Malaysia - Day 3

Today was an early start and last day in KL with a goal to reach Batu Caves via public transportation. We ate breakfast and set off to find which public transportation to use. In Malaysia, there are many different agencies that manage similar transportation which makes it a bit confusing on how we should pay for fares. We couldn't get the ticket machine to work for some reason and the card system was also confusing but ultimately we were able to figure out which line to take. We hopped on a subway and transferred onto a train to take us to Batu Caves. The train was extremely late so transferring was thankfully not too worrisome as we had to also take time to purchase train tickets.

Batu Caves

We got to Batu Caves just before the crowds from tour busses arrived so the plaza was somewhat 'quiet' with a large flock of pigeons milling about as pigeons would. I had to use the bathroom which costed maybe 10 MYR and thankfully the bathrooms were clean but wet. In the bathroom, I saw a cute floofy dog in the bathroom lying on the ground. When I came out, it was perched on the sink ledge looking curiously at the windows. It was a funny sight to see! Too bad I could go pet the dog as it was verrry cute and verrry fluffy.

Murugan and rainbow steps

On the steps

At the entrance of Batu Caves stands a large statue Murugan and rainbow steps leading up to the cave. I had thought the statue was a Buddha but that was totally incorrect and Murugan is a deity of Hinduism. Pictures probably don't do much justice but the statue is larger than life and I wonder how statues this large are created.

The colorful steps to the left are 272 steps that make for great Instagram photo ops but Jon and I the worst at it. By the time we started up the steps, the tour busses had started coming in and filling up the plaza. We trudged up the steps, checking out the monkeys and bypassing all the others. For healthy people, the steps are totally doable, maybe a tad steep especially when there's a lot of people on the steps going up and down or stopped.

Did I mention there were monkeys? These monkeys at Batu Caves are notorious for targeting people for their food and will grab stuff out of your bags or hands with no hesitations. While walking up the steps, we stopped to look at something and a monkey on the side snatched my bundled up yellow rain cover thinking it was food. Thankfully I was alerted immediately and grabbed it back from an upset monkey. A random guy in front of us started hissing at the monkey and telling it to stop. Not sure if he thought he was helpful or was doing it for fun.

Many of the monkeys had a baby tightly grasping the mom and they were cute! Look at how long the tail is!

The day was already hot and humid in the morning but the cave was cool a nice reprieve. The cave itself is very cavernous, with high ceilings and water dripping down. Never have I been to such large caves but it was ultimately a religious site so there were temples and other structures built within. It does put into prospective on how large this cave is to have so many structures and steps. Again, my pictures don't do just and probably make it look worse than it actually is.

Monkeys filled the caves, taking fruit from the offerings and throwing empty coconut shells from coconut stands to crack them. We saw a monkey try to steal an older couple's bag of food as they sat to repack their bags. There was another couple that was being harassed by a monkey as they were holding bananas and they ultimately caved and threw the monkey the banana. Bad choice.

Ramayana Caves

The crowds and monkeys were in full force when we exited Batu Caves and we quickly climbed down. It was hot and humid as usual. As we were walking back to the train station, we saw a sign for Ramayana Caves with little people around it. Not knowing what it was and the price looked cheap (10 RM), I thought why not and also cool down. Well, we were the only ones inside which made it a bit awkward as the staff was just looking at us. The cave was set like a museum and had somewhat tacky neon lights, not like a religious landmark like Batu Caves was.

The statues were depicting the story of Lord Rama who is another Hindu deity. The signs had brief English descriptions but not really enough to understand the story in depth.

We quickly walked through the exhibits and reached a set of very very very steep stairs that climbed up the side of the cave. Pictures do not do just at how steep these stairs are and they are also not evenly built stairs so you have to be very careful.

At the top was a large stalagmite and a lady that spoke very little English. She did tell us if I remember correctly that it took millions of years to form and maybe a form of energy. Online tells me that this is a lingam which is a phallic symbol that symbolizes generative energy. I'm not sure if it's true but I'll leave it up to you to decide what it looks like.

At the end before the exit, there was a mysterious gap in the cave wall that looked interesting though it wasn't clear if we were able to go in. I asked the staff if we could, and he said yes, turned on some lights and moving laser points to light up the cave. The cave does open up and the lights does make for some cool photo ops but it's unclear how this relates to Lord Rama.

Jalan Alor Food Street

Probably the most famous street in KL, we had to go check it out for dinner. It was honestly quite overwhelming with all the people and vendors calling you to sit down and so many different restaurants on the street. I had imagined it was like a night market where there are stands for people to grab quick bites but Jalan Alor was more like a street lined with restaurants where people sit outside and eat.

We did not know where to eat but online had recommended a restaurant for chicken wings where we ultimately tried and thought it was so so. I agree with online opinions saying it's a bit overrated and would rather go somewhere else for food but it does seem to be nice if you wanted to eat outside.

Final words

KL was an interesting experience with the little time we had to explore in. People were kind and usually could speak at least one of the languages we could. If we had more time, we definitely would have traveled further out from downtown to find durian stands and more local spots. Or next time we visit another city in Malaysia as often opinions say KL is not a great city to visit and there are much better cities for tourists. I leave you with a final video of a pedestrian crossing in Bukit Bintang where people take it into their own hands to cross because the pedestrian cross countdowns are way too short.

Malaysia - Day 1
Malaysia - Day 2

Malaysia - Day 2

After a not so fun night last night, we changed up our itinerary today to be our relaxing day to avoid any incidents in public where I would need to find a bathroom. It turned out Jon had brought anti-diarrheal medicine which I will never understand why he never offered it up until this morning. Diligently I took a pill every couple hours so I could survive going outside without feeling like running to the bathroom every hour.

We had breakfast buffet as usual and oddly today, the staff led us to a seat instead of allowing us to pick a table. We were sat in a busy spot so we opted to change to a quieter table in the back. I experimented with yogurt in hopes that the probiotics would help my stomach.

Malls

In the afternoon, after I felt things were more solid, we left the hotel to walk around the nearby malls, safe places with bathrooms. We went grocery shopping in the Giant supermarket in Sungei Wang Plaza where we found some interesting snacks like Pokémon themed Oreos, chocolate covered M&M copies called Nips, chips shaped in rings. I thought they were special but most of these could have also been found in Taiwan for a bit cheaper.

The only picture we took was this cat food with a cat that looked like how Cheerio would look at food if she was animated.

We explore the rest of the mall which was pretty run down and mostly had small shops. It was still a lot with many stories and even had a whole half of the mall that was basically empty. I read that the section was redone and revamped to have a cooler vibe and encourage more people to come but walking through there were very few vendors and was not a high class feeling mall that people probably wanted when coming into Bukit Bintang. That empty section did have a climbing/adventure gym at the very top that was closed that I would imagine would be the reason why people would come by.

Fahrenheit 88 is also another mall nearby and this mall had a similar feeling to some of the malls in Taiwan with lots of boutique shops. Again it was very empty as we walked through and it felt awkward to just be walking through with the sales people watching no one enter their shops. It was strange comparison to the Pavilion Mall which had tons of people milling around even if they weren't buying things.

As mentioned earlier, the Pavilion Mall is the most high class mall in the area with tons of name brand stores. The mall is filled with people going up and down the walkways, up and down the escalators. Forums say that people in Malaysia love malls and I can see it here. Obviously since I'm not a shopper, we just walked through and tried to find some food for a snack. The food court is huge, with so many options to choose from and all the dishware and silverware is standardized and reusable so no need for anyone to serve things in single use wares.

Petronas Towers

Since we had nothing better to do, we decided to take the walk to the Petronas towers. The Petronas Towers are the most famous landmark in Kuala Lampur as they are the tallest structure in the city and have lights on them that make the towers almost look silvery at night. It's too bad that it was rainy and we weren't able to enjoy exploring the park in front of the towers.

What is very cool is that from the Pavilion Mall to the Petronas Towers, it is all connected in a network of covered raised walkways, tunnels, underground malls so that you do not have to walk in the rain or the heat. Tons of people were walking it at night and it honestly was a strange sight to see so many people using it like a highway to get around.

There was really only one spot to take a picture of the Petronas near the city hall because it was pouring rain when we got there. The picture is not great but hopefully you can see what I mean about the towers looking silvery and draws your eyes with all the lights going up the towers.

Of course at the bottom of the towers is another fancy mall which we did not really explore as we were done with malls for the day. In front of the mall where the park is, there is a fountain show that occurs at 7pm every day. Everyone was trying to find a spot under the roof to avoid the rain so we tried to secure a good spot in the front.

When the show started, there were colored lights and small fountains of water going up and down in a row across the lake. We waited for a couple minutes hoping to see something exciting but the fountain show continue to do the same thing. It was pretty underwhelming and I would say not worth seeing.

Back to Hotel

We got back to the hotel relatively early in the night at 8 pm for a sleepless city. There were still plenty of people on a weeknight going to and from the malls and the street was filled with cars. Because of the car first mentality of drivers, we saw many times where cars would block pedestrian crosswalks and pedestrians would not care at all about the stoplights. The crosswalk in front of the mall always has traffic stopped in it so we would see crowds of people squeezing between the bumpers of cars.

Since it was relatively early in the night, we actually get the time to use the pool! Finally! We excitedly made our way to the pool looking forward to a nice refreshing dip only to stick our toes in the water and find that the pool is unheated and very cold. It took a lot of courage for Jon to even get half his body into the water. I imagine if it were during the day when it was hot, it would have been nice to jump into a cold pool, but the air at night was actually more of a lukewarm feeling after the rain subsided. We swam a couple of laps, enjoyed the pool to ourselves until 2 people came by to jump in the pool a couple times before they left.

It was a great feeling to come back from the pool, take a shower, and settle into the bed for another good night's rest.

Malaysia - Day 1

Malaysia - Day 3

Malaysia 2024 - Day 1

National Mosque of Malaysia

Bright and early we got up for the hotel breakfast buffet before setting off on a day of walking around some notable landmarks. Our first destination was the National Mosque of Malaysia and of course we had to try out their MRT. Unfortunately the public transportation system is a bit confusing with all the different agencies and being somewhat disconnected from the tourist attractions. There was no direct line to the mosque so we took the green line from Bukit Bintang to Muzium Negara (National Museum of Malaysia).

There was no time to waste as the walk from the station to the mosque would take 25 minutes and thankfully the route took us through part of the Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately for us, the botanical gardens sits on a hill that we climbed via a set of long stairs. I hadn't talked about this before but Malaysia is HUMID which was expected but it has been a minute since I've had to exist in humidity. I kept telling myself as we climbed that it's actually not that bad, could be much worse. Then the mosquitoes started biting. Definitely bring bug spray for the forest areas.

20 minutes of meandering through the gardens led us down to the National Mosque of Malaysia, a building that looks unassuming on the outside but is very vast and specious inside the walls. The mosque was meant to be a symbol of independence from the British government. I was worried that I had made a foolish decision to wear shorts (already foolish because of mosquitoes) and that I would be the only person that needed to wear the robes provided by the Mosque. Thankfully, it turns out all females needed to wear the robe regardless of what you were dressing. The robes were very baggy and females needed to wear the hood up to cover the hair so it reminded me of Mario Shy Guy. Jon also opted to wear one because he was wear shorts.

All shoes must be taken off before going up a set of stairs that opens up to a large airy space with a long pool in the center. The granite floors were clean and you can see someone occasionally dust mopping the floors. We walked around the complex, making our way around the different spots.

While exploring, I spotted a little cat sleeping under a shoe rack that showed no interest in me and continued to sleep.

Merdeka Square (Independence Square)

We wrapped up our time at the National Mosque and planned out our path to another symbol of independence, Merdeka Square. Knowing that Kuala Lampur is notorious for being terrible infrastructure for pedestrians, the route had one challenge of cross some fast roads right across from the mosque. Walking to that road, it didn't seem so bad considering it is only a 2 lane road but in KL, the cars drive fast for such a small road. We decided to give it a shot because there was clearly a path on the other side. A few minutes went by and there was no good gap for us to run across. Another girl next to us also seemingly following the same route as us watch the traffic go by. Finally we saw a chance when a car looked like it was going to turn instead of going forward, bolted across the road and the turning car did not actually turn so close call for us.

The rest of the walk wasn't so bad and we quickly made it to Merdeka square which is a big grassy field surrounded by buildings. Many tourists were there taking pictures with the field and the clock tower and we even saw the girl from the mosque moments after. The square felt very out of place with all the commercial high rises surrounding it and otherwise, to me there was not much to see.

Chinatown and Petaling Jaya

Jon cupping a durian

From Merdeka Square, we crossed over the Klang River (River of Life) after waiting at a crosswalk that never turned green for the pedestrians. People were crossing in front of cars because this light was probably never going to turn green.

Walking through some dirtier parts, we made it to Chinatown and found ourselves at a durian dessert shop called Durian BB. It was a cute cafe that had A/C and durian flavored ice cream and drinks and addictive theme song that will forever be stuck in our heads. They are heavy on marketing and want you to buy things from their shop by coming by with free samples and even suspiciously placing tokens for the claw machine on your table. We used the tokens, didn't get anything and got suckered into buying some freeze dried mangosteen because it felt awkward not buying anything. At least we got a cute Durian BB tote bag that was useful for the rest of our trip. 

The fun part of the shop was upstairs where they have large figures of their mascots (different tropical fruits) and even a little game that you play by moving your body to control a character to dodge durians. We were pretty much the only ones upstairs and had some fun looking at the different exhibits.

After cooling down, we walked down Petaling Jaya to see what it is all about but I walked quickly through the street because I hated buying things under pressure and knowing that this is a tourist trap, I wasn't interested in any of the things being sold. While this street is in Chinatown, most of the sellers were not Chinese.

We explored a bit more, stopped at a cafe to cool down. At this point the sky had opened up and the rain was pouring down endlessly, thunder signaling a monsoon passing through. It seems most of the tourists took cover as they didn't have umbrellas but we whipped out ours and powered through some rain to a noodle shop to eat a late lunch.

We were seated with an older gentleman eating alone. After we ordered, he asked us in English where we were from to which we answered the United States. We had a nice conversation with him and learned that he was from KL. Since he is retired, he enjoys coming in the city for the day to walk around and eat his favorite foods like the noodle shop we were at. Though he did say Penang has much better food in his opinion. He apologized for his bad English but I thought it was quite good and communicated just fine with us. I asked him where he learned his English and replied that he learned through watching English shows and movies. He is also fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin and understood Jon and I when we spoke either languages. In his younger days, he frequently went to Singapore for work and seems to appreciate the US but sadly he said it was too expensive to travel to the US. After some more chatting, he humbly bid us farewell and went on his way.

After slurping our noodles, we opted to walk all the way back to our hotel. Our little flower umbrellas was at least enough to keep our bodies dry but Jon's shoes got completely soaked especially from the puddles we had to cross. Surprisingly, we didn't have a terrible time find sidewalks but did have to take some breaks from the strong downpours.

Bukit Bintang

By the time we got back to downtown, the rain was reduced to a sprinkle and we walked through the empty streets of Jalan Alor before the dinner crowd. In the area, much to the opposition from Jon, we walked into an quiet alley to escape the people and we stumbled upon some animal murals on the faces of the buildings. It was very cool to see the art integrated with the buildings to bring some brightness to the alley.

We went back to the hotel, thankful to have some time to rest and dry up. Dinner was right around the corner but neither of us were hungry so we went out to the near by malls, walked through and ended up at Brands Outlet which is like a cheaper Old Navy. There was a whole section of T-Shirts that Jon just had to take buy a couple shirts along with some chunky sandals he desperately needed since he didn't bring any sandals.

By this time, I was getting sudden urges to empty my bowls which I had attributed to the constant hot to cold switches. I decided to try to make the urges go away and each time it went away, I thought I was all good. But they kept coming back and while Jon was ordered a sandwich for dinner, I couldn't take it anymore and ran back to the hotel. Through the night, it was evident I had probably gotten traveler's diarrhea already on the first day. We could only speculate that it came either came from the salad I had from the hotel or the water we asked for at the cafe. It was a full day that ended tragically and made for a uncomfortable night and my first shart ever.

Malaysia - Day 2
Malaysia - Day 3

Malaysia 2024 Flight and Arrival

May of 2024, Jon and I did a trip to Southeast Asia in part for a wedding in Singapore. We made a trip out of it and tagged on Malaysia since I've never been and it's right next door. It would be my first time to Southeast Asia and a long time since I've traveled to another Asian country besides Taiwan so I was excited. We would be in Malaysia for 3 full days (5/6 arrive at night - 5/10 leave at noon)

Flight

We flew to Malaysia via Singapore Air which is supposed to be a top tier airline so I was curious to see just how good the experience was. Flight time was the longest I've ever been on and it was unimaginable to think we would sit on a plane for 16 hours just to go to Singapore and another hour to go to Kuala Lampur. Thankfully, we were able to book the seats so that there was an empty seat between Jon and I on the long haul. The plane was on the older side so it didn't have as luxury feeling as I expected and the bathrooms were cruddy but overall it was a good experience. I ended up playing 2048 a ton and watched Holdovers before I went crazy.

As we got closer to landing in Singapore, we checked how the transfer would be at the airport to catch the Kuala Lampur leg. Much to our dismay, the 2 gates are in different areas of the terminal and < 50 minutes of time from landing to get to the terminal. I thought we were making good time with the flight but we ended up having less than 10 minutes to get to the other terminal. We got off the plane as fast as we could and immediately started running to the next gate. Signs above said walking would take more than 10 minutes which freaked us out even more and meant there was no stopping even if we hadn't run more than 10 feet in a long time.

Sunset

We noticed some other passengers running behind us so at least we were not the only crazy ones running through the airport. When we got to the gate, we found ourselves needing to go through security (in Singapore, security is at each individual gate) and the other passengers arrived soon after us, all breathlessly throwing their stuff on the conveyor belt. I'm not sure what that security is for because my bag was filled with small cups of water and Jon had a full water bottle in his backpack but they let it through and only asked me to dump the water bottle I was holding in my hand. The flight was uneventful and super quick but we saw a nice sunset as we entered Singapore.

Never again will I do a 50 minute layover in Singapore airport again.

Arrival

KL airport is very busy for 10 pm at night and we walked through throngs of people just to exit the gate areas. With my empty water bottle, I wanted to fill up it up with the fancy Asian water dispensers but sadly the station I saw had a group of guys gulping down cup after cup of water like it was the most delicious drink and I didn't want to stand their filling up my water bottle while they waited. Also with the amount of people, I was scared of catching Covid.

We picked up a 7 Day CeleDigi sim card that Jon had ordered ahead of time on Klook and we were on our way to picking up our check bags and heading to the hotel. In KL and Singapore, there is an app called Grab that is basically the same as Uber/Lyft but much cheaper. Jon ordered one to take us to the hotel in downtown and costed $13 for a ~30 min ride. Immediately I can tell that driving in KL is going to be scary as our driver barely drove within the lanes and drove very very fast. KL stays awake at night for sure and there was even heavy traffic around our hotel at midnight!

Things in Malaysia are supposed to be much cheaper and hotels are no exception. We stayed at the Westin in downtown which is supposed to be a 5 star hotel and we paid around $170 a night for a high floor (Jon wanted it) and breakfast buffet. Other Western brand 5 star hotels were a bit higher in the $200s and the less known 5 star hotels were much much cheaper so we were a bit weary about trying.

The Westin's room itself leaves much to be desired and definitely did not feel 5 star class. The room had a slight cigarette smell on the first day and the bathroom was old/not well remodeled. For example the shower floor did was not graded correctly so the water pool and did not drain completely. I would be disappointed if I had to pay 5 star prices in the States but there's nothing that can be done and we needed to hit the hay for the next day.

View from 30th floor.