First week in Kuala Lumpur

I've finally found some time to sit down and start writing this blog as Jade has been keeping us very busy traipsing all over KL, always in search of the best food and things to take photos of! (I'm going to have to take back my comment Jess about him not being too bad, he's taken a ton of photos!!)

Anyway what have we been doing you ask? Well quite a lot actually. I'll tell you about Kuala Lumpur for now, there'll be more to follow. We flew into Kuala Lumpur and eventually made it to our guesthouse right in the heart of Chinatown with a bus stop right outside, a lot going on and so noisy which meant we didn't get much sleep that night (or the next few nights for that matter!). The first few days were pretty overwhelming: it's hot and humid and people are very much in your face asking you to look at things, buy something or telling you you need their product. After a couple of days you just get used to it and learn to keep walking and not make eye contact, it's quite amazing how quickly they can switch into sales mode when they think they might get a sale out of you. One minute they'll be sitting at their stall, texting and ignoring everyone. Suddenly they see you and they're up, animated, telling you everything they have on offer: "come Miss", "you need watch Miss?", "I give you good price Miss!". It can be quite a lot. And this isn't limited to the hundreds of market stalls, you get the same thing in the malls too.

In all of the craziness we did manage to find the infamous Lot 10 Hutong - a mall food court like no other. Such a cool place and we could stay there for days trying all the different food. In fact we did go back a couple of times so we could try all the things we wanted (and could still go back and not have the same thing twice). Lot 10 was setup by the CEO of the mall basically taking all his favourite street food stalls off the street and putting them into one handy food court designed by Yuhkichi Kawai, an award-winning Japanese interior designer. The char siu noodle dish and banana puffs must get a special mention - they are seriously delicious!

Part of the food court maze, you could get lost in here!

Jade enjoying some weird noodle dish

One afternoon we caught a train from the central station to the Batu Caves, a Hindu temple within a mountain. One word: amazing. To get to the temple you have to walk up 272 steps to the cave with the temples inside. At the top you get a pretty amazing view, complete with monkeys eating bananas all the way up also. The temples are pretty fascinating all intricately designed and set in a giant limestone cave which is very impressive. It's just a shame about all the rubbish although the temples themselves are spotless, there is rubbish piled up in every corner. It's nothing unusual though, everywhere you go there is rubbish dumped and piled up all over the place. I can definitely see now why New Zealand has the clean green image it has.

Entrance to the Batu Caves

Monkey!

So much rubbish!

One night Jade dragged me to some really out of the way random street that was meant to have authentic Malay food. I really wasn't fussed on the curry he choose for me as I had no idea what anything was and was even less pleased when I saw giant cockroaches crawling around out back. Jade really enjoyed his though and soon wanted to go try the weird looking bright green furry balls for dessert that we had walked by earlier. Neither of us had any idea what anything there was but we dished up a plate, which also included a custard-like looking cake to try, and found a table amongst the wandering stray starving cats. Jade tried them first, biting into a green ball. Squelch! A thick black sweet liquid exploded from the middle. Yum! I have to say they were both extremely good! Some googling later and we found out these deserts are called Kuih. We think the green balls were Klepon (a Malaysian boiled rice cake, stuffed with liquid palm sugar and rolled in grated coconut) and the cake Bingka Ubi (a Malaysian tapioca cake) both of which I'd recommend trying.

Klepon and Bingka Ubi, yummy!

Well I think a stop here on our way back home is a must and may have to buy another bag or three! So many shops and so many malls and they're all right next to each other, I think I'm definitely going to have fun!

Anyway that's been the great KL so far, stay tuned for more adventures from white toast and jam.