[Remote Year] Welcome to Kuala Lumpur!

I’m feeling fresh this Monday afternoon (4 pm local time / 4 am EST) after a weekend spent traveling across the world — from our month 8 + last European destination (Split) to month 9 + the start of our Asia chapter (Kuala Lumpur):

• stayed up all night with my roommate baking cupcakes and watching Netflix
• 4:45 am [10:45 pm EST] pickup
• 5 hour bus Split > Zagreb
• Flight: Zagreb > Doha
• 7.5 hour layover [thankfully got into a lounge so food + work + showers were had!]
• Flight: Doha > Kuala Lumpur
• 1 hour van ride to our accommodations
• 5 pm arrival and check-in [5 am EST]

= 31 hour travel day

After arriving, I did a brief Nike+ workout and some stretching before a shower and dinner at a nearby restaurant picked at random while wandering. I successfully stayed awake until 10 pm and then passed out for 11 hours.

Dinner last night + today’s lunch stall at a mall basement food court:

There was a Remote Year group (Libertatem) here in KL in September (their first month of RY — welcome to the family!), so luckily most of the kinks seem to have been sorted out (compared to our many months of being guinea pigs for new cities — a special mix of excitement and challenges).

Accommodation

This month, our entire group is in the same place: the Maple Suites serviced apartments. This is great because it means we can all easily coordinate outings and hanging out, which we haven’t been able to do as easily over the past 3 months in apartments. I’m also thrilled for regular cleaning after a month of being allergic to my apartment in Split.

Each apartment is a 2-bedroom, 3-bathroom and appears to be roughly the same layout: kitchen, small office, living + dining area, balcony, and then the two bedrooms. We (thankfully) have air conditioning.

The building also has a pool and a small gym with minimal weights + machines (and some fab 80s workout guides).

When I was a teenager, I used to daydream about living in a giant studio apartment with big floor-to-ceiling windows and high ceilings. This isn’t exactly the loft I pictured, but it is quite spacious and honestly, even though the style is a bit dated, I kind of love the slightly aged 80s vibe. I need to find some close-up photos of our phones ;)

Workspace

Our workspace is in the Farenheit 88 building, which is one of the many malls in KL and is next to the Starhill Gallery and Pavilion malls that I shopped in when I visited KL last summer.

So far, the workspace seems to have good delineation of space: two long work tables, wraparound standing desks along the windows, a couple conference rooms, and a few call booths, and a separate kitchen with seating.

Also, there are great paintings of animals as people that I’m into. We also have some yellow arm chairs that are very reminiscent of those in our K10 Coworking space in Prague.

City

I haven’t done much exploring yet because I am so on top of writing this post on day 1! I visited KL as the last stop on my 6 week solo trip through SE Asia last summer, so I have photos from that below.

Here is the view from my (current) balcony:

From my past trip:

I thought the Islamic Arts Museum + Masjid Negara national mosque were very beautiful. I stayed next to Chinatown and explored around KLCC park and took care of some shopping at the Pavilion Mall and Starhill Galleries. I also was pretty sick and spent considerable time in my hotel room throwing up and eating oreos with gatorade. #travellife

Some of last year’s photos of the Central Market, Islamic Arts Museum, Masjid Negara, seeing my first drag show (loved it), Pavilion mall, the Petronas towers, and KLCC park:

Our RY local contacts seem to have some good events planned (food + neighborhood tours, Batu Caves, world’s smallest rainforest, etc).

I’ve got a week-long trip planned to go back to Hong Kong and am hoping to make it out to Bali where many Battutas are spending the month.

I wasn’t initially planning on being in KL this month and wasn’t that excited to be here for 5 weeks. But thanks to our housing + workspace + upcoming events this month and the excitement of being back in Asia, I’m actually feeling pretty good about it being a productive + fun chapter of my RY experience.

Katherine is a digital nomad, working remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. She’s a member of Remote Year 2 Battuta, living around the world with 75 other digital nomads from February 2016 to January 2017.

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