Malaysia, exciting Malaysia

Sharon's beautiful store at the Bangsar Shopping Mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Last weekend I had a lovely trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to teach two classes at Scrappingville for store owner Sharon. What an amazing opportunity to teach overseas. Lauren my daughter came along for the trip to do a bit of shopping. We left Perth in the wee hours for a 5.5 hour flight. We were met by Sharon and her driver at the airport and it took about an hour to get to KL as the airport is 80kms away. We were so excited to be there and the hotel Boulevard was really lovely, right smack in the middle of two massive shopping centres. Mega Mall, Mid Valley was 1.5million square meters (4.5 mil square feet) and if that wasn’t enough for you there was one just meters away called the Garden which houses so many top end stores. I left Lauren to check out the shopping and I went to the store to set up for classes the next day.

I had such a great time teaching at Scrappingville as there were so many keen girls wanting to know everything about Collections. Many of the girls had actually been to Uni in Perth! We had about a 3 hour class then we had a nice lunch and in the afternoon we did some make and take spools, which the girls loved and made more than one! A few of us ended up at dinner upstairs in a wonderful Chinese restaurant with so many delicious courses thanks to Wendy! It was so great to get to know the girls a little more. Saturday was a huge class with lots to learn making assorted size tiles on a triple layered frame. Again an amazing lunch provided by Wendy (thanks!!!) of local dishes to die for and some little dessert cakes called kuay made of glutinous rice and flavoured with pandanas leaf etc! Yummy. If I could only get the recipe for that fried chicken, it was so jam packed full of flavour, I managed to eat all the crispy bits as well. I think I ate Nasi Lemak nearly every day, cos’ I did eat it for breakfast! After lunch and the class I did a long demo and made a piece using tiles and the ‘leftover frame’ in the Collections style. After the class we did lots and lots of photos!

Here's Naddy taking a shot of TohEe, Wendy, me, and Tea. The girls did like their photos!
On Sunday Michelle took us to China town for some shopping, food sampling, purchased some knock off tiffany jewellery and then we ended up at a local shopping centre and spent a few more dollars! Then Michelle dropped us off at the Pertronas Towers so we could go up and see the view but alas all tickets had been sold so we only got some photos of the buildings. They are so tall about 88 storys that it was hard to photograph with someone in it!

Petronas Twin Towers are bigger than big!
Lauren practically had to eat the footpath to take this shot to get both of us in it! LOL!
Breakfast was huge and so many choices, it was hard to know what to have, so we did try many of the dishes on offer!
During the class this girls worked hard to complete the project and so attentive as well!

The hospitality of the girls was amazing and Lauren and I are so grateful because we had such a wonderful time. Whilst I was teaching Lauren was discovering all the wonderful shopping centres KL has to offer including KLCC and the Pavilion. KL is such a large city and the metro area there are about 7 million people so you can imagine how diverse the shopping is compared to Australia. Food was incredibly cheap and diverse; you could really get anything you wanted there at these amazing huge shopping centres.
Sharon’s shop in the Bangsar Shopping Centre was delightful and reminded me of a boutique store Crabtree & Evelyn as it had the most beautiful recessed arches filled with wonderful samples and products. If you ever get to KL please go visit the store as it’s right near the city and all the wonderful shopping centres and Sharon’s hospitality was nothing short of AMAZING! It was a pleasure to come to KL and I would do it again in a heartbeat! (hint hint). Check out the video for some photos and footage! Thanks for looking Julie xxx