Welcome to Malaysia, So Long Londoners!

I hope this isn’t too rude to Malaysia, because I only have good things to say, but I feel it’s an oft forgotten travel destination in South-East Asia, perhaps like the unloved middle child who has to work extra hard to prove their worth (sorry Dan). Gap year students famously tour Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and the digital nomads and Aussies love Indonesia and the Philippines, but Malaysia doesn’t get talked about much, despite being snugly nestled right in the middle of all the good stuff. Well, I can tell you now (as I’m a couple of weeks ahead of the blog) that it’s great. With top notch beaches, jungles, cities and wildlife, the track isn’t hard to stray from and we often find ourselves alone to witness it all in peace.

Day 88 – Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur was a big change from Vietnam… like, immediately. Firstly, everyone was driving in their lanes! And they weren’t all honking each other or nearly running over stray animals. In fact, with driving on the left hand side of the road, and the sky for some reason looking almost London-y, we both had a moment of nostalgia for home. The kind of nostalgia driven by enforced road safety in large part.

We arrived at our lovely little AirBnB in Bangsar suburb, which I liked to compare to Dulwich for being a wealthy residential area with a bit of a buzzy high-street and a restaurant scene, about 20-30 minutes out of town but well connected by train and bus. It was a great place to be based, a much better option than the high-rise hotels that were largely offered on the booking websites. It was late-ish so we settled for an Indian meal (lots of Indian food here) and an early night.

Day 89 – Kuala Lumpur

What else to do, then, but go out and explore? We were located close to the Botanical Gardens (top travel tip: botanical gardens are always a great visit) which in turn abutted The National Museum of Malaysia. It felt like a good way to start the morning, so we set off and found ourselves in the Botanical Gardens in the scorching heat! It was lovely but WAY too hot, and we could only manage a short circuit. This was at 10:00 so we were a tad worried that Malaysia might be too hardcore for us temperature-wise.

It’s quite fun to notice the Merkeda Tower in the skyline while exploring KL. It’s the 2nd tallest building in the world, although they cheat a bit with the tall skinny bit, which takes it above some of the other contenders.

We went on to the National Museum which was a serendipitous first day outing, not only due to the air-con, but also because it taught us loads about Malaysian history, from it’s British colonial past leading to large migration of people from India and China who today make up a large portion of the population after the Malay, through to Malaysia’s occupation by the Japanese and eventual independence from the British in 1957. All this info is helpful in understanding the cultural, and more importantly culinary, landscape. Indeed George Town (in a couple of blogs time) is basically a massive China Town and in the Cameron Highlands (three blogs ahead) we have Indian roti canai for breakfast every morning.

In the evening we decided to hit the famous street food market, Jalan Alor. ‘Twas here we found our favourite corner of KL, bustling full of food stalls of every kind but with a focus on Chinese seafood restaurants down the middle stretch. We stopped for a cold coconuts, had fresh mango and ate some Indian ‘pani puri’ before settling in at one of the busiest plastic chair clad Chinese joints for our main meal of noodles for Billie and fried squid for moi.

Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and so alcohol is less plentiful and affordable – probably for the best – but we did manage to snag a cheapish big bottle of Tiger to share for our first night out in KL.

Day 90 – Rest day & blogging

Day 91 – Kuala Lumpur

Today we decided to check out the infamous Petronas Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world and, at one point, the tallest building in the world full stop. It’s these you’ll see furnishing many a magnet and postcard in the souvenir stalls.

Under the towers is a big fancy mall with pretty much every shop you could imagine. They even had Marks & Spencer! It was huge and garish and quite ugly. I quite liked it, but Billie was fairly repulsed which we don’t blame her for.

We planned to eat here as there were supposed to be food courts and lots of restaurants: all either stupidly expensive, looked crap or didn’t do veggie. With the gaping chasm of hunger surfacing from deep within, and Grabs (like Ubers) not reaching us for 20 mins+, we decided to walk back to Jalan Alor, the street food street. It was a half hour walk through the most confusing series of streets and overhead pedestrian tunnel walkways that even Google Maps couldn’t make sense of.

I’d almost lost the plot entirely, ready to eat anything from anywhere, when we finally arrived onto an actual main road with plenty of people, and a straight line to Jalan Alor. The main street, though, was exciting; a bit like Picadilly Circus, with big advertising screens on the sides of buildings and a massive multi-zebra crossing that is reminiscent of the famous Tokyo crossing I’ve seen in videos. Weird Japanese-esque mascots joined in the fun and there was an awful lot of noise and people. It was great!

We arrived back at Jalan Alor and it was even more packed than the night before!

We went back to the SAME restaurant because we enjoyed it so much, and this time I had spectacular prawns. Because we’d built up such an appetite, we explored the dessert options and had some delicious coconut rice cakes which they wrapped in banana leaves and steamed before our eyes. Scrummy.

I’ve compared Kuala Lumpur to a number of other cities in this blog, which is unfair; Kuala Lumpur is it’s own incredible beast with it’s own identity. It’s one of the coolest cities I’ve visited, with distinctive cultural centres interlinked by futuristic walkways and gaudy malls. Why not?!

Next, we’re heading off to the Perhentian Islands – a marine paradise where many thousands of fish will envelop us in their school, leading to the greatest underwater experience of our lives… See you then!