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