Malaysia/Singapore Day 19 - A flower display? but thats so girly :

August 5th
Koala Lumpur

Lay-in in the morning until like 11 or so then we headed out to find something to eat , we ended up in a cafe near sungei wang mall - a small Chinese cafe place. I ordered a wonton noodle soup again , we also called a ‘toast with peanut butter and condensed milk' to share between us.



They pretty much gave us half a loaf of bread with peanut butter and nuts and all that on the top of it. Despite looking very odd it was pretty good.

We then walked around sungei wang mall and ended up in some horrible horrible girly shop with lots of useless stuff , clothes, plates , cutlery and everything crappy like that - I took a few minutes to reorganize one of the stuffed animal displays



Back to the hotel after this where we chilled out for a while , we then got picked up by my cousin and went to a flora display (the plant , not the butter)
I guess it was pretty impressive... as flowers go... Lots of different colours and styles.







I enjoyed the garden design competition entries the most , university and school students attempting to design a nice garden and such
Heres one of the better more innovative ones..



And here's a weird garden edition of what I can only assume was something inspired by a long session of wake island.



Oh also. This plant display looks kinda like a rampant rabbit or something...



They also had lots of baby fruit and veg plants to buy which was quite intresting to see , heres a chilli plant and a pineapple plant - I had no idea how pineapples grew and assumed it would be a tree.. apparently not though.





At some point we also took a ride on this...



We rode around up the river to look at the scenery and such and then rid back , it was a nice break from staring at colourful flowers and was nice if only for the breeze it brought with it.
--insert first person boat view here-


After we finished looking at all the pretty (boring) flowers we headed to take a brief look at the sultans house or something like that , it was super huge and probably had its own post code.



We then went to the Carrefour , essentially a supermarket - nothing huge to report here.. I bought some mentos , milkybar and some kit kat ball things to eat on the plane tomorrow. One of the things different here was that they do a sort of pick and mix on biscuits and crackers and that , grab a bag and fill it with whatever you want.



Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant , we had a steamed catfish - which tastes of pretty much nothing , just generic fish meat taste :/
We also had frog , lala's and... stuff... It was all very okay and nothing particularly special which was a shame as its our last meal in Malaysia. Ah well , can't win em all.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 18 - Previously on MBA..

August 4th
Kualar Lumpur

A slow start today , we enjoyed somewhat of a lay-in and then headed across the street from our hotel to Jalan Alor , the food market street. We dropped off some clothes for laundry and then headed to the first nice looking stall we saw which turned out to be a stall specializing in won ton mee (dumplings in noodle soup)... we ate it , it was mediocre and my stomach gave an annoyed growl in my direction - I took its hint and we ended up back in the hotel to use the toilets and such.



We then took a trip to the gym and swimming pool , my mum wanted to get her hair dyed and cut at sungei wang mall which would probably take just shy of 3 years so we swam around and had a shower before meeting her at the iCafe in Times square mall - updated the blog some and then played abit of quake 4 deathmatch with my brother.
After checking mail we went for lunch , we stopped at little Penang (or something to that effect) which is a cafe which sold Penang style food - ate a noodle soup thing.

From here we went to Low Yat plaza again , determined to buy some tech stuff... 5 floors of price comparing and stuff and I eventually came into the possession of one ‘Creative Zen' with 2gb of internal memory and then 4gb SD card memory which came to around 300 RM total (bargained about 15 RM off) - £60 for a really nice looking mp4 player isn't too bad imo.
I also bought a razer goliath mousemat which cost 60 RM so around £10 , I figured I may as well invest in one just in case I get a rough desk at my new accommodation like I had at uni.
To access the SD card I got for my mp3 player I also bought one of those 5000 in 1 USB card readers which was £3.

We then shopped around Sungei wang for some DVD's and then went to Pavillion for dinner , I had a lovely Hainan chicken rice , which is basically just chicken and rice but the rice has been boiled in chicken soup stock or something to that effect , this makes the rice moist and flavoursome.
Nice as it was however it wasn't particularly filling so I went to a shop I eyed up earlier called Mr Baoz (Bao is bun/package in Cantonese) - I bought a BBQ chicken bao , deep fried and crispy on the outside with mayo and then on the inside was BBQ flavour chicken , tasty but it had a very strong taste and was somewhat of an acquired taste - particularly the mayonnaise.



We walked around the pavilion some more and ended up finding a random outdoor covered bit in the mall , it basically just goes outside but still 6 floors and all that , very pretty..



Headed home shortly after , tomorrow is our last day :<

Malaysia/Singapore Day 17 - Bird Pyramid

August 3rd
Kualar Lumpur - Bird park and Sunway Pyramid

First thing's first , breakfast.
We travelled to a nearby cafe place from our hotel where we had frog congee , we were expecting to just get frogs legs in the congee (rice porridge) but apparently we got the whole frog - not quite the eyes and head and all that , but definitely more than just the legs... Just as well I figured , frogs legs just tastes like chicken anyway at least the rest of the frog has a slightly different taste.



After this we took a cab to the Bird park , the worlds largest covered bird park - or so the banner claimed , of course in Malaysia anything goes. My dads Malaysian citizenship saved us a good bit of money whilst buying tickets , im sure i touched on the racism which Malaysia exhibits towards tourists already a little but here entering the bird park - Tourist price is 45 RM , Citizen price is 15 RM , we saved around 120 RM just from my dad flashing his ID , a rather nize twentysomething pounds.
Upon entering the park we were greeted by some birds behind nets , disappointing a I thought but little did i know the day would get better yet.




Cockateils and parrots are so cute , totally want some when I grow up.

We entered the parrot area , which turned out to essentially be a walk in aviary where the parrots would just fly around you and be walking around on the floor around



The guy in the left of the picture gave us some seeds and a slice of apple each, seeds in left hand and apple in my right hand... The birds soon flocked to me like some sort of freaky bird man - I think I had about 10 on me at one time, 5 on both of my arms , their claws really dig in but not quite enough to be truly painful.



Oh. Also. Monkeys running around randomly.



We saw a bird show which was nothing too special , the usual throw the eagle around , make the parrots do tricks and all that. Later in the day we turned up at the nursery , a which didn't contain much but had a large container of baby chicks which were just.. there.. We picked them up and took some pictures , they were soft :D



The sun gently giving us a toasting through the day , we walked through the park viewing flamingos , emu , peacock.... etc etc.
We eventually finished the park and took a cab to the sunway pyramid mall , a large mall (duh) with an Egyptian pyramid/sphinx decor.



The mall is also ajoining to a waterpark called the sunway lagoon , I took a picture from the cafe we went to have a snack at (no pictures of the snack unfortunately as we were mad hungry , it was rice and chicken and then spaghetti with some meat and spices , we also had watermelon sago and mango sago for dessert)


You can also see some sort of rollercoaster on the far right , I don't remember that being there last time I came...

Another intresting feature about the mall is the presence of a rather large..


Icerink?!

Shopping shopping shopping ... bought a hoodie and a belt - bought the belt from a shop called XTREME (fuck yes.)
Nearby also was...



An indoor archery centre place , pretty much done bowling style. Pay 8 RM get 12 or 16 arrows or something , shoot at the target with their bows and thats that , they even supply a tab and a bracer for you. My main gripe with the place was that their bows had no sights! They force you to shoot barebow - this essentially means you have to look down the arrow as you pull it and sort of guess where the arrow is going to go , of course i guess if you you've never done archery before it wouldn't be a big deal.
Dinner was at sushi king again as everyone wasn't too hungry , 12 plates this time , upon leaving I randomly god a hell of a headache , just as well we ended up going home shortly after.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 16 - Back to KL and back to the malls and food courts

August 2nd
Malaysia - Melacca -> Kualar Lumpur (Bukit Bintang)

Woke up in the morning and had the buffet breakfast again , nothing particularly special...
After this we went to the gym to check it out and played around on the machines for a bit until tired and then came back to the room to pack.
After packing , checked out and then took a cab to the bus station where we bought tickets back to Kualar Lumpur - the bus wasn't as bad as the bus we took to melacca thank god , I still slept most of the way as I get a headache reading/playing games whilst on the road.

After checking in to our new hotel in KL we headed out for an explore of the area , we found a few small malls to explore - one of which was ‘lot10' a large mall with lots of designer shops - and pretty looking escalators with changing lights on the bottom!



We then decided we'd keep exploring a little longer before going to the pavilion mall for dinner.. Little did we know the pavilion was just round the corner which I eyed out , thankfully we were spared the embarrassment of calling a cab to take us less than a minute's walk away.




(yes. Thats the same shop on 4 floors - its like the asian Debenhams)
We explored the shops until dinner time , where we went to a posh looking (but not too expensive) Chinese restaurant - the food was amazing , we had a cold ‘drunken chicken' which is boiled chicken soaked in a Chinese wine to make it sweet yet still chicken and then chilled (not pictured as already eaten) , mincemeat with veggies and then some sesame something or other shells to put them in - sort of like an asian taco (left) , prawns in egg yolk , crispy noodles with mixed seafood (middle right) and a rice dish with meat.



I forgot to mention that the restaurant was in the most gigantic food court ever , its hard to judge just how big it is here but walking from one side to the other would probably take a few minutes at a normal pace , we were looking at menus for a good 20 minutes if that says anything.



One of the shops in the food court was this , a shop specializing in Jelly cakes - yup , cakes made entirely of jelly...



Now... the jelly they use in asia is slightly different from English jelly , its made from different ingredients which makes it a fair bit harder and less wobbly but its still jelly nonetheless , and very impressive - the layers on the cakes can actually been peeled off one by one , as we found out when they let us have a free sample of a jelly layer cube.

After leaving (and with a very full stomach) we went exploring again , KL looks so pretty at night with trees lit up different colours and lights strewn across the street , the fountain outside the pavilion was lit up with changing colours as well



A little exploring later and we came across ‘Jalan Alor' , essentially another place to eat food...
It was a whole street full of outdoor restaurants (we call them hawkers , street sellers essentially)



And at the end of the road we discovered our hotel again , directly opposite Jalan Alor - although early we decided to come back for the day.
Im currently typing this up in our hotel room , the TV is on and is displaying a Chinese program called ‘One Day , Five meals' which pretty much sums up the way of life here (as if you hadn't figured that out by now though).

Malaysia/Singapore Day 15 - Museums and such.... zzzzzz

August 1st
Malaysia - Melacca

Truly a slow and boring day , this will be short , i only took 1 picture today...
Pretty late wakeup followed by a buffet breakfast in the hotel , food was the usual hotel breakfast stuff - toast , croissants , fried egg , there was also not so usual hotel breakfast stuff... like curry , rice , fried kway teiu and congee (rice porridge).

After breakfast we took a dip in the pool , the weather was pretty bad and it had just finished raining but we still swam around.
Afterwards back to the hotel room to watch Hannah montanna and some other cartoon I don't know the name of on Disney channel.
We then went out to have a walk around and went around 3 museums or so , one shaped like a boat , another with a warship on... zzzz....

.... After this we came back to the hotel and... watched more Hannah Montana.
We left at 6 or so and went back to Jonker street to get dinner - pretty much all of the food shops were closed however so we ended up eating at the same place , I didn't really complain because it was amazing. After this we went to a nearby mall and had a walk around , all the shops were shit. Played IIDX Gold in the arcade here for 2 RM (all the arcades here work on tokens oddl, I didn't realise the cabinet actually had a vibrating floor when you play - or maybe the bass is just that ridiculous.
Came home , watching Disney channel again.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 14 - 'Fast and furious : trishaw edition' and the guy that makes a livingpoking coconuts with his finger

July 31st
Malaysia - Kualar Lumpur -> Melacca

I was awoken from the strangest dream (something about Sting having an argument with one of the guys from slipknot about whose skin was smoother from using baby oil or something ridiculous like that). From there I spent half the morning playing Jeanne D'arc on PSP until it was time to go out , we were going out to our future hotel to drop our bags off and then off to Melacca (an area of Malaysia which has alot of history) via coach , dropped our bags off at the ‘Royal Bintang' and then went to the coach station - where all of the coaches are privately owned and they all sell their tickets through ticket counters , of which there are fifty or so and then there are salesmen pestering you CONSTANTLY whilst you walk towards the ticket counter , my dad turned away about 8 or so salesmen trying to offer him cheap coach tickets before we got to an official ticket counter...

The coach had no suspension whatsoever , the wheels were pretty much welded straight onto the frame - this was obviously rather unsavoury considering our coach to Melacca was going to take 2 hours. 15 Minutes into the trip I started feeling sick , but thankfully somehow managed to fall asleep until we arrived.
We took a taxi to our hotel here , the Hotel Equatorial - a 4 star hotel apparently , although our room doesn't really look that fancy if i'm honest (there isn't even a dial to control air-con temperature)
We do get a nice view though..



We had lunch at a nearby mall , it was horribly mediocre - didn't bother taking a picture.
After walking around Melacca some , I wasn't sure whether to think we were in a developed area or a rural area... there were alot of old buildings around but at the same time parts were pretty well developed , supermalls with air conditioning and pristine tiles and all that , on the other hand not many of the restaurants here have heard of air-con.. or washing up liquid for that matter..
Heres a general panorama shot of what it looked like outdoors



We walked for a bit and then saw those bicycle rickshaw things riding along , they were nicely decorated with flowers and tinsel and lights and even had music on alot of them with loud speakers and such - these things were everywhere and would usually come in packs of 2 or 3 , with one blaring loud music and the others following close like some sort of fighter jet formation.



Id also like to point out 3 of the bike rickshaws with younger drivers had super beast speakers and were blaring out really loud bassy hardcore music - I'm going to try and upload a video of it here but im not sure if it'll work or be a link or whatever since im pre-typing this on a laptop and not on wordpress.

video-0005

I will also upload a longer 2 minute video of the ride at some point but it'll have to be afterwards since its 20mb.

The rickshaw dropped us off outside some sort of Malaysian history museum , which I quickly hurried my family through - it was about as entertaining as a trip to the grandparents (negative entertainment value). From there we decided to check out the castle where the british fought off the portugese and turned Malaysia into a british colony or something like that? It was a long walk up some stone steps but we eventually reached it , as usual for castles there was a nice view from the top



The castle itself wasn't much like to look at , more of a fort actually than a castle as it was pretty small - that or half of it had been asploded or something at some point



After this we cooled off in the mall and had a drink by the fountain and then went to the church , to not check around as it was closed so we hung around outside where all the rickshaws hang out - this is where I filmed the video earlier.
I also bought 2 pairs of Nunchaku here , 1 foam padded practice set and one rather nice looking polished wood set.



From here we went to ‘jonker walk' , essentially another Petalling street market sorta deal. It was standard marketty street sorta stuff , didn't buy anything - brother managed to convince the parents to let him buy a wooden katana.
Dinner was at a supposedly famous place , Famosa chicken rice ball shop.
It was basically a ball of rice which had been boiled in chicken stock soup to give it a nice flavour , eating it with some actual chicken and some soya sauce was amazing , considering its just a... well.. a ball of rice... Yummy stuff.



Outside nearby was some sort of open karaoke thing on a stage going on , also a nice opportunity for another panorama picture..



On the walk home we saw some crazy Chinese guy - who is also famous apparently (can probably find him on youtube if you search ‘finger poke coconut' or something to that effect) , he sells his own brand of muscle relief oil and was advertising it by doing what he does best..
According to my dad he holds the world record for... penetrating the most coconuts using one finger in 1 minute...
A long build up and then he went all kung fu on us , hopped onto two pots started yelling and jabbed the coconut 3 times with his forefinger and broke through , coconut water exploding out. He walked around with the coconut stuck onto his finger like some sort of oversized ring to show the audience and then called his two assistants who spent like a minute holding trying to get the coconut off from his finger.
He walked around again to show the audience his finger , swollen... near broken looking.. lumpy.. He poured his oil onto it and such. We stopped watching soon after because he was taking ages to do anything.



Back to the mall to get some drinks and fruits and then to the hotel where im typing this , not sure whats planned tomorrow but watching X-games on TV atm.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 13 - Its all in one! - One Utama mall

July 30th
Kualar Lumpur - 1 Utama Mall

In all honesty we really didn't do a whole lot today...
A late wakeup in the morning followed by a taxi ride to 1 Utama Mall , the mall we had a quick look around with my uncle on our first night in KL. We walked around alot and browsed the shops , for the most part all we did today was clothes shopping - its all pretty cheap here so may as well.
Random things I noted was that there is a small rainforest area inside the mall (it kinda opens up into a small park area and then there is random rainforesty bit)



We also sampled alot of foods , I say we , I mean I did..
I tried a cinnabon, a red bean puff thing , some of my dads chewy bun thing , a doughnut - of which there were a ton of different crazy looking flavours and such...



Lunch was another Laksa , a curry laksa this time which wasn't as bad as the asam laksa i had last time.



And for dinner was crispy noodles with pork , the drink was red bean with sago <3



And then.. yeah. Thats about it really. Pretty uneventful day.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 12 - Another fish encounter

July 29th
Kualar Lumpur - Central Market / Sungai Wang Mall / Petalling Street Market

In the morning we went to ‘Central Market' , which can be described as the polar opposite of yesterdays Low Yat Plaza (IT mall) - this market was full of hand crafted stuff , paintings , statues , woven silk clothes and other literal crap.


Id say this picture sums it up pretty well..

The best thing about this place however was the fish spa - 5 RM (Bout £1) for 10 minutes , we decided to give it a go. There were 2 pools of water , one had larger fish and one had teeny tiny fish - both love feet.
I Went for the larger fish pool , I slowly lowered my bare feet into the water...
and quickly pulled them the fuck back out.
Dozens of fish swarmed my feet , nibbling away at dead skin cells. It was a new level of ticklish , a few dozen tiny wet fish wriggling around all around both of your feet.



Lunch was a rather mediocre sizzling chicken with crispy dumplings and egg noodles in sauce , its impressive that such a dark sauce could have so little flavour.



We journied back to Times Square mall , we thought instead of using the (really cheap) taxi's we'd try and use the trains and monorail , both of which run overground - suspended above the streets and weave around buildings and such.
The trains here also have open fronts with a window , which allows for a rather awesome view that ive never experience before..


First Person Train Driver View!

In Times Square we just went to use the internet cafe again , after checking mail , facebook and blog (all of which had no comments/mail/notices =[ ) I checked for MP3 player reviews, the Creative Zen Mozaic is looking pretty good atm - cheap and cheery. I spent the rest of the hour time playing Demigod - which was pretty much WC3 DOTA or like a really slow Diablo game.
On the way out before we went to Sungai Wang plaza we got some buns from ‘Bread Story' , a chain we also saw in Singapore - Chinese buns are awesome , usually sweet but can also be savoury and filled with all sorts of goodness , personal favourites are the Kaya filled buns and the ones with Meat Floss on.



At sungai wang we didn't do a whole lot , just browsed around the shops and such , my dad was looking for some pirate DVD's but we couldn't find anywhere that sold them - when we came 5 years ago there were full shopfronts just selling pirate DVD's blatently out in the open , now there were none..
Eventually my dad decided to actually ask one of the ‘legit' DVD shops... at first he acted like he didn't know what dad was talking about but after seeing my little brother he shiftily moved to the back of the store and opened a locked door to a back room...
Inside was a single round table with some chairs and 4 DVD binders filled with the latest films - they operate by you taking the cover out of the binder and putting it aside then afterwards they'll get the films for you and put it in a sleeve , DVD's here were 8 RM each but dad bought quite a few... like 26 or something.. so they gave him 6 free (Ended up spending around £25 on pirate films)

Final stop of the day after a homecooked meal by a relative was Petalling Street , sort of like Chinatown but nightime market edition. Rows upon rows of market stalls selling (Id like to point out that all of the following are fake designer stuff , eg rolex/Gucci/D&G... ) pens , handbags , jewlery , purses , shirts , suits , watches , games (Pokemon Lugia's Ocean for the GBA anyone?). I bought a small clock for 10 RM (bartered down from 25 RM) and some shirts , was also tempted to buy a lazer pen , a pocket knife and a pocket blowtorch but decided against it.



Thats it for today , oh - I also finished Star Ocean First Departure for the PSP last night :< only lasted 15 hours or so (I started it on the plane to Singapore) , Dont know what to play now...