Kuala Lumpur

Thursday morning we woke up in Kuala Lumpur. We had spent some time the night before planning but didn’t really now what there was to do in KL. Plus, there didn’t appear to be all that much to do in Kuala Lumpur, maybe 3 days worth, tops. For the day we had decided to head to a coffee shop nearby that appeared to have good coffee and food based on their website. It didn’t live up to that expectation, but wasn’t terrible, just not all that it could’ve been. But, there was a very helpful employee there that got us a nice map of the city (we didn’t have one and KL is a very confusing city – no grid pattern, just randomness everywhere!) and told us a few good things to do.

Now breakfast was only our third or fourth encounter in the local money, Malaysian Ringgits (RM), and was very difficult to get over the prices. My cappuccino cost RM$10. Crazy, right? Well it’s not all that crazy when you convert back to USD in which case it was like $2.80, but when you go up to pay for breakfast and it’s like RM$50 you have a minor heart attack thinking they are charging you a fortune. (This feeling still hasn’t totally gone away after what is now 4 days in the county and countless purchases in the local currency.)

With our new map in hand and some confidence that we could find our way we headed to a park in the middle of the city, one of the top tourist attractions according to a website we found. When we got there we went first to the visitor information center, which turned out to be no help. As we walked up the stairs to the front doors there was a small security booth to our left with a security guard inside who was fast asleep. And he wasn’t sleeping sitting up like you would see in America, but he had his head down on the desk (the front of his forehead was touching the desk) and arms straight out in front of him, one on each side of his head reaching out towards the other side of the desk. There was no mistaking this guy was asleep and likely had been for a while. I’m still not sure if he was getting paid for this time or not, and if so, how do I get that job?

Inside the park, Bukit Nanas, there were supposed to be some great paths and a cool canopy walk. The great paths turned out to all be in disrepair. All of the gardens were empty (or did not have the plants they should have, ex. No orchids in the orchid garden and no herbs in the herb garden). The canopy walk was closed and looked as if it had been for quite a while. The entire park was pretty much falling apart. Surprisingly we did find a few men repairing one of the paths, but I’m not sure why as we couldn’t understand why any tourist would want to go to that park. Deserted, in disrepair, and generally a large waste of time!

At the top of the hill in the park is a large building, no idea what it’s called, that is essentially the Space Needle and/or Sky Tower. We had no desire to go up but since the park had been such a terrible disappointment and this was so close we completed the hike up to the top and wandered inside.

To get from the park to the Space Needle/Sky Tower, you had to walk through the Malaysian Cultural Village, obviously some sort of tourist attraction. It was all boarded up, there was no one around – another failed tourist attraction in KL.

The Space Needle/Sky Tower cost RM$99 to go to the top and RM$49 to go half way up. We were not interested to start with and we definitely not willing to pay these kinds of prices. Plus, the aircon inside wasn’t that great and it was hot out. I can’t imagine how hot it was up at the top where it is all windows and no airflow from outside. This would be the 3^rd failed tourist attraction of the day.

After all this disappointment, especially after the wonders of Singapore, Elizabeth and I were pretty much ready to leave KL for good and never look back. We had been in the city less than 18 hours, had been exploring only a few, and were done with it completely. We were already talking about making sure we warn everyone we know to never go to KL. And if you do go, get out as fast as possible, go to Singapore!

At this point we decided to go over and see the Petronas Towers, the one large and iconic building here in downtown KL. It is the double skyscraper with a bridge half way up connecting the two towers. Look it up, I’m sure you would recognize it. It is the 7^th tallest building in the world, although it doesn’t look it. We had read online that you could go up for free but had to go very early in the morning to get tickets. (Turns out this isn’t’ true, it actually costs RM$80/person – too expensive for us.) Since we didn’t think we could go up, but had nothing better to do, we headed that way. At the base of the towers (and obviously part of the large complex that includes the towers and many other things) are a shopping mall, convention center, aquarium and I’m sure lots else. We stumbled upon the shopping mall on our way, and our whole lives changed.

This is where we would spend most of our time in KL, in various shopping malls around town.

Now we never really went into a shopping mall in Singapore except a few times and only because we were either lost, hot and needed aircon or for a very specific purpose like a restaurant of store for something we needed. We spent very little time in them, as there was so much else to do.

This is not the case in KL, the mall is really all there is to do. And, it appears to be the center of their lives – they shop there, eat there (they all are a very large dining destination with many good restaurants and extensive food courts), they socialize there (the malls are open quite late at night and people just hang out there). Finding this out quite quickly we pretty much decided we wanted to have as authentic of an experience as possible and did not feel bad about spend most of Thursday in the mall, shopping, eating, browsing, just staying out of the heat and out of the streets of KL.

After exhausting our time in the mall – no more to see, no more to eat – we walked back to our hotel in Chinatown. Walking is not a very enjoyable experience in KL. Most intersections do not have crosswalks and the ones that do usually do not have working pedestrian crossing signals, meaning you never get the right-of-way to cross. On top of this, people do not obey streetlights very well, going through red lights and going the wrong way down the roads. (I actually saw people on two separate occasions go the wrong way on the motorway on motorbikes; I’m guessing they missed their exit?) Plus, the sidewalks are all falling apart. Being a pedestrian in KL is a hazardous experience. And to top it all off, the men are creepy and you can’t avoid them on the streets – but you can’t avoid them anywhere so it wouldn’t have been better on a bus or in a taxi.

When we reached out hotel we were ready for a rest – and had to redo the plan for the rest of our time in KL finding out that the “tourist attractions” were not what they were made out to be. For dinner we wanted to get some good food – at this point we had had 3 meals in KL, none of which we were impressed with, a big change from Singapore where we had 3 tasty and healthy meals every day. We found out that there was a DTF (our new favorite restaurant) at Bukit Bintang, a large shopping area of KL not too far from out hotel, and knew this is what we had to do if we wanted to get some energy and nutrition into our bodies. No more messing around with random restaurants – we needed something we could rely on.

We walked over to Bukit Bintang, found Jalan Alor (a large tourist eating street) along the way where we would dine the following night, and had DTF for dinner. Such a great experience. After dinner we wandered around a bit, enjoying once again the festive Christmas spirit here in KL, much like Singapore. It’s a bit more interesting, however, to see so much Christmas spirit in a Muslim country. I mean who here actually celebrates Christmas? A walk back to the hotel and then to sleep, ready for another day of “tourist” activities on Friday.

The next morning came around and breakfast was no better – although we did find the donut lady across the street who had fresh made donuts, man were they good! We split a donut and had a bit of fruit, but that can’t sustain a person! (Breakfast became ended up becoming the weak point of our entire time in KL, well really food in general but especially breakfast – more on this later).

A long walk over to the Islamic Arts Museum followed our few morning snacks. This museum is the only actual proper attraction I can recommend in KL. It is absolutely wonderful. If you ever find yourself in KL for a few hours (hopefully you won’t ever find yourself there for much longer than that) go to this museum! The best exhibit by far is the architecture exhibit. They have models of Mosques from all around the world and talk about the different architectures you find in different areas, who built them, how they have maintained, etc… The models are outstanding; it is like traveling the globe in 20 minutes. And to see how different they can be was just incredible. Best fact? There is a mosque in Jerusalem with a gold dome. In the 1990’s the King of Jordan donated 80 kilograms of gold to repair the dome. 80 KGS! That is like 172 pounds of gold! We wandered a few more exhibits, all great. My only piece of advice if you go, bring a sweater, it is very cold in there. Definitely no problems with their aircon system!

Now our goal was Little India for lunch but we still had at least a 30 minute walk over there and no restaurant in mind. It was now after lunchtime and we hadn’t eaten much at all that day. I was getting very crabby and just wanted some good food. I finally said I couldn’t just keep going without a goal, I needed to eat. With this, we went straight to the nearest shopping mall. A nice woman saw us fumbling with our map in the street and pointed us in the right direction. We asked after a DTF but she said the nearest was a metro ride away. (We never took the metro in KL as it was too confusing – and probably not that clean). It’s so good everyone knows where the closest DTF is at all times! J

Inside the mall we found a Japanese restaurant with sushi and that was that. After a lot of ordering and eating we were finally energized and had eaten something healthy – a hard find in Malaysia outside of fresh fruit (but you can’t live on fruit alone!). While we were sitting at breakfast we saw a white man alone sitting down the counter from us. As we always do, we tried to figure out where he was from, what his story was, etc. Elizabeth guessed Australian, which wasn’t a terrible guess. He was eating his sushi with his hands, so non-English speaking countries didn’t occur to us, as they tend to be more civilized in this manner. We thought about asking him but then didn’t in the end. We left, found a coffee shop, and enjoyed a nice afternoon beverage.

The mystery white man from the Sushi place followed us to the coffee shop (well not actually, but he did end up at the same place as us) and I decided I was going to ask him where he was from and see how close we were. Turns out he, Hugo, was French, just passing through on a stopover between Australia and France (we thought he had moved to KL recently to be with his girlfriend), and wad just killing time at the mall before his flight left that evening. After I interrogated him a bit he invited us to sit down and we spent a good 30 minutes or so chatting with him about his 2 years in Australia, his future plans, etc. After this, it was back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.

Friday evening was meant to be good as one of my friends from NZ was going to be in KL and we would be going out to dinner. She had spent the previous few days in Borneo and was flying back in for a few nights before going off to the UK where she is from. She was in KL for a few days before we got there but left for Borneo the day we arrive so we decided to wait around to see here instead of moving on North. Also, for those of you who don’t know, Borneo is the world’s largest island. It is off the east coast of Malaysia and is shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, with Indonesia having the majority. Inside of the Malaysia part of the island sits a third country, Brunei.

My friend, Suzie, had told us she should be back at the hotel around 7pm and then we would head to Bukit Bintang where she had some shopping to pick up and then it would be dinner on Jalan Alor, the eating street. She didn’t end up arrive until about 8:30 at which point we were starving. Side note, Suzie had stayed at the same hotel we were staying at and we didn’t know it. When she came back to KL she stayed there again, so convenient for all of us! Suzie arrived and we headed to Jalan Alor. Suzie knew of a free bus and we hoped on that. Elizabeth and I love walking, as does Suzie, but we were all hungry and didn’t have time to waste walking there.

Once off the free bus we bee lined it to Jalan Alor and found a restaurant to eat at. The food was mediocre – just not impressing us Malaysia! The company was great; it’s so cool to meet friends from “home” around the world. What a small place! After dinner we took a small wander and then back to the hotel and to bed.

Saturday we were going to leave KL but were having trouble finding a place to move on to so we decided for the second time to stay another night. We originally only booked in KL for Wednesday and Thursday night but extended for Friday night and then eventually for Saturday night. I’m not sure why, since we didn’t like KL, but since we didn’t know where we were going to we just stayed there. Plus, by this point we now had a friend there and the hotel was nice and clean so that was a good enough reason.

In the morning we met Suzie in the lobby and headed off to breakfast. Now by this point Elizabeth had hypothesizes that part of the reason our time in KL was so miserable was because we were not eating well, and were not having good, healthy, filling breakfasts like we had been having in Singapore. With this in mind she had researched a breakfast place relatively near where we were staying with what appeared to have good western food (we usually wouldn’t do this but the Malaysian food we had eaten up to this point was not healthy enough so we didn’t want to rely on that) and coffee so we went off in that direction.

My masterful navigating got us there without getting lost (although I wasn’t always sure what street we were on since the maps didn’t always match up exactly with the real roads). We arrived around 9:50 but breakfast didn’t start until 10 and they wouldn’t give us a menu. Since we had to wait we found a table, decided on coffee orders, and Elizabeth went up to put it in. No soymilk. Elizabeth, being vegan, obviously can’t have regular milk and Suzie is also a soymilk drinker. This was make or break. None of us really wanted to go anywhere else so Elizabeth went back in ask if we brought soymilk would they make soy drinks for us – and they said yes. We left, found soymilk across the street, brought it back, and they made us the coffees.

There were a few weird things about this. People here drink soymilk so for a place to be out of soymilk is just strange. The store across the street sells soymilk so you would think if the coffee shop ran out they would just go across the street themselves and buy some. We paid RM$4 for the soymilk, the coffee shop charges RM$3/drink to substitute soymilk, the bottle we bought could make probably 5-6 drinks, why didn’t they just go get some themselves even just for us? It would have been a RM$2 profit just on us. They didn’t charge us for the soymilk in the end, obviously since we bought it, but then they kept the rest and probably sold it to customers later in the day. How weird!

Anyways, we had breakfast, and then in true Malaysian style headed again to the mall – the one under the Petronas Towers. This was our third day in Malaysia and would be our 4^th successful trip to a mall. (We tried to go the night before but it was closed when we arrived so it really was our 5^th trip to a mall). We spent a few hours shopping and then we ready for lunch. Suzie hadn’t been to DTF, we wanted a good lunch, so off we to the Bukit Bintang mall for Xiao Long Bao and Bok Choy – 6^th trip to the mall. Lunch was great, Suzie loved the Xiao Long Bao – as she should have – and then it was free bus back home.

Rest time again, as is the daily afternoon routine and then we went for a little dinner in Chinatown. We found a restaurant where all the white people ate and decided since we were also white this would be a good bet. Now at this point I had learned my lesson, Malaysia food comes with too much sauce and too much fried stuff. I found a pineapple fried rice on the menu, which I knew wouldn’t have a sauce on it and ordered that. A nice, safe meal. Elizabeth hadn’t learned this yet and made a mistake and got a fried noodle dish which she didn’t enjoy much. Suzie had a good nice pork dinner.

As we were sitting there we were having loads of fun playing “Where are the white people from?” with every table around us. At one table was a young man sitting by himself. After all making a guess I went over asked where he was from – Australia, I won – and invited him to join us. He, Steven, took me up on the offer and we sat with him through dinner. He turned out to be an Epidemiologist working a Queensland University in Brisbane. He was in KL waiting for his Iranian gf to arrive the next day from Iran. They were going to spend a week together before his parents then came over to meet her for the first time since they started dating two years ago. He was very nice and made our night much more interesting. Before parting ways we showed him to the donut stand so he could get himself a nice hot donut in the morning and then it was nighttime for all of us.

We had committed to leaving Sunday for Penang. Saturday night before Elizabeth and I had booked a hotel for 5 nights in the Georgetown area of Penang Island. We didn’t have bus tickets but you just show up and go. We didn’t want to get too late of a start so we were up and out for breakfast by 9:30. Suzie joined us again, how wonderful!, and we found a little place around the corner serving rice porridge with different meats. I had chicken, Suzie had pork, and Elizabeth a vegan option. My chicken came with a huge piece of chicken. It was very good as it was cooked on the bone with the skin, very tender and juicy. I couldn’t possibly eat all of it but picked off what I could get. A while later I realized the juice that the chicken was sitting in was rather pink in color but I had already eaten a fair amount – what was I going to do? And anyways, this may be some of the best food I’m going to get for a while as far as hygiene is concerned, right? I mean we were in the big city! Everyone was happy with finally getting a good, local, cheap breakfast. Then back to the hotel, we checked out, and headed for the bus terminal.

Overall we left still feeling quite disappointed with Kuala Lumpur, but having Suzie the last two nights was a blast. There was a bit of redemption towards the end but I would still recommend Singapore 100-fold over KL, to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Penang, here we come!