KL Notes
Our long weekend in KL was exceedingly pleasant but not particularly blogworthy. I’m just writing my notes here for future reference, but if you’re after more interesting stuff I promise to try and post my Pulau Ubin photo of a scary witch-face rock fairly soon.
Ate well: yummy chicken porridge on Jalan Alor, great pork ball noodles and poh piah on Jalan Imbi, the biggest otak piece I’ve ever seen in my life at Madam Kwan’s (thanks Benny!), sublimely moreish joo hoo char at Old China Cafe, fun at Kim Gary’s with Macau pork sandwiches (thanks to umami’s review) and boiled Coke with ginger, and last but by no means least, Nando’s. I know Nando’s isn’t particularly Malaysian but as far as I know there aren’t any branches in Singapore, and we like it lots.
Sightsaw slightly: Ogled the Petronas towers like everybody else, wandered from mass at St John’s cathedral past the Masjid Jamek (beautiful mosque, pity about the overwhelming smell of sewage) and Merdeka Square, then down the Petaling Street market crush where I found it laughable that anyone would actually buy anything.
Down the road from St John’s Cathedral
Shopped badly: like many other intense sensual experiences, this second shopping trip to Sungei Wang just didn’t live up to the first. Bought nothing worth mentioning.
Met up with Benny: for dinner and a trip back to his house, during which he illustrated a few of the differences between Malaysia and Singapore. “Eh, ‘dilarang masuk’ lah!” I said, as he blithely steered his car past a big DILARANG MASUK sign. “This is Malaysia lah!” Benny said, “The sign only means you shouldn’t enter, not that you cannot enter.”
Generally took things easy: Sleeping in hostels formerly used for housing refugees (Zagreb), backtracking from irrelevant bus stops along Polish highways in search of unpronounceably named salt mines and national parks, exploring the ruins of Ayutthaya on foot in the blazing sun – these things are for other holidays. In KL we take cabs, feel no compulsion to seek out “culturally enriching experiences”, and sleep till noon every day. Quite a refreshing way to holiday, once in a while.