We've realised our achilles heel is budget airline sales. Sweet seductive sales that tempt you into booking straight away for fear of the ludicrously cheap fare being booked by someone else. They lure you in, you hit purchase ... and then go "wait ... that doesn't work ... we have that thing on then ... oh crap".

Last year Air Asia had a sale on with fares from Kuala Lumpur to London for less than $170AUD including taxes and baggage for late November 2011. Less than $700AUD for four people? That's even better than cheap flights to London - it's a bargain. Sale frenzy took hold of us. A few months later cheap flights from Paris to Kuala Lumpur came around. We booked those too.

It was only after we booked all the flights that we started thinking about all things we should have considered prior to booking - like how much it would cost us to spend all that time in Europe! And how cold it's going to be.

So here we are in Kuala Lumpur waiting for our flights to the UK. We've been here three nights, and have another six before we leave. Just over a week of museums, cinemas, playgrounds, restocking medical kits, outfitting ourselves for winter ... and oh yes, getting reconditioned to travel again.

We've realised that 6 months in Penang with a car, eating out on rich foods almost every meal and no pool or gym really doesn't equip you for lugging backpacks around Europe on foot. Or walking long distances each day up and down hills ... or across flat ground for that matter.

Our lifestyle in Penang is a little too wonderful!

Getting travel fit! Again!

The last two days we've been covering a lot of ground by foot to get used to walking again. With backpacks on of course. Our legs are tired and we're sleeping well at night! Hayley has finally hit the age where she can walk long distances and stay out all day without collapsing which is going to make such a difference to our travels.

So what's it like walking around KL?

Hot but fun. You never know whats around the next corner. It's mostly flat and you can usually walk on the pavements so it's not a bad city to explore with kids.

The guesthouse we normally stay at was fully booked so we're staying in a family room at a brand new hostel, The Nest. It's fabulous. Brand new clean rooms, everything works, nice staff and walking distance to everything we want to see. All tucked away in local streets halfway between the main shopping streets of Bukit Bintang and the KL Tower.

We're having a fantastic time exploring new areas of KL and revisiting some old favourites. Kuala Lumpur has such a different feel from other Asian cities. It lacks the chaos of Saigon, the vibrancy of Bangkok and the polish of Singapore. It's somewhere between the three in character and development.

Within a 1km walk of our hotel we have extravagant hotels, gleaming shopping malls that are almost self-sustaining communities within themselves they're so large, architectural feats like the Petronas Towers and restaurants serving cuisine from more nations than we can count.

And of course, just a short walk takes us through all the problems that you see in Asian cities - traffic jams, pollution, rain that's just a little more abrasive than rain should be, people living in tiny apartments (or in actual poverty, sleeping on the sidewalk in the tropical storms) one street from giant 4 star hotels, and a lack of rubbish collection and public education that results in trash piled up on back-roads each day until it's collected each morning.

It's an eye-opener for the kids - who have both become environmentalists, launching into sermons every time they see rubbish on the street or a truck belching smoke about how people should treat the planet.

But the back streets also hold some great local sights. A glimpse into local daily life and apartment living. Around the corner from our hostel is a local Chinese man who has set up a restaurant out of his car port. Home cooked food served on plastic tables right next to his car. The food must be good as it's been busy every night.

I love this drink vendor we stumbled across.

Or how about a car park whose entrance is actually a waterfall. Seriously, you have to drive through the waterfall to enter the car park.

I wonder do they offer a car wash service afterwards!

Jalan Alor, the famous food street, is completely different by day. It's quiet, mostly deserted and a lot more fun to explore with the kids when your not dodging cars.

We're looking forward to Europe, but in the meantime we're having a fantastic time exploring KL and getting our walking legs back.