KL - round 2

thinking we had a pretty good idea of KL from our first few days at the beginning of our trip, we arrived from Melaka into KL at a bus station we had only heard of in passing, in a part of town we'd never been to and pretty much clueless as to how to get to where we were staying. We dug out our map that had been securely and snuggly packed into Ari's backpack.

If you're wondering, I won't keep you in suspense - we made it! (even after navigating the first train during rush hour and then after weighing the pros and cons, decided the comfort of not having to cram into the next train with all our gear (infinitely) outweighed the cost of a taxi)

as you may have read, we have the Liew's and Chien's to thank for a great local experience! The night we arrived we had an incredible dinner (Ari and I had only had breakfast at this point - granted it was half a steamed chicken with chicken rice balls, we were still pretty hungry)!

The next day, acting as our personal guides, they took us hiking through the regenerated forests of KL where unfortunately, the 200m high canopy walk was closed for Hari Raya. (if you zoom in, it's not raining - i am sweating. awesome, i know)

to several (incredible) local food stalls. We indulged in roti canai (indian fried bread that comes with an assortment of curries),

nasi lemak ("fatty rice" that is rice soaked in coconut milk, with a fried egg, peanuts and a spicy sauce and all steamed in a banana leaf)

and tea tarik (tea with condensed milk and poured or literally translated as "pulled" in a way to add frothy bubbles), Bak Kut teh (a hokkien-malay dish of pork ribs marinated and cooked until the meat is falling off the bone)

And our first Hari Raya Aidilfitri open house celebration at Hilda's friend's home. The festival marks the end of Ramadhan (month of fasting) and from our experience so far, is filled with family, friends and (lots of) food! Families have open houses and serve a ridiculous amount of food for their guests. We had local dishes particularly roasted lamb and beef rendang (please see wikipedia for mouth-watering description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendang)

but let me take a break from food...

the people of Malaysia are incredible. Everyone is a polyglot - our taxi driver spoke four languages and all his children spoke five. While the minimum here seems to be three. They live in a society that has individual customs and separate values and yet appears seamlessly integrated.

We can't thank everyone we've met enough! Everyone has been overwhelmingly generous and welcoming. All the people we've met from guesthouses to local food stalls to the random family that picked us up on the side of the road in Cherating (thank you whoever you are!) have been genuinely friendly and without hesitation, have shared their food, experiences, culture and lives with us.

Malaysia was definitely a soft-king-sized-tempur-pedic-mattress perched on top of a water bed- cushioned landing for our trip. Brunei next!

***

We're in Brunei. Today is day 34 of our trip and we've discovered one month was barely enough to cover peninsular Malaysia! We're almost on our way to Hong Kong and due to last minute itinerary changes we're skipping Borneo Malaysia and (after hearing from a persistent source - Rudy), we are discussing the logistics of making a quick trip to Penang. Who knows what else we missed?!

For you Dunkin lovers out there - apparently Malaysia runs on Dunkin too - I mean "cafe dunkin" (i believe it's pronounced dun'kinnn)