Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Jan 13: to Kuala Lumpur!
Today was uneventful: we slept in grabbed some breakfast, and grabbed a taxi to the bus station. The bus ride was about 2 hours, and we hopped off, located the subway station (without any help from the taxi drivers), and made our way to Chinatown. The subway stop was much further from the main area than our map indicated, and everything was wet from the rain (making it difficult to walk with our shitty flip flops). After a bit of searching, we found a spot for the night, and then we ate some food because we were starving (hadn't eaten since late breakfast). We also decided that our hostel wasn't quite up to standard, so we looked for a while until we found a place suitable for tomorrow night. Afterward, we hung out, watched a bit of TV, and went to bed.

Jan 14: exploring the Lake Gardens in KL
This morning we planned to head over to the Lake Gardens. Unfortunately, the 'afternoon rain' was a bit early, and it started raining around 11, so we looked for some shelter. After an hour or so, we got fed up, and bought an umbrella. We then made our way to the National Monument, snapped a picture, and headed toward the butterfly garden. Unfortunately, it was closed because of the rain. So, we headed to the bird park, and had a great time. We saw lots of very colorful and birds, and it even stopped raining. After the rain stopped, we saw a lot more birds, and even several peacocks displaying. We also got to see the bird keeper feed the eagles pieces of meat and/or little baby chickens (we had seen those hatching earlier)--the guy threw them up in the air, and the birds flew down and caught them After the birds, we had a quick snack of chicken sandwich and mashed-potatoes-from-a-machine (turns out the mashed potatoes were better than the sandwich). Then we headed back to the butterfly garden, since it was no longer raining. There weren't too many butterflies, but the ones we did see were quite beautiful, with the exception of the butterfly that wouldn't leave us alone and kept pooping (?) on us (large droplets of a water-like substance kept coming out of it's abdomen...ew). Afterwards we headed to the orchid garden, which didn't have that many orchids, and then to the planetarium, which was pretty cool. Afterwards, we tried to make it to the National Museum, but we were quite exhausted and hungry (and felt we didn't really have the energy to explore a museum), and decided to just have a quick look at the old train station and the National Mosque. The old train station (and the new one) were both quite beautiful, with amazing architecture. Afterwards, we headed to the National Mosque, where we were given robes and I was given a head covering. We wanted to just take a quick look around, but we ended up talking to this tour guide/muslim (?) for over an hour about Islam. Thoroughly exhausted and starving, we found the train station (with a little bit of trouble, actually) and made our way back. We had some ok-Indian food and then headed back to our hostel, where we ate some chocolate and watched School of Rock and then went to bed.

Jan 15: Chow Kit market, Little India, and lots of food fails
This morning we woke up, hopped on the subway, and headed towards the Chow Kit market, which is a giant wet market (meaning they sell fresh products like veggies, meats and seafood) a little further out from the center of Kuala Lumpur. The market itself was pretty interesting (we think it was the biggest wet market we've been to yet) and we spent a while just wandering around (and bought some mangoes). After Chow Kit, we decided to skip the subway and walk back through Little India, on the way picking up a bright orange drink. In my mind, there are two options for a bright orange drink: orange or mango. Wrong. It was sweet corn flavored, and disgusting (food fail #1). It turns out there was a market set up in Little India that day and we decided to wander through the streets trying foods as we went. This was a good idea in theory, but in practice it turned out to be disastrous. First we picked up a samosa (decent, but cold) and some interesting looking spring rolls (they were gross, food fail #2). Walking down the street, we redeemed ourselves by splitting a chicken sandwich (Asian style, covered in red and white sauces that you really have no idea what they are). We also tried red paste grilled in a banana leaf (also gross, tasted like fish, food fail #3). Eventually we escaped the food fail market and found ourselves at the Masjid Jamek mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Kuala Lumpur. After a brief walk around the mosque, we found we were hungry and sat down at an Indian Nasi Campur (buffet style) restaurant and split a plate of the buffet and this awful noodle dish. The noodle dish was.... horrible. It was basically spaghetti noodles covered in gross peanut sauce with apples, cucumbers, bread, mystery meat, and something else that tasted so bad we can't even remember what it was (ULTIMATE FOOD FAIL!!! #4). I'm not even exaggerating, this food was really that bad. As Steph eloquently put it, the food was so bad "my soul hurt". Feeling a little bit sick, we walked over to Mederka square, hoping some historical buildings would soothe our aching stomachs. Mederka square is where the people declared their independence from Britain and has a whole bunch of old-style architecture, including a cricket field. It was pretty interesting to see all these buildings that are basically half-european, half-malaysian in style. After Mederka square we headed over to the Central Market, which was built in 1936 as a wet market. As tourism increased, however, it completely changed into a trinket market, holding tacky Malaysian souvenirs of all kinds (and pretty high prices). After walking around the market for a while we went to look for tour to a city near by, but it was really expensive and we decided to pass. After we decided it was time for some internet to catch up on some blogging and decide what to do for the next few days (we were really behind at this point). A while later, we headed towards Chinatown for a rice claypot, some veggies (pretty good, pretty much gourmet compared to what we had experienced earlier this day), and a beer (ugh, $5!). After some food we headed back to our hostel and watched Night at the Museum: The Battle for the Smithsonian while eating some mangoes and chocolate before heading to bed.

Jan 16: Batu Caves and exploring Chinatown
Today we woke up, ate some Roti, and hopped on a bus headed towards the Batu Caves. After about a 30 minute bus ride (the caves are about 13km outside Kuala Lumpur), we hopped out and joined the 500 hundred or so other people going to visit the temple. Batu caves is a pretty neat location; it's basically a temple inside this huge cave. It was an especially interesting time to visit this temple, because we visited only a few days before the annual Hindu Thaipusam festival. Thaipusam is a pretty big deal over here, where devotes cleanse themselves by fasting, shaving their heads, and doing a pilgrimage while engaging in various acts of devotion. What we saw was mostly people carrying pots of milk on their head or walking up the stairs on their knees (this girl did this the entire way up and there were lots, and lots, and lots of stairs). Apparently during the festival itself, however, people end up piercing their bodies with hooks and their tongues and cheeks with skewers as acts of devotion. After visiting the temples in the big cave, we paid 5 ringgit to go inside the "Dark Cave", which true to its name, was really dark. The cave has been kept as dark as possible, with lights spread out far enough so your just able to see where you are walking and not much else. This makes the cave really interesting because the entire time you are walking you can hear the screeching of bats all around you (and smell and see bat guano everywhere also). At one point during the walk we came upon a stretch of 3 lights that were flickering so we couldn't see anything, and decided it was a good time to turn around since we didn't have a light of our own to guide the way. Outside the Dark Cave there were tons of monkeys ready to steal stuff from you, but we managed to avoid them on our way down. After a brief confusion about where to catch the bus, we were on our way back to Kuala Lumpur. Once we were back in the city we decided to explore Chinatown and found ourselves at the Sri Mahamariamman temple, another Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur. When we walked inside, there was some sort of ceremony going on and there were people playing awesome music. The ceremony was interesting to witness because it involved this guy putting all kinds of things (like berries, coconut milk, red paint, yellow paint, white powder) on this statue and then washing them off with water. It was a fascinating experience, to say the least. After this, we wandered around Chinatown some more and eventually ended up wandering to a street called Jalan Alor for some food. Jalan Alor is a famous hawker street, which means it is full of stalls to order food. We had some chicken wings (supposedly the best in the world, but they weren't, but were still good), some koey teow, and some veggies. After some dinner, we ended up wandering around this area of town (named the Golden Triangle, don't know exactly why, but it is where the nicest malls and hotels are located) and got a tad bit lost. We eventually found our way out by finding Jalan Alor again (very lucky, actually) and found that we had done a giant loop of the area. At this point we were tired and ready to head back to the hostel for some mangoes and chocolate and TV (we watched Smallville, it was the only thing in English on TV).

Jan 17: Petronas towers, and massage!
Today we woke up early and headed towards the Petronas towers hoping to make it to the observation deck (its supposedly free, according to our guidebook). Once we got there, however, we found out that the towers are closed on Mondays and furthermore are closed for some maintenance, and also cost 10 ringgit (instead of free). A little bit disappointed, we walked outside for some pictures and wandered around the area briefly looking for a park. We discovered that the park we were looking for was actually the opposite direction we were walking, and upon finding it, discovered it was actually kind of lame. At this point we hopped back on the subway and headed back towards Chinatown for some blogging time. After a super long session to get all these past 3 blogs updated, we decided we hadn't eaten in a while and found some delicious duck with noodles for a snack. After a snack, we headed for a massage shop we had scouted out the night before. What we got was a painful, back-cracking, butt rubbing, and exceedingly relaxing massage. We both decided that we were definitely in a bit of pain after, but it still felt great. Next we walked around looking for a guesthouse to exchange our books (we had 4 to exchange at the time) and finally found a place that would take 2 of our books, but really had no books we really wanted. We ended up trading them anyways since we had nothing to read on the flight home. After trading our books we headed back to Jalan Alor for some grilled fish, mussels in a delicious sauce, and garlic baby-bok choy. The fish was pretty good and the other two were pretty awesome. Satisfied from dinner, we decided to go back to our hostel for some relaxation (we definitely wanted to lay down after that massage) and to pack our bags. After packing we went out for our last errands: book exchange (if possible, all our books sucked), gift buying (Steph had a last minute purchase) and for a snack. We ended up being about 50 ringgit short of our budget goal, so luckily we ran into an exchange on our way. After picking up the necessary cash, we headed for Central Market to a book store we had found. It turns out our trade earlier that day worked out for the better, since we got much more money for new books than we would have with the old (the two we got earlier were in really good condition). So we bought two books and headed back to Chinatown for our snack, picking up a fresh mango on the way. Once there we found a place to eat our last koey teow and roti bom and chased it with a beer.

Jan 18: back home!