Our First Visit To Our New “Home”

The reason I started this blog is to share our adventures and our new life as ex-pats with family and friends. Ex-pat is short for the term expatriate, which means a person who lives outside their native country. With our big move across the world approaching, we are quickly going to be ex-pats and experience the world in a whole new light. I hope that this blog will be a way to inform, inspire and influence those who want to travel the world, take a chance on something that seems crazy, or just have new experiences.

My husband Luke and I are looking to do all of the above. We are moving to a country that we really know nothing about, have never visited before, know absolutely no one and are leaving everything we are comfortable with behind. We are doing this for all kinds of reasons, the main one being to broaden our minds and have new, totally out-of-our-norm experiences. We want to experience life through the lives of the local people, find those off the beaten path places, and truly embrace other cultures. We cannot wait to start this journey, and hope you all will follow along with us as it begins, right here with this post…

We found out about the opportunity to move to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia back in November. It was a long drawn out process to come to fruition, but now the time is here! Most people have had to look up where Malaysia even is (see below) when we tell them we are moving there, but we jumped at the opportunity to go anywhere that was in Southeast Asia.

As you can see, Malaysia is a nation that is split between a body of water. One part of the country lies on the Malay Peninsula (where we will be living) and the other part lies on the island of Borneo.

On our first visit our worlds were rocked…for the better! The city of Kuala Lumpur, or KL, as the locals and ex-pats call it, is a beautiful, clean, bustling modern metropolis. To quote one of my favorite travelers Anthony Bourdain, “I did not realize I was living my whole life in black and white until I took a visit to Southeast Asia.” The sights, smells, colors, history, and people are unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was like sensory overload! Of course, after the jet lag wore off the first thing we wanted to do was go out and eat!

One of the best first places to eat in KL we found out about was Jalon Alor. Jalon Alor is a famous “Hawker Stall” street known for having all types of cuisines and staying open late. Hawker Stalls are street vendors that sell food and drinks in small stalls and stands. Now, I am not going to lie, this street is fairly “touristy” and costs more than other Hawker Stalls around the city, but we just had to check it out and see what the hype was about. It did not disappoint! The chicken wings roast out in the open, dumplings of all kinds are steaming in pots, fresh fruits are ripe and ready to eat, and restaurants with plastic chairs out front and cold beers are a plenty! This street is a must-visit street for visitors to KL.

The main reason we took this visit was to find a place to live for the next few years. This was no easy task, but it was made easier through our amazing realtor Luke’s company got us in touch with. I will post more about our house hunt as well as photos later! Though our house hunt took up quite a bit of our time in KL, we still managed to see our new “home” and play tourists. Some of our highlights included: rooftop martinis (rooftop bars are on almost every high-rise building and a MUST when visiting), a trip up to the top of the KL Tower, watching the fountain light show at night under the Petronas Towers, and visiting some of the many shopping malls in KL. I have never seen a culture so in to shopping! Their malls are multiple levels, have insane decorations, and have some of the best restaurants in the city, so the malls really are something special to check out!

It was a short, but memorable first visit to our soon-to-be new home, and it honestly made us so excited for the big move! We feel we are as ready as we can be to move to the other side of the world, and to start living an incredible new life as ex-pats!

Happy travels, and remember to take a chance on something crazy!

Courtney