After nearly 24 hours of travelling, we had landed in Kuala Lumpur, and navigated our way from the airport to the train to the centre of the city. With bags too heavy, and a burst of heat hitting us as we stepped from the train, we set off in what, of course, turned out to be the wrong direction, having been caught out by the multilayering of roads on Google Maps.
Returning back to our starting point we tried again in another direction. This led us along a roadside, a shortcut through a shopping centre and then onto a lower road which, about ten minutes later, resulted in us landing at the base of the hotel building. This building looked nothing like the photo we had been sent by the person we’d booked with, leaving us momentarily bemused. We found the hotel entrance around the back a short while later, and after a Crystal Maze-like experience, finding the key box, putting in the code, and making sure we’d pulled out the correct key, we were heading up in the lift to our room.
After taking some time to relax we headed out for a short evening exploration and a hunt for food. Heading in the opposite direction to the one we’d arrived from, we made our way further into the heart of the city, being met with the sight of Chinatown shortly after making our way over a bridge crossing a concrete-lined river.
After a nice meander on the outskirts of Chinatown we sat down for our first experience of local food, and after being slightly confused by its coldness, realised we’d accidentally chosen dessert for a starter – our tiredness meaning we failed to notice that some of the ingredients in the Cendol we had chosen were ice and sugar! We eventually found a vegetarian/vegan Indian restaurant, where we then had a main to follow our dessert.
We had learned before arriving, that Indian food is one of the three main cuisines in Malaysia – which I remember from my previous trip to this country while trying to hunt down vegan food. The other two cuisines are Malay and Chinese. A Grab (a local version of Uber) driver told us there were such large populations of Indians in Malaysia due to workers initially being brought over by the British to assist with rubber production in Malaysia. The Chinese population initially arrived to work in the tin mining industry.
Continuing our wander after food, we found ourselves at an entrance to Petaling Street, one of the largest street markets in Kuala Lumpur. You can find a range of items inside; suitcases, clothes and shoes (the latter of which often seemed to be wrapped individually in plastic); many other random items; and food.
There was a palpable feeling of excitement to the place when we first arrived, though this appeared to be more down to a small procession of drums, a dragon puppet, and a (potentially) famous politician. There was still a hubbub of activity as we moved away from the mini procession, under the arch and along the first street lined with stalls.
Our visit to the market was short partly due to our tiredness but also due to the torrential downpour that began around 15 minutes after our arrival. We had arrived at the tail-end of monsoon season on the west coast of the Malaysian peninsula, and though the downpours are at least warm, they are most definitely thorough in giving you a soaking.
The next day we enjoyed a slow morning, breakfasting on some fruit we’d bought the night before – bananas, longan (a small round sweet fruit with a stone in the centre) and a fruit new to both of us, langsat (a fruit both sweet and bitter that broke away like cloves of garlic).
Staying in a place with an infinity pool, we felt taking a dip was something we should do at least once. So we headed a few floors down, signed ourselves in and headed out into the slightly cool air to find a pool completely void of holiday-makers, with just some workmen powerwashing the floor nearby. It was a slightly chilly and a rather noisy experience, but the quick dip with momentary views on the Malaysia tower and the Petronas Twin Towers was still a great sight to take in.
From there we set off walking in the centre of the city, and began what eventually turned into around ten hours of walking, exploring and eating. Something we both agreed afterwards was an absolutely incredible way to spend a day.
Our walk took us the same route we had gone the previous night, past the end of the vibrant Petaling Street with archway in the typical red and yellowy gold that signify Chinatowns around the world. We paused to buy a juice, choosing mango and dragonfruit from the long list of options, and with the boost of nutritious hydration helping us along, as we began our adjustment to the nearly 30-degree celsius heat of the city (having come from the 10-15 degree celsius weather of Cumbria in the north of England).
We aimed first for Jalan Alor – a famous street food spot in the city – but found we’d arrived too early. It was around 1 pm and the street wouldn’t begin to open until 2:30-3 pm. So instead we headed into a nearby shopping centre to pick up SIM cards, to make our travels a little easier. The shopping centre we entered turned out to be the biggest tech hub I’ve ever walked into, with multiple levels dedicated solely to technology, be it phones, gaming or gadgets, anything tech appeared to be there. On the top floor, we found a whole area dedicated to stands offering repair services, something usually relegated to shops in side streets in the UK.
Back on Jalan Alor around an hour later, there was still little life in the street, but we found a larger restaurant open at the top end and decided to give it a go. With a little difficulty, we communicated our wish for vegan food (we would later learn that “vegetarian” is much more commonly understood due to the presence of Buddhism and Hinduism throughout the country) and crossed our fingers that what we received would be vegan. We chose three dishes, one of which consisted of lotus root and macadamia, which was a slightly sweet but savoury dish. We also ordered a Tiger beer to share, forgetting until the bill came that you need to pay a premium for alcohol in Malaysia as it is an Islamic country with any alcohol served is taxed at a high rate. We enjoyed all of this over the next half hour or so as the street truely began to come to life, ice trucks arriving with ‘edible ice’ to stock up the restaurants for what they seemed to expect would be a busy evening ahead.
After lunch, we wound our way across the city towards the Petronas Twin Towers – the tallest twin towers in the world, which have held that title since 1996. We passed stark contrasts typical of large cities around the world as we made our way through the bustling capital. From the touristic area of Jalan Alor food street to residential streets, to the wealthy business part of the city that the towers were located within. Though we didn’t take a tour of the towers, they were an impressive feat just to stand below and gaze up at, the garden we stood in was full of people posing for photos, suggesting we were far from the only people that thought so. I later learned that much of the architecture was designed to incorporate significant symbols from the Islamic religion, providing a deeper meaning than ‘just’ two tall towers rising into the sky.
By the time we had reached the towers it was early evening and we were beginning to lag from the long day, so we began to work out how to make our way back towards our accommodation. Such it was that a few moments later we found ourselves outside a very grand shopping centre a few moments later, on our way to the metro line. We have found the shopping centres an interesting reality, not somewhere we usually spend much time no matter which country we’re in, it was strange to be in the realisation that we’d travelled halfway across the world, and could walk into one of these large buildings full of shops to find the same choices on the high streets we’d just left behind. Marks and Spencers for example, kept popping up wherever we went!
We found a metro station outside the shopping centre and made our way back across to Chinatown with little effort, the daylight beginning to wane as we stepped back out from the air conditioned train into the hot, humid streets. Finding vegan snacks was a challenge, and so went to an Indian place we’d visited the previous evening for a snack of Poori (crispy hollow balls that are filled with a slightly spicy runny liquid), before continuing to venture further into the neighborhood.
We made our way to Rekxl, a place that I had found online, noted as being a cultural centre that was a great place to people watch, and we decided to stop by to see whether that the case. We found much more than expected: a food court on the bottom level; a bookshop at the top, which had been curated into a maze of shelves; a rooftop bar hidden in the top, back corner of the building. The bookshop experience was heightened by music that drifted through from a performance taking place in a theatre on the mid-level of the building. A dramatisation of the story of technology, a snippet of which we were able to view by peering over the top of bookshelves at the very top corner of the blocky maze.
Though we’d had a different spot in mind for dinner, we decided to check out the food court on the bottom level before moving on. We chose a couple of dishes from a Japanese vendor – a plate of cabbage and another of tomato. Seemingly simple dishes but covered in a wasu sauce, which something neither of us had ever tasted before but which blew us away.
Tasty though the salads were, they didn’t satisfy my hunger after the full day of activity. So as our final stop for the day we headed on to The Hungry Tapir – a fully vegan restaurant just outside of Petaling Street market. The prices were high compared to general local food, but the food was great, and as we were still adjusting, being able to eat food without concern as to whether or not it was vegan was a relief. We also discovered the the tapir is an animal native to Malaysia, that they look similar to an anteater, but are completely unrelated.
It was an incredible first couple of days, filled with more sensory input than either of us had experienced in quite some time. Leaving us exhausted, but hungry for more.