Globetrotting Adventures: Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur & Melaka

Kuala Lumpur 27.04-06.05

Thanks to Air Asia we arrived in Kuala Lumpur airport so late that the buses had stopped running to the city! We decided to save a bit of money and just sleep on the floor in the airport along with all the other people waiting for early morning flights. We managed to get about 4/5 hours before getting some breakfast and catching the shuttle bus into KL Sentral station. On our first day we applied for our Chinese visas and found out that we could only pick them up a week later on the following Monday. This meant that we would have to stay in KL a bit longer than anticipated so we extended our stay at our hostel and decided to see everything KL had to offer.

We were staying in the heart of Chinatown and every night there was a bustling market selling all kinds of fake goods from bags and clothes to watches and jewellery. Needless to say we bought tonnes of new stuff! Nina got a ‘Mulberry’ bag and some ‘Tiffany’ earrings while I bought 3 ‘Fred Perry’ polo shirts and 4 pairs of ‘Calvin Klein’ boxer shorts. They all look surprisingly real but will probably fall apart in a few weeks. During the course of our week in KL we visited quite a few other famous markets in different areas of the city. The Chow Kit market in the north of the city seemed to specialise in meat and to our shock they actually displayed the heads of the cows that had provided the beef! The Pudu market was even bigger than Chow Kit and sold fish, poultry, fruit and veg and all kinds of delicacies. Although all the vendors kept shouting for us to buy their squid or frogs or chicken feet, we only ended up getting half a watermelon from one of the fruit sellers. While walking around we came across a man who was blow-torching chickens and he was extremely happy to pose for a picture!

Massive Jack Fruit

Happy to have some fresh fruit!

The proud blow-torcher!

During our week in KL, we managed to divide our time equally between the historical sites and the more modern ones. We visited the national museum which gave a great outline of the history of Malaysia and had a really interesting section on the country under the separate colonial leaderships of Portugal, The Netherlands and Great Britain. Combined with the Chinese and Indonesian influences, Malaysia is now a melting pot of cultures. We made a trip to the outskirts of the city to see the Batu Caves which are hidden away in mountains behind a giant golden-coloured Buddha. In the centre of the city we walked from the Masjid Jamek, the largest mosque in Malaysia, to Merdeka square where independence was proclaimed in 1957.

Outside Batu Caves

Inside Batu Caves

Masjid Jamek

Merdeka Square

A Hindu temple near Chinatown

We went to see the iconic Petronas towers but decided to skip going on the sky-walk between the two as it was quite expensive and we had heard that the view was better from the Menara KL tower. The observation deck on Menara KL prodived a panoramic view of the city and you got a great view of the Petronas towers against the skyline. KL also has a huge amount of up-market ‘megamalls’ and on the Friday night we decided to go to the cinema to watch Iron Man 3. While walking around looking for a place to eat, we discovered to our joy a Nandos! After 2 months of curry in India, we couldn’t resist treating ourselves to the peri-peri goodness. The Bukit Bintang shopping area was also home to the newest Megamall which had the biggest food court we had ever seen. However, our favourite place to eat in Kuala Lumpur was a stall on the side of the road in Chinatown that served satay in about 50 different varieties. We knew that satay was the most famous Malaysian food and our eyes lit up when we found this perfect place to try it. You chose your own skewers before either boiling the veg on your table or having the guys BBQ it on the grill for you. It was amazing and we ate there about 4 times in 6 days!

The Petronas Towers

A hard life

SATAY

The KL skyline

Petronas Towers as seen from KL tower

We anxiously made our way to the Chinese visa centre on the Monday knowing that all our plans for the next 3 weeks rested on the outcome of our application. In the end, we were silly to even worry and picked up our passports complete with visas inside. HOORAY! We then picked up our bags from the hostel and got on a bus to Melaka, an old seaside town south of KL that had gone back and forth between colonisers and invaders. It had a lot of history and reminded us a bit of Galle in Sri Lanka with its Portuguese feel. It was a lovely place to stroll around and we had a delicious traditional Malaysian meal on the riverfront to celebrate the fact we were definitely going to china! The next day we decided to take a river cruise which went right through the heart of the town and showed all the major sites. We then had a horrible lunch of what can only be described as under-cooked scrambled egg on top of chicken that didn’t taste like chicken and rice which was infused with the flavours of the former. Massively unsatisfied, we vowed to have a good dinner and we were recommended by our home-stay a satay restaurant famous in all Malaysia! The difference with this satay was that all the meat was boiled in a peanut sauce on your table instead of being grilled. This meant the flavours were amazing! We came back from Melaka to KL for a night before jumping on a plane to Chengdu in China.