KL

(Holly) We made it to the KL terminal. Tired, no sleep on the train. Nick likely caught a few more Zzzs.

(Nick) The ride over from Penang had it's perks but it's really disorientating to get on a train at 11PM and get off a train at 7AM in the middle of rush hour in a very large city. Couple that with the fact that most things in Kuala Lumpur are under construction and we really didn't have any specific direction in mind other than a few notes of places to check out that Rauff had given us in Penang.

We got on the train in Surat at 3AM at a station that had charm but few amenities. And walked out on marbled floors..

Traffic, Adversisements and Construction. Welcome to KL

Here's the construction as we are walking around the train station. Or to rephrase. Here's the train station as we were walking around the construction.

(Nick) The walk through the train station took about all the mental abilities we were able to summon up between the two of us. The construction meant that in order to board the monorail line that serviced the areas of the city that we were interested in we needed to leave the train station and walk about a city block around the station and through the construction for the who knows what and then reenter the station on the other side. But we made it. And again, I will stress the benefits of traveling light should any of our readers out there consider similar adventures.

Monorail

The monorail took us downtown to our destination, Bukit Bintang. We heard that this was the area to go and find a place to stay, but also be in the middle of the KL scene. I guess looking back we should have known that it is the main downtown of KL. For perspective imagine getting on a New York subway not really knowing where you are headed then you step out in the middle of Manhatten at 8AM.

After a few "which way do we go now" moments we ended up walking along with a Nepalese security guard. The "walk' was probably a half a mile and in an air conditioned tunnel under and through the city's streets and buildings. It felt like walking through an enormous mall. I can't really say where we started but we got out at the foot of the Petronas Towers. Looking back I know how tired we were because neither of us realized it. You'd think they'd be kind of hard to miss. But along the walk we had formulated our plan. We were hunting a bus.

Who knows how long these walkways go. We can tell you that Nepalese security guard knew his way around but in no way had fallen in love with the modern mega city of KL. KL has the feel of a city undergoing explosive growth but a lot of the workers there seem to be imported.

(Holly) Our new Nepalese fried sought us out. I started visiting with him on direction. Honestly, I didn't really gain much about KL to converse beyond basics. Instead our dialogue wrapped around Nepal. This man lit up when speaking about his home country. I'll just say his love was quite contagious.

(Nick) This just seemed really out of place. But there it was hiding in a corner of the mall tunnel.

(Holly) Since my SE Asian adventures have started, I've told myself that it's a guaranteed good time if you see a cow at any point. And seeing a dairy cow just made me thing of a  WI boy. I smiled and voted we take a pic.

(Nick) Picture us walking out those big glass doors at the base of the towers and never knowing that those big towers were looming right behind us. Because that's how it happened.

(Holly) We jumped on a tour bus. I passed out from exhaustion. I was a bit grateful for my fiancé at that point. I was bus sick, tired, and hot from the AC going out and tourists traveling in and out in packs.

(Nick) Lucky for us Holly had looked ahead into ways to explore KL and seen that there were double decker "city" buses that provided tourists with an easy way to explore the sites of the city. (Holly: "Yes, ahemm... I kind of did that.") In our case we used it as a temporary hotel on wheels. Holly caught a nap and I used the bus' WiFi and caught some of the sites of the city. The bus was a convenient spot to plot our next destination. The next goal was to find an actual hotel. A place to drop off our stuff so that we could move around properly. From what I remember the bus ride was pleasant at first but then less and less enjoyable after that. Driving around a big city is not actually a very efficient way to travel (time wise) and the air conditioner was not functioning correctly. By the time we got off in Chinatown, about 2 hours after hopping aboard, it was cooler outside than in.


(Holly) I recall opening my eyes off and on. At one point I felt pretty bad that I was leaving Nick to sit on his own. I had nothing to contribute to the venture. I was bus sick and exhausted. I just recall saying, we need to get off I can't do this much longer. He said, "Ya, I actually found us a place. It's in China Town and we should be there in about a half hour." I wasn't stoked about the 30 minutes. But I liked knowing our next move. Grateful!

It was a really nice modern hotel in the middle of Chinatown that our bus went right by. We stepped off the second time around. This is a picture of the front of the hotel through the restaurant which opened right onto the main Peddler Street of Chinatown. At $50 a night I wouldn't call it expensive.

(Holly) $50 eh, $1500 baht.. Hmm. I feel like that remark was meant to trigger thoughts for us when we read this in 10 years. That being said, I have no complaints. A real bed too!


 Haven for the weary travelers. And the bathroom was incredible too!

(Nick) That was an exhausting day. I remember how good it felt walking into our room the and crashing with AC cranked up. Not a bad time to mention the room keys in most of our rooms served double duty as also being the key to activate the power in the room. Once you enter the room you place a key tab into its holder near the light switch and voila the light and air conditioning pop on. High on efficiency over there. Also every light bulb I saw over there was a compact fluorescent or LED. A lot less of the bulbs have coverings on over there than you'd see here so its kind of obvious.

(Holly) I just want to add that the light switch feature, having the tab on the key is actually very common. I have seen it in almost every place I have stayed in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, etc. Perhaps a SE Asia thing. Electricity is more costly than water. I know because I am a payer to Thai utilities.





 Venders selling below a bridge.

 The scene at the intersection.

Look up from Peddler Street. Right outside our hotel.

 Peddlers as far as the eyes could reach.

Interesting to be on the street when they start setting up the night market. Lots of moving pieces.

(Holly) I easily convinced Nick to buy some rambutans as they were out of season in Thailand. They are hairy on the outside, red and green fibers. The inside yields a clear, grape-like fruit with an almond size nut in the center. The flavor is sweet and sometimes tangy. I would describe the flavor as a mild strawberry, grape, lime flavor. They are even better when chilled.

Duck. Duck. Duck. Malaysian. Duck. No goose.

 Cantonese menu. The cost is in Ringgit. 6.5 Ringgit is 65THB, or just over 2USD.

 We dug into some Cantonese cuisine at a local eatery. You pay before you eat. All the food is made in an open-air market stall.

(Holly) Nick and his stir-fried dry noodles with seafood, it was alright.

(Nick) Not really sure what it was exactly. Chicken something I think. But I do remember that it was tasty. 

 (Holly) I ordered stir-fried ginger chicken. Let me tell ya, the dish was not lacking in flavor.

 Dried fruit and candies, street vending. The tubs include products such as dried coconut, coconut and ginger candies, dried pineapple and mango, and more.

I found myself intrigued by some street art in an parking lot. We decided to check it out.

 (Holly) The art was beautiful. I'd rather find raw art like this any day than go to a closed in art museum. How beautiful. So unique; I was inspired. I can't say if Nick caught on to my next move, but I think I got a smile out of him.

One.. Two..

Three...

 Snap. This is my KL inspired art. And one of my favorite moments there. You can call me crazy if you wish, but I feel like you should lighten up as it's very unlikely that your windshield was even in a 5,000 mile radius of my pigeon raging fun.

I see a little silhouette of a man.. 

 Nick checking out some red bananas.

(Holly) Nick and I walked for some hours around the city. We passed by many venders along the way but choosing which to stop at was always a challenge. We managed to pick up some grilled corn just as our stomachs were starting to digest themselves.

(Nick) Ok. I'll admit to adding a few words to that last passage of Holly's but its time to point out that as much as Holly loves food sometimes she does need to be reminded of the importance of stopping somewhere and eating it. 

(Holly) So much to see. I can get easily distracted. It's true. I have to stop right now and tell you, the corn was amazing. It didn't look like much, as the local we purchased it from reheated it on his grill. We walked on til we stumbled on at eating place. Nick put in an order.

 (Holly) The dish of choice, chicken satay padang. This is a common Malay and Indonesian food. It is served with a few sauces, varying vender to vender. Our particular vender offered a peanut sauce and a sweet sauce. Now, normally the dish is served on a banana leaf. Then, your choice of sauce is poured on top of the rice cakes (cubes in pic above) and the chicken satays. However, Nick and I didn't want to limit our palate with just one sauce.

 On the way back we took the rail to catch a different view of the city scene..

(Holly) This was Nick's night run. I stayed in the hotel room while he desired some late night Chinese food from a street not far from our stay. He was pretty cute when he came back. He had a variety of food and then put out some fresh and dried fruit for me to snack on. He even found my dried cranberry which was my only request. I wasn't hungry but was food curious. I tried a bit of it all. The satays were descent but the green vegetables were quite pungent with fishy aromas. I am not a big fan of fishy smelling and tasting foods, but I don't regret trying it.  And then to top it all off, some wine. Yes, wine. Oh my, that was some wine. I don't recall where the wine was from, but it certainly didn't need to accompany any more of my night. I vote Nick's food run successful. There's just something cool about trying new things, but mostly with good company and seeing how excited he was to try it all.

(Nick) The next day we spent on a long walk taking in the sights of the city. We were vaguely aimed and a Middle Eastern district where we hoped to get some food. But as you learn while walking you never really now what to expect when wandering a large city.

Modern Architecture

Interesting old architecture

Exotic fruits.

In the hands of beautiful women.

(Nick) Holly hates it when I do stuff like this. But who doen't want to see the other side of Holly's lens once in awhile?

Don't those Mangosteen look just like bags of red onions. The insides look like a clove of garlic. But the flavor just kind explodes in your mouth like a cross between a grape and a grapefruit. I'm a big fan.

(Holly) ..& a hit of raspberry. Yum!

If all the little girl's are wearing headscarves at school you're probably not in Kansas. 

(Nick) We spent half the time hiding from the rain. Unfortunately we had left our umbrella in the room for some odd reason. But I was fascinated with all the motorbikes shooting between lanes and all the drivers with their jackets on backwards. 

Even better to dodge rainstorms when you're hungry. We found a nice Middle Eastern restaurant outside of the downtown area. 

And watched it pour. For a long time. Many of the patrons there had hookahs (and were in actuality real live Middle Easterner's) but we weren't that adventurous. We  could have ordered a Red Bull flavored hookah.

We walked on and noticed that kid's everywhere like playing in the mud. 

(Nick) Moments after taking the picture of the kids we were introduced to the local law enforcement. Interesting moment. We didn't catch a picture of that one but a pleasant enough looking man walked over to us with brief greetings and asked us where we were going. After a few beats he introduced himself as a KL Naroctics officer. After a very quick flash of the badge he demanded that we give him our passports and wanted to know how much cash we had on us. If it sounds weird, it felt that way too. Holly smartly had left our passports in the room. He did ask me to empty my pockets and then really wanted to know about the cash situation. We weren't carrying much. And after telling him that our purchases were done on plastic, that we did not have passports on us, and that Holly was a teacher in Thailand his demeanor changed completely. After a quick "Sawadee kap" he left us alone. Our best guess is that he was looking for a bribe and would have taken our passports if we'd given them to him. 

Fair warning. Be careful with your passport when traveling. Photocopies usually work for checking in at hotels. So only carry the passport with you if you are moving from one place to another.  

After that. It rained some more. 

And even in the middle of a large city there are plenty of dogs just wandering around 

There was a huge amount of rain coming down. Best to watch where you stepped because the water was coming up from the streets too.

(Holly) Nick voted on taking a short cut home. We ended up attempting to cut through a flooded open shop. Then we turned around. It didn't seem to be out of the norm for the locals. They had their push brooms sloshing the water around. Vehicles carried on through the flowing streets.

Café - Restaurant, street view. Typical around the city for the inexpensive plate.

 

There are many extraordinarily large malls in Kuala Lumpur. I believe this one was named Times Square.

There are Boy Scouts in Malaysia.

Mosque at lunchtime.

My best guess is that the Mosque we walked by is also a religious school We walked by at lunchtime and many of the students were outside eating together. Across the street was another school for younger boys. We walked by a number of boys in the 8 -12 year old range in all white school uniforms.

You'd think that with all this cheap stuff right outside our room we would have bought something. I won't say your wrong but what I really wanted was some Malaysian peanut butter and some coffee to bring back. Malaysian White coffee is the thing to have and Holly has told me stories about the amazing peanut butter you find only in Malaysia.

 (Holly) Yes, it's way better than PETER PAN PEANUT BUTTER. Peter Pan should really stick to twinkling in the sky and let mothers take care of the peanut butter.

One last night in KL

The Swiss Inn puts out a fantastic breakfast buffet. But these two momentarily stole the show. They were pretty excited about getting their own orange juice. Reminded me a whole lot of Elliott and Daevani.

From train to bus to aeroplane we busted out of KL early one morning bound for family in the island city state of Singapore. But to get there we'd need to cross the pirate infested Straits of Malacca.

Would we make it?

What mysteries await?

Just how cheap can plane tickets get?

Stay tuned.