Stunning food of Kuala Lumpur

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Trip Start Sep 22, 2011 Previous
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  Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Leaving Melaka was nice and simple and the coach trip up to Kuala Lumpur, or KL as the locals call it, was only a couple of hours. Arriving in KL we needed to get the metro and monorail into the city, which would have been easy if we weren't carrying all our gear. It was also pretty crowded, so I think we managed to annoy plenty of people too. Luckily though, the final station was very close to our hostel and we were soon dumping our bags into our nice private room (fed up of dorms already). Our hostel was called Sunshine Bedz and it was very central in the Bukit Bintang region of the city. With it being lunchtime I was now on the search for food and so we wandered across the road to a very posh little food court. The prices were still cheap and we enjoyed and absolutely delicious Black Pepper Beef dish. I could have eaten many more, and so we will be back! After lunch we went back to the hostel and spent some time on the computer. The afternoon thunderstorm had arrived and so we thought we'd hide inside and plan the next week or so of our trip. We booked our flight to Phuket for Saturday, to get the 30 day visa, and also booked a few places to stay. This actually took a few hours and thankfully it had finally stopped raining once we'd finished. It was also now dark and so we decided to venture out and grab some dinner. We wandered up and down the local hawker food street and eventually sat at the restaurant which seemed the busiest, Meng Kee Grill Fish, and I'm very glad we did. We ordered some beers and then decided we'd try a few little dishes of different things. We ordered salt and pepper squid, mixed beans, satay kebabs and fried carrot cake, and all of it was amazing. Seriously, this was the best meal we've had whilst travelling. The carrot cake for starts was so moreish, and included neither carrot, nor cake. The carrot is actually a type of radish, which they call white carrot. Anyways, I could go on describing how good the food was but let's leave it by saying we'll definitely be back!
After eating everything presented to us we needed to walk it off and so took the walkway from Bukit Bintang to the Petronas Towers. The walkway finishes up in a mall underneath the towers and so when you pop out you're right below them. They're big! The view from below with the towers all lit up is stunning. We hung around here for a while taking photos and then headed back to the walkway before it closed at 11pm. Back in town we walked along the street with a all the bars on and I stopped at each to check the football scores. It was the last day of the Premier League after all. I wish I'd actually stayed and watched it now, but alas we couldn't be bothered to fight the crowds and so didn't. Maybe it'll be as interesting next season... doh!

Monday morning we were up nice and early to get down to the Petronas towers to get a ticket to go up them. Unfortunately for us, what we didn't know was that the towers are closed to visitors on a Monday. Bugger! Instead we had a walk around the gardens and took a few posing photos. We then walked through the city and into China town and the markets of Central Market and Petaling Street. Central market was our first stop and we stayed in here ages to take advantage of the aircon and cool down a little. There were plenty of nik-nak shops and Alex took a liking to a pair of baggy Aladdin pants, or parachute pants as I called them. They did look very comfy so we may be back. After the indoor market we hit the knockoff mayhem that was Petaling Street. As we walked around the huge array of fake bags, watches, clothes and sunglasses we just had to ignore the constant shouts of "yes sir, watch for you? You come look, I give you good price". To be fair, they were pretty good fakes and they touted them a genuine copies, which I found amusing.
Next on the list of sights to see was the square over the river which included many old colonial buildings and a cricket pitch. As we wandered around here it decided to start raining, but luckily we didn't have to hide for long. By this time we were knackered and so we hoped on the monorail back to the hostel. That evening we walked back down to the China town markets as we'd read that they grow at night. Upon reaching them we found that they did indeed grow and the whole street was now full. It was more of the same, although Alex did find a pair of the parachute pants for half the price as earlier, and so bought them. She even managed some bartering and knocked a quid off the price. A real bargain!

Tuesday morning we were again up early to try our luck at getting up the Petronas Towers. We also planned to go to the Batu Caves today and so we joined the queue of people already waiting to get tickets, saw that the morning slots were filling up quickly and so decided just to book some tickets for Saturday morning instead. We then made our way to the train station and paid a fortune for our tickets. 40p return, outrageous! With our bargain of a ticket we jumped on the train and in half an hour we were dropped off at the foot of some limestone cliffs on the outskirts of the city. There are 272 steps leading up to the caves and the bottom of these is a massive golden Buddha. Also guarding the steps were the local monkeys. Most of these guys just sat around and posed for pictures and were very cute indeed. We did meet one grumpy guardian however, who after I brushed his tail, turned with teeth bared and lunged at Alex. She managed to run away and so he chased me down the stairs for a bit before returning to sit in his spot. We later saw him chasing and snarling at other tourists too, so it wasn't just us. Grumpy thing. The caves at the top were pretty cool, with the ceiling rising over 100m high. There were also lots of little monuments scattered around the cave walls and a shrine type building in the upper part. Other than that the caves were very basic with not much going on. Definitely worth a visit though, just don't expect more than a cool cave at the top of a lot of steps. At the bottom however there were a few more temples and places to look around. The funniest part of my day was watching Alex try and walk through a square full of pigeons. She was going well until a bloke came and surrounded her in food and a little boy decided to chase them. I was honestly on my way to help her, but I needed to take a photo and besides, I couldn't stop laughing!!
The Batu Cave's hadn't taken quite as long as we thought they would and so we were at a bit of a loss as to how to spend the rest of the day. After cooling down in the hostel we took a walk down to Pudu Central, where we're getting the bus to Cameron Highlands from tomorrow. The highlight from the rest of the evening was the teryaki pork burger that I got from the food court, it was gorgeous!

As I said before, tomorrow morning we're off to enjoy the cool climate of the Cameron Highlands. We're looking forward to digging out our jeans and jumpers again.
Kuala Lumpur has been a decent city to explore, but we couldn't stay here too much longer, plus with everything so spread out, you definitely need to be able to cope with the heat as you walk around, or pay for a ton of metro tickets. We've had fun though and the food has made it worth every minute. We'll be back on Friday and I'm already looking forward to another trip to Meng Kee Grill Fish. Mmmm.... fried carrot cake!

Hope you are all well.
Thanks for reading. Keep in touch
Love Us Two
xx

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