February 22, 2012

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia




Sorry folks for the long hiatus, sorry for using the word folks too. As some of you may know I have been back in Korea since February 2nd but before that I was traveling around exploring the city of Kuala Lumpur and the Island of Bali.

My friends Anne, Esther and I traveled to Kuala Lumpur and stayed at the Rainforest Bed and Breakfast, it's off the main road in a great area next to a yummy thai/indian restaurant. The hotel was situated so that we could walk everywhere and the places we couldn't walk to we would just get on the public transportation (looked just like the people mover in Detroit) which would take us wherever we wanted.



The only bummer about the [we'll just call it the] people mover was that each line was owned by a different country so if you wanted to transfer you had to get off and pay for another ticket then get back on again. Someone was telling me Tokyo was like that in Japan but I really don't know if that's true.

The highlights of our KL visit include:

the Masjid Jamek Mosque where we got a free tour of the temple. They provided the garbs for proper temple attire which turned out to be a theme across southeast asia. We were given the tour by a woman with just the three of us but later a couple of Chinese women latched on but she went and showed us different parts of the temple and answered all our questions. Visiting the mosque wasn't even part of the plan but it was differently worth it. Right after we got off at the Masjid Jamek Station we were beckoned to by a man behind the gate of the temple. At first it looked sketch but it turned out to be awesome. Highly recommend doing it.

Also right off the Masjid Jamek station was Dataran Merdeka (also called Medeka Square). This is where Malaysian clained their independence from colonial rule (from the brits). At the square there is the "world's tallest flagpole on record" but everyone knows the tallest flagpole (off the record) is in North Korea. We took pictures at the square and right across the street was the Sultan Abdul Samad Building which was designed by the same British dude that designed the Masjid Jamek Mosque. (Something I actually learned from the tour)

Within a walking distance away is the National Mosque which we couldn't take a tour off because we were not M
uslim and that day/time they were only giving tours to visiting Muslims. We could see the outside though and it was really beautiful.

Our last couple stops during that day consisted of the World's Largest Free Flying Aviary which wasn't really very great but we did see a peacock shake it's tail feathers. Then we went to the Islamic Arts Museum which was really beautiful and had art, clothing and miniature models of Mosques all over the world.

The next day we went to the Batu Caves which is where we saw all our monkeys. It pretty much made the whole trip worth it (the monkeys not the caves). We got to the caves by taking the People Mover, it was the last stop on the red(?) line.

Our last day was spent at the Golden Triangle which is a mall under the Patronas towers that holds all the designer clothing stores. They had a lot of other western stores too such as sephora, banana republic and gap. We sat outside it for awhile because the day was so beautiful then we walked to the Pavillion where they had the United Buddy Bears. The United Buddy Bears were created by Eva Herlitz and each bear represents a different country so we had fun finding different countries and seeing what each country did for their bear. There
were also a lot of designer brand stores in the Pavillion which was fun because we could go in and see all the clothes, shoes, bags and makeup the product has and no one gave us any judgmental looks. After going into the Louis Vuitton store to look at their new wallets Esther and I had afternoon tea which was fun because it was at a really nice tea house.

But honestly one of my most favorite parts of the trip was the food. It was a blend of Indian and Thai and Malay and it was so so so so so delicious. The coffee shops served meals too and there were always fresh juices. The White Coffee Shop had seriously the best iced coffee I've EVER had in my life and the lime in the food was so delicious. You could get spicy or sweet you could be tame or wild but the food was always delicious. Seriously not even the monkeys beat the food.



1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the update on you. Love seeing the pictures.

    Gig

    ReplyDelete