Two hours to land go through immigration and take a taxi to our hotel. With luck our heavy luggage and its logistic challenges (paying for a premium taxi and tipping everyone who lifted them) are behind us. I have now reduced their weight by removing the books, files, vitamins, power cords, and personal care products (ones that are pricey here).
As usual we stayed at Shah's Village Hotel in Petaling Jaya. Since our last stay in October the hotel has installed new carpeting throughout and apparently a new cook. Breakfast was first rate - not only better than breakfasts we remembered from previous visits, but better than hotel breakfasts we have had recently.
Our first stop was to Amcorp Center, a close by mall. We found a new bookstore, Books Xcess - source for books that cost less than Kindle copies. We stopped at Han's Art Gallery (sadly no web page)to say hello to the owner and to view the paintings - the ones we liked best are big. In any case no buying until we have walls in Malaysia. (Doug has the measurements for the walls in the condo.) We are working on having a collection as chaotic as the Barnes, but with value only to us. The last stop was to DiGi to get prepaid phone cards.
Our big project was to start to find housing - nothing is easy or cheap. We had planned to rent a service apartment, which we assumed meant we could rent for a few months with few added costs - apparently an erroneous assumption on our A 6 month lease with all the usual upfront costs, e.g., paying two months advanced rent, is most likely. We have a 90 day visa; it should be easy to get another 90 days but it is a risk. Not much that we can do on a Sunday - tomorrow we are meeting with another realtor and beginning the process of applying for Malaysia My 2nd Home visa. The bottom line - we maintain our flexibility at a cost.
The picture of Doug captures our first days' activities. He is at his IPad looing for vacant apartments, realtors, and Malaysia My 2nd Home information and agents.
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