Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Hi again! We’re still in Berastagi, Indonesia. We decided to stay in this little town for two extra days to utilize our hosts’ WiFi for photo uploads. The process has taken many, many, many hours and has been interrupted repeatedly with power outages (typical in Indonesia, so we were told). But, we’re happy to finally be able to share a bit from our time in Kuala Lumpur.

We arrived Kuala Lumpur (KL) in early January, withdrew some Malaysian ringgit (aka plastic money) and jumped into a taxi directly to our hotel.

The drive into town was eye-opening. Really, the shock started in the air, as we descended low enough to see what appeared like the entire country covered in palm oil plantations as far as the eye could see. From the property boundary of the airport, all the way to the beginning of commercially booming KL, it was the same fields of green oil palms as far as we could see. On the one hand, it was lovely to see the lush vegetation, but we know the deeper story about palm oil. Without getting too political or preachy, our family has chosen to avoid packaged products whose ingredients include palm oil and it’s not easy. Nearly 60% of packaged crackers, cookies, cereals, etc. contain palm oil, sometimes misleadingly and innocently labelled “vegetable oil”. Palm oil plantations are responsible for a very long list of global issues. Not only is palm oil not a healthy oil, but the manner in which the plantations soils have to be prepared is criminal. We’ve all heard about the haze in Southeast Asia and the draining/burning of centuries old rainforest peat soils is the culprit. The smoke from burning rainforest lands has affected us personally while we were in Singapore. Our week in Singapore included daily headaches, fits of coughing and the necessity of face masks to block some of the smoke. I got a bit sick and that was during just one week of exposure. The people who have no choice but to live where fires burn for months on end suffer a plethora of medical conditions as a result. Further, hundreds, maybe thousands of species of birds, mammals and plants have become (or will soon be) threatened due to the damage to the ecosystems from palm oil plantations. The tree canopy and fertile, rich soil that provided habitats and food have disappeared. Palm oil plantations provide sustenance for a teeny tiny percentage of all original rainforest life. Ok, so, please get informed & avoid palm oil, if possible. We’re certainly not perfect global citizens, but this is one issue we experienced ourselves and wanted to share. Getting off my soapbox now.

We chose a large-ish hotel in KL with a swimming pool so that Jette could have a fun place to cool off since the climate is so hot and sticky. We checked into a large room whereupon Jette decided she finally had enough space to do some gymnastics.

blurry gymnastics

The view out of our room’s window was quite telling. You could see almost step-by-step how the city was being transformed. Blocks of small independently owned properties were being slowly demolished to make way for large hotels and office buildings. There was a construction project adjacent to our hotel and we could watch the laborers each day. We remarked that large buildings still used very basic labor. That is not always the case, but we did observe concrete being poured by the bucketful on several different properties.

Once we were settled, we took a stroll in the neighborhood to check things out. We ended up having a pretty decent lunch at a pretty nice sidewalk cafe and explored, yes, another mall. This one left us unimpressed.

The next evening, we had dinner at Wong Ah Wah in KL’s Chinatown, known for their chicken wings. Jette ordered a lime juice which is usually fresh lime, water, a bit of sugar and ice. This time, it was quite different. This restaurant added salt and a pickled plum. Holy wow. This was a VERY strong taste! We all dutifully sampled it, but cannot say it went further than that.

One day, it poured buckets of rain on us while we were out and about. We took shelter in a covered walkway bridge for a while.

We did have a great time at the 20+ acre, free flight Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. There were some fabulous exotic birds and we caught a show with some trained birds.

The Bird Park had a lovely restaurant in a gorgeous setting, so we had lunch there after our walk.

We saw these signs everywhere throughout KL. Apparently, purse-swipe crime is a big enough issue to warrant these types of warnings. Even though we did not have any issues, downtown KL is not a place I would feel comfortable walking around by myself late at night.

Intuition plays a significant role in our daily lives, and even more so on our travels to new places. We rely on our sensibilities and if a situation, place or person doesn’t seem quite right, we “go with our gut” and usually move along. After several “sketchy” circumstances, and some odd characters, the three of us decided that the downtown KL neighborhood we were staying in was not for us. We decided to spend more time in KL, but chose to move to a different neighborhood.

We moved to an apartment in the Bangsar neighborhood. Bangsar is known as an affluent area with some diverse food options, good cafes, and a more relaxed sensibility. We found all of those descriptions to be quite true. We feasted on comfort foods, fancy lattes (as I’ve started to call them), and even did some fresh fruit and vegetable shopping at the local grocery. We stayed directly across the street from a mosque and were awoken at 5am each morning with the first call to prayer. That part wasn’t our idea of a good time, but it was certainly a common, real life experience for us in KL, the city we had come to explore.

Several times, we commented that the neighborhood reminded us of Los Angeles. The scale, street parking and palm trees all contribute to the similar feel of the both. Bangsar was a comfortable and “just enough”. Just different enough, yet familiar enough for us to feel really happy being there.

Bangsar even had a Mexican restaurant. We had dinner there one night. Jette ate a HUGE plate of cheesy nachos (and nothing else the next day).

There were two really excellent “banana leaf” restaurants in the Bangsar area. One was Raj’s Banana Leaf and the other was Devi’s Corner. They both serve small portions of vegetables on, you guessed it, a banana leaf. They pile on some rice and there are optional meat dishes too. The idea is to eat with your right hand. It’s fun, messy and delicious!

Banana leaf restaurants will continue to bring more rice and vegetables until a diner is satisfied. The way to properly indicate that you do not care for more servings is to fold your banana leaf over.

After almost a week in KL, we made arrangements to travel to Taman Negara National Park, the oldest rainforest in the world, at 130 million years.