TBA Day 11: One Last Good Day in KL

This day started out with me deciding that there had been enough hiding out in my room, so (after watching Monday Night Football) I set out to explore the city a bit more. I mostly wandered through a few massive, absurdly fancy shopping malls (and bought a sarong for my upcoming island time). I kept thinking how much Midge would enjoy the window shopping, with storefronts for all these absurdly expensive brands I’ve only heard of on TV (with one notable row including Hermès, Versace, Prada, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Montblanc, and Burberry all lined up side by side). I was actually in this crazy mall looking for a pharmacy, and I finally tracked down a pharmacist to ask about my lack of appetite. She gave me this magical probiotic pill that’s supposed to improve your immune system, improve digestion, and increase appetite. Not sure if it was the magic pill or not, but by the time dinner rolled around I was at least able to eat something substantial (finally).

I had tried to use the laundry service at my hostel on Monday but the service never picked up my clothes so I wouldn’t have been able to get my clothes back before I checked out today. The people at desk sent me down the road to a hostel that has laundry service and the extremely nice woman there helped me out (I guess I’ll know for sure how well that went when I go over there in a couple hours to pick up my laundry before heading for the train), and I ended up striking up a conversation with an American-looking guy in the lobby who seemed to be about my age. Turns out he’s actually a Canadian, but still manages to be one of the more obsessive NFL fans (Vikings) that I’ve met in a very long time. We sat around talking about football for like two hours, and he ended up joining me for dinner as well (which rocked because it meant more foods to try… and also good company, of course…).

We went to Enak, which is an actual fancy-ish restaurant that I’d read a lot of recommendations for on Chow.com.
For appetizers he ordered the Satay (satay over here is immeasurable better than what you usually get in the US) and I ordered calamari with chili sauce, both of which were extremely delicious.

For main courses the waiter accidentally tricked him into ordering a third dish, so we ended up with Beef Rendang, a Chicken Curry, and… some other beef thing that was ordered mostly because it was the only other beef dish that wasn’t supposed to be super-spicy (Canadian-guy is a apparently a bit of a spice wimp) and which (despite being the least aesthetically pleasing of the three dishes) turned out to be the best-tasting thing we ordered.
The Beef Rendang was different than most I’ve had in Melbourne, but still pretty good, with (to employ wine-speak) a really lovely complex flavor on the finish. (I think I like the version I make better, but that’s probably just because my version is Emily-style and thus exactly suited to my tastes.) The chicken curry was nothing to write home about, but the random beef thing was seriously good. The meat was nicely charred to give a great depth of flavor. I’m going to have to figure out what it was called so I can try to make it at home. It was fun to put on some less scrappy clothes and sit in an actual restaurants (napkins and everything!) with some good company and enjoy a tasty meal on my last night in KL.

In the end I would say I don’t think I would necessarily come back here. I don’t tend to like cities that are too big and when I like them it’s typically because they are both flat and possessing a subway/lightrail system that can get you near almost any destination (like in Melbourne, Singapore, and Boston). When I’m forced to take cabs (or drive) to get anywhere, I end up feeling less free to explore the city and just don’t develop the same affinity for the place. The flat terrain, amazing subways, and general accessibility ( including escalators and elevators everywhere you encountered stairs on the subways) that made Singapore a big city I really enjoyed are things that just weren’t there in KL. It’s not a bad city, and I’m definitely glad I came… KL and I just didn’t make a connection the way Singapore and I did... Which is to say: it's not you, KL, it's me.

Day 12 will be spent almost entirely in transit, after which the adventure continues in Penang…

Day 9: Butterflies, Thunder, and Pork

Still having a bit of the RTS today, but I think I’m making progress towards recovery… (Yesterday I didn’t even enjoy the smell of food because it just made me go “Uch. I couldn’t eat a single bite right now,” whereas today food has been smelling delicious even though I really don’t feel hungry…)

I took a culinary tour of the neighborhood around noon and confirmed that I chose a great place to stay: there are like 10 places where I would love to eat within a block of my hostel. Still, I wasn’t hungry yet so I decided to head down to Chinatown and see what things looked like over there. That is one bustling neighborhood, dude… And in case you were about to ask (as about 50 people there did), the answer is “No. I do not want a massage. Really. Please stop following me with you pamphlet now. I am fine. Thank you.” I saw a busy stand selling popiah, so I decided to try one (their small size made them seem like a good option for somebody with RTS). It was pretty tasty, but not nearly as good as the one in Melaka… Then I wandered past a store called Bee Cheng Hiang and was lured in by the pretty pretty barbecued/dried meats inside… I got the Chilli Pork (below) and it was so very very delicious. (Probably not good that the first awesome thing I ate in KL was from a chain based in Singapore, but whatever…) I may have to head back there to get some train snacks before I head to Penang.
After Chinatown I went to the Butterfly Park, which was (somewhat surprisingly) pretty darn fun. It turns out butterflies are totally awesome. Who knew? While the bird park was interesting and the birds in their cages were adorable, this was more interactive. You’ve got all these gorgeous exotic butterflies whizzing past your head and you’re stalking them with your camera, hoping they’ll land somewhere long enough for you to take their picture so you can show your friends how pretty they were… Also, there were bunnies! fI don’t think the tropical climate they maintain in the butterfly park is probably the funnest place for a rabbit to hang out, but they were so cute. There were even tiny little baby ones… and slightly bigger babies sitting in the food bowl, as they do. There were also turtles and koi, but definitely the butterflies were worth the trip on their own. Good stuff.
I had a couple more ideas of things to do after the butterflies, but as I was preparing to leave I started hearing some pretty intense thunder. By the time I got outside I found myself in the middle of a totally kick-ass thunder storm. I’ve never heard such loud thunder in my life, and the sky just opened up and poured down rain… When I made it back to the bus stop there was a nice British couple there (they’d gotten off the bus at the same time as me, but had gone to see the deer park instead of the butterflies) and we had a nice time chatting while we waited for the bus. There was a family from New Zealand on the bus when we boarded, and we all enjoyed watching the storm through the windows and talking about our travels… I think the main thing I miss when I’m not around people who speak English fluently is the sarcasm and jokes (I’ve learned from many bad experiences that usually by the time the sarcastic thing is translated, it ends up being taken literally…). Such a large percentage of the things that I usually say are sarcastic or facetious, and I think I start to feel less like me when I have to try to choose the simplest word possible and to not confuse things with sarcasm. It was refreshing to just be able to laugh and joke with some folks…

The rain storm pretty much killed my adventurous spirit and put me in a coffee-and-my-book kind of mood, so that was the rest of my afternoon… The magical Chilli Pork (so good!) seemed to work wonders in thwarting my reverse tapeworm, though, so I was back in business (finally) for a bit of dinner. I was in the mood for a hunk of protein uninterrupted by stuff like, well, anything that wasn’t meat, so I went to a meat shop I’d seen on my neighborhood tour earlier and got a couple small delicious-looking (and, I would soon discover, delicious-tasting) sausages (one garlic, one chilli) for a total of US$1.20. The shop also had something similar to (but not quite as good as) the chilli pork I’d had earlier and I decided to order some just in case I needed it later to combat a relapse of the ol’ RTS. Now, I’m not sure how pathetic white people usually are with spice, because the guy says “Oh. It’s very spicy. Are you sure?” and I was like “Yeah. Spicy is great!” and smiled and gave a thumbs up. Then he still made me try a small bite to make sure I could handle the “spice,” which turned out to be basically non-existent (and not just by Emily-standards, I would say…). Whatever…

After dinner I headed down to see the Petronas Towers at night. Those are some seriously beautiful towers, dude. I was impressed in the daylight yesterday, but they’re absolutely stunning at night…
I’m going to try to get in a nap now before the Bucs take on (and, one would hope, annihilate) the Bears at 1am…

TBA Day 8: Being a Tourist

(Written Day 8 but posted the next morning since I was too tired to mess with pictures that night)

Still suffering from RTS (Reverse Tapeworm Syndrome), I knew I (tragically) wasn’t up for any culinary adventures today and I decided to go ahead and get the tourist thing out of the way…

Part of the reason I chose this hostel was that their web page mentioned they have a tours desk. So, I asked at the desk last night if there were any tour thingys to just basically see the city, given that I couldn’t walk very far. The guy consulted with his colleague in a language I don’t speak (at one point turning to me to clarify “You can’t even walk 2km?”) and they told me the only option if I really couldn’t walk was to take cabs everywhere. OK… So this morning I started looking into the public transit system and it looked like that might be a workable way to see the city (I have an aversion to taking cabs, which I know Stanley is rolling his eyes about as he reads this story). I set out towards the nearest lightrail station, but the terrain in KL is not nearly so flat as that in my beloved Singapore so this was looking like a bad idea. Just as I was about to give in and call a cab, a brightly colored double-decker bus with a web address listed on the side went rushing by. I went back to my room to check it out online, and it turns out it’s a tourist bus that stops at pretty much every major attraction in the city and you can hop on and off for 24 hours after buying your ticket (almost like exactly what I was asking the guy at the tours desk for!).

The map on the web page was a bit too qualitative (lots of cartoons, no cross-streets) to tell where the pick-up points were, but it appeared there was one in my neighborhood. I went to the front desk and asked the woman there about the pick-up point for the KL Hop On Hop Off shuttle. She instead showed me on a map all the places I should go and then said I should really just walk. I explained that I couldn’t and she, too, seemed perplexed that even a mere 2km (over massively hilly roads, I might add) was too far for me but finally pointed me to the stop, which turned out to be about 30 feet from the hostel’s front door. The shuttle was US$12, which is fairly pricey by backpacker-in-Malaysia standards, but it turned out to be a really nice comfortable way to see the city. I only stopped at 3 places, but I also got an idea of other places I’ll go back and hit on my own (perhaps via a dreaded taxi ride).

So, I went to the Petronas Twin Towers (which are really quite lovely),
I went to KL Tower and up to the observation deck,
and I went to the bird park, which is apparently the largest covered bird park in the world. There was a bird show, which I’m used to seeing birds of prey in, but this was a bunch of trained macaws and stuff and it was pretty adorable (although my favorite bird was still the eagle that flew past like 6 inches above my head). I also loved the Palm Cockatoos, which look so awesomely cranky. Good times…
That’s about it for an uneventful but oddly tiring Day 8. Not sure what the heck is wrong with me and this RTS situation, but hopefully I’ll be ready to find (and be hungry enough to consume) some delicious food tomorrow. So far I’m not really feeling KL, but it’s probably not fair to judge before trying the food… Still, as far as first impressions go, this doesn’t really feel like my kind of town… but hopefully I’ll find out in the next couple days that my first impression was wrong.