Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

Malaysia?  Who actually goes to Malaysia, right?  I mean, people transit through KL all the time... but who actually goes there?  We do!

KL - a world-class city

Malaysia is a very popular tourist destination. If you're thinking: "hunh?", you're not alone. Globally, it's a top destination, but not for Western tourists. It bring in visitors from all over Asia instead - and with fervour.

26M visitors arrived in Malaysia in 2016.  In the late 80's Malaysia started really promoting itself internationally.   Since then, it has become a tourism juggernaut.

We chose Malaysia for 4 reasons:

1. I lived there for a year when I was 7/8 and I wanted to relive my childhood 
2. KL is a major transport hub and we were passing through anyway
3. We wanted the kids to experience a predominantly Islamic culture
4. The food!

We started in KL, hence this post and the previous one about Petronas' Petrosains discovery centre.

OK - let's dig into KL and surrounds!

The Garden City of Lights

That's KL's nickname - and it's aptly named!  The city is clean, tidy and orderly and peppered with greenery.  It is innervated by fabulous highways that are very well maintained.  Signage is solid and folks obey the law, most of the time... on the roads and, at a glance, elsewhere too.

Great signage, great highways, clean and tidy

There are street food stands and other typical Asian sights, but with a twist.... you see, Malaysia is about 60% Muslim, 20% Buddhist and there's some Christianity and Hinduism thrown in for good measure along with a smattering of other religious backgrounds.  It's a full-on culture mash-up.

Restaurants and people's dress seem to roughly reflect this distribution.  There's a disconnect when it come to signage - they generally read in this order:
1. Malay
2. English
3. Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese)
4. Arabic

How is Arabic last?!

KL's botanical gardens are a great example of the 'Garden City' showing off its greenery.

The botanical gardens - a great jogging spot - another accidental 12K

 Bogs and tropical plants

Malaysia has an amazing growing climate!

Throughout the city in the early hours and just before bed, you can hear the Muslim call to prayer, in the form of chanting/singing, ringing out over the city from loud speakers - it's quite something to wake up to!

Downtown scenic areas

The monorail

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend that anyone flying through KL take a long layover in the city to get acquainted with Malaysia - it's a wonderul place to visit!

Food

The food in KL and in Malaysia in general is a cultural fusion.  You will find good Indian food alongside traditional Malay and even Chinese, all in the same restaurant!  There are also mashup cuisines - like Nyonyan.  If you order a burger in Malaysia, it's likely to come with a very Malay ketchup and be smeared in a BBQ sauce that has an Indian or Malay flair.

The staple street food is called Char Kuey Teow.   It's much like Pad Thai, but flavoured more subtly.  Frying is the name of the game here... fry, fry, fry!  Nobody bakes - it's too damned hot to run an oven!

Kuey Teow

Another classic street food is the curry puff.  It's like a samosa but shaped differently and with different filling. You can buy these almost anywhere  - even at the gas station.  Of course, these are deep-fried, not baked :)

Curry puffs

Puffs of all kinds!

Last, but certainly not least, is the Malaysian satay stick - chicken or pork.  These are marinated meat skewers cooked on a charcoal grill - often on the street, even for brick-and-mortar restaurants - the smell brings in customers.  Satay is served with a peanut-based dipping sauce.  You buy them by the stick... CAD$0.33/ea - and they are TO DIE FOR.

Satay - there's nothing like it!

There are other, more complete, dishes... like Beef Rendang and Nasi Lemak... but truth be told, my gang has yet to be wowed by these.  Rest assured that Malay cuisine lives up to its Asian origins - it's heavily steeped in rice, seafood and sauces.

Wait - I've left out something very important - Ikan Bilis.  This translates to Anchovies... but these aren't your granddad's oil-soaked, salty pizza topping.  Nope - these are salted and dried fishes that sit, safely, out in the sun for days or even months in plastic bags.  They are graded by their attractiveness - smaller ones are cheaper.

Ikan Bilis!

Ikan Bilis put a very special scent in the air - a heady "did someone just step on a dead skunk" kind of smell - think sweaty hockey socks meets blue cheese.  Here's the best part - Malaysians will put Ikan Bilis on anything. Soups, stir fries - you name it.  They serve a similar purpose to Japanese Bonito flakes or Thai Fish Sauce.

While in KL, we hit some markets and enjoyed some sit-down Indian food. Yumm.

Authentic Indian - yumm!

Revisiting my youth

Okay, many of us have revisited a part of our youth only to discover that our childhood memories were, well, a little off.  Our visit to the neighbourhood I grew up in was like that - a distorted echo of a childhood memory.

Our house!

So, my family lived in KL in 1985 - I was 7.  It was a formative and exciting time for me.  I remember crazy early mornings on the bus to school (school started very early and finished early to avoid the intense afternoon heat).  It wasn't a western-style school bus - it was more of a city bus... and the driver cranked tunes - 80's pop hits.

Our apartment complex  - we started here and then moved into the house shown above

I remember my school - the Garden School, with its inner outdoor courtyard, school uniforms and 4 student 'houses'.  I remember getting off the school bus daily and hitting the local corner store for a sweet treat on my way home.

Though it may sound odd, one of my favourite pastimes was to hunt frogs in the gutter in front of our apartment.  Countless hours were spent knee-deep in gutter water after a torrential monsoon rain - yay!

I remember the jungle encroaching on our back yard.  Back balconies are all meshed-in because wild jungle monkeys wreak havoc on anything you leave outside.  AWESOME!

Distance from jungle to balcony

I remember our friends there and some of the restaurants we ate at, and the flavors and smells.  I remember nuances and feelings - some vague, some more concrete. Above all, I remember it all with fondness.

Our cell phone plans in Malaysia included unlimited WhatsApp calling... so we actually dialed in my parents to give them a 30min live virtual tour of their old neighbourhood!  It was exciting to hold my virtual parents out the window on my phone so they could drive around and take in the sights - thank you technology!

All the local businesses had changed hands or been repurposed... the walls were not as high nor the hills as steep as I remembered.  The apartment complex was smaller and the house's gardens were more modest... but it was soul food nonetheless!

The Batu Caves

There is a cave system high on a hill in the north end of KL.  In it, Hindu followers have built shrines.  The cave is accessed via a long, vibrantly-coloured concrete staircase.  It's hard to describe... so I won't - here it is.

The rainbow staircase

The caves are high enough above the city to offer some inspiring views though they, themselves, are unfortunately dirty and, to be frank, stinky.  Maybe it's the bat guano, maybe it's the pigeons or maybe its the garbage or the sheer humanity of and in the place, but we didn't love the experience of it.

Lively!

Shrine-in-a-cave - you can see Cheryl and the kids at the orange gates

A worshipper?!  Im kidding - but there are clever monkeys everywhere!

Pretty artworks

I CRUSHED a shrine!!!

More pretty art!

Holy house in the sun spotlight

Look closely - this guy's getting cleaved in 2!

Big shrine, in the dark - kind of spooky

The artwork on and around the shrines is beautiful, but not especially awe-inspiring.  We liked the natural aspects of the cave and found that the shrine, in many ways, took away from its natural beauty - sorry for the brutal honesty.

Unlike many things we've seen in KL, the Batu Caves were a bit disorganized and... well... dirty. You might be thinking: "well, they are caves, Mike!".  Touché... but the grime was human, not animal or nature.

This loosely controlled chaos did lead to some fun though - there was a festival in town to celebrate a Hindu religious occasion and it made the access path to the cave staircase feel like a walk through India... an unexpected treat!

We'll do another post on KL soon - stay tuned, and thanks for reading along!