Just licking my lips

the last two days have been about food. We were on a quest for Ramadhan break-fast night markets. (During Ramadhan, approximately the month of august, people fast all day. For people who are super hardcore i think this might include abstaining from drinking anything)

Though we avoided the kittens up for grabs (sorry craig, i definitely veto that poll) at the wet market, we've tried a lot of other local fare including Chinese, Malaysian-Chinese, Indian and Malaysian food. However, after four meals of unsuccessful attempts to find a spot not inundated with tourists we finally found what we were looking for!

A side note. Ari just woke himself up in a puddle of drool on his pillow. It's 8:45pm and he took a nap two hours ago. He said "no i'm not sleeping, just licking my lips" haha one of us is still jet lagged

After i woke ari up from his nap and my hanger (pronounced hang-GR) had fully set in, we went off in search of the night market (with no concrete directions - not good for hanger). Ari led the way while i increasingly displayed signs of learned helplessness (ashley, i know you're enjoying the psych reference) If ari hadn't been so convincingly confident in our search that "he KNEW there was food around the corner", you would probably have found me curled up in the fetal position on the side of the road...crying.

Luckily we found it! and here is the photographic evidence.

At 6:30pm this was the incredibly crowded market with food stalls lining the streets (and the Petronas Towers behind).

By 7pm vendors were closing up and the street was basically empty. We figured people go home and eat with their families and if you fast all day you're not going to wait around. So we made it, luckily, just in time!

Here's our food packaged in plastic bags. We gorged on Penang noodles, some other sort of noodle, fish grilled in banana leaves, an assortment of fish balls, "cheung fun" and vegetables in a spicy peanut sauce and grilled chicken. All for about $3 each. Oh the bag with the straw is fresh coconut juice! (I just read somewhere that all hawker stalls are monitored by the Malaysian health department - really hope that's true)

I know this is probably a lot of reading (my attention span is about three paragraphs and then i start skimming/looking at the photos) but for the purpose of documenting our trip we also went to China town yesterday and Little India. And found this clothing/shoe/random stuff market that seemed to go on for miles. I think Ari has a video of that somewhere...

Today we went to the Batu Caves where there is the largest standing statue of Lord Murugan. Maybe more exciting for some of you is that Anthony Bourdain was there when he did his No Reservations show on Malaysia haha We made it up and down the 272 steps (over 300 ft climb). Ari said, "Meh. This is exactly like Porter [Station] (Boston)". Me: skeptical. (Has anyone ever counted the number of steps in porter?? Just curious.)

Last thing! Look what i found on a snail tank in our restaurant from last night!!! shepard fairey obey stickers!

tomorrow early morning we're going to get in line for free tickets to go up to the walk-bridge of the petronas towers.

(we already have about a hundred photos, so this is a tiny selection but hopefully at some point when we figure out an online storage system you'll have access to those too!)