took place at the Royal Selangor Club (the Dog, as I mentioned before), initially on the verandah of the Long Bar. This was required as the Long Bar is still a male only bar (except on New Year’s Day).

We then had a fabulous meal in the Chinese restaurant (courtesy of Zee’s excellent choices from the menu).

And it all ended in the Cellar disco (I think they still use that word) with dancing and some karaoke. Now this was no ordinary karaoke, this was karaoke in Tamil, Malay, Chinese, Hindi and English. Not being a shy group, as you may have picked up by now, we naturally joined in with the spirit of the evening (and there had been quite a few spirits involved), singing along with as many songs as we could get our western tongues around. We also contributed with a fine rendition of American Pie (boy did that go on a long time) and Love Me Tender (Bash and I have a career ahead of us, I feel). I believe one member of our party also did a pretty good example of Indian dancing – but I will leave that for you to judge from the photos below (by the way, I have no idea why Nick is holding a broken chair leg!)

More soon, I promise!