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...

Malaysia/Singapore Day 11 - Times square - 11 or so floors of shops and Low Yat - 6 floors ofelectronics

July 28th
Kualar Lumpur - Times square shopping mall / Low Yat Plaza

Today was somewhere inbetween eventful and really uneventful , depending on how you look at it we sorta didn't do much at all today...
A late start and a taxi ride to Times square shopping mall , a mall which was somewhat on the large side... And by that i mean...


It has 10 floors up , 1 basement level and then about 4 basement levels worth of car park. This place is gigantic. As usual for this holiday blog , the first ‘important' point of order was the finding of food - thankfully most of the food was congregated on the ground , lower ground , 3rd and 10th floors...
We ended up going to a small cafe like restaurant called the lemongrass cafe or something like that , I ordered ‘asam Laksa' , ‘Laksa' is a Malaysian dish which is curry noodles with sardines and crunchy veg like onions/cucumber and some pineapple on the side , normal Laksa is known for being really spicy - I soon found out that ‘Asam' meant spicy... I ordered the ‘Spicy' spicy curry noodle dish. FML.


It will burn you.

It was too hot to be enjoyable , which was a shame. And all the stuff i ate afterwards had a generic ‘lava' taste to it. Whilst eating lunch we noticed a thundering sound every now and then , our seats rumbled a little... we were on the 3rd floor inside a giant shopping mall and being rumbled through the building...
It turned out..



That apparently inside the same 10 floor shopping mall was a semi large theme-park , complete with rollercoaster with a loop in (also a drop ride, spinny machine , vomit inducer... and other family favourites). The shopping mall actually had a main area and then this side area , with a different theme on each floor , eg. Computer and electronics floor , womens clothing , mens clothing , toys , gifts for girlfriends, etc etc.



On the 9th floor there was also the iCafe , another huge cyber cafe with LAN gaming and such , really nice computers and kitted with 22" widescreen monitor , speakers and lots of games. Whilst uploading the blog posts and such (god my website can be so slow when it comes to uploading) I got to listen to music over the shop speakers and then what I assume was WC3 (dota) , Counter strike Source , L4D and some other asian FPS which looks like CSS that i keep seeing , my brother spent the hour playing Plants VS Zombies.

Did some shopping , bought a gift for some cute girl I know , some shorts , a pair of trainers (for £6! Ive bought shirts here that were more expensive).

We took a break after walking around the mall for some 5 hours or so , I had a Kiwi Katamari (or it may have been Kalamity or something hell if I know) which was really nice , shaved ice with some sauce and kiwi fruit pieces..



Afterwards we went to Lao Yut Plaza , a 6 floor shopping mall which is renowned for being exclusively electronics. The floors were divided into Cafes and generic , Mobiles , Games , PC parts , PC accessories , Laptops , And hypermarts (which is basically everything in 3 shops for people who don't like to shop around)


Imagine this^

But on this scale


Relentless technology and mobiles and cameras and PSP's and computer bits...
You can actually find every PC part and accessory in this shop for cheaper than you'd be able to find anywhere else , its impressive and makes me wish I had enough money to buy more stuff.
After shopping around a bit I bought a PSP Memory Stick 8GB for £20 , which sounds pretty good but tbh I never really checked the prices online to see how much they are.
Am also looking at buying a new mp3 player (Saw a Creative Zen for around 400 RM (£73) or a Creative Mosaic for around 270 RM(£50) ) but I would rather like to visit another cyber cafe and check some reviews before I spend , Im also pretty tempted to buy a steelmat or one of those razer mousemats , they were 50 RM (£9) in the hypermart but im not sure if thats a good deal or not , they are pretty smooth and I don't know what my desk is going to be like at my house in Leamington next year.

After shopping we went across the road to Yaki Yaki , a Japanese BBQ buffet restaurant.



Basically... they give you a big BBQ in a pot , then you can get whatever meats you want from the buffet - the meats have all been marinated and such and theres salmon , beef , chicken... and side stuff as well like corn , satay , mushrooms ,peppers...
But then theres the other cooked food , seafood dishes with crab , prawns... some rice and noodle dishes..



Theres a teppanyaki chef on hand to teppan- any stuff you have..
Theres a satay grill with a chef who constantly makes satay (chicken , beef , mussel , eel , squid..)
Theres a counter where you can select fish and they'll steam or fry it for you...


Theres a cart which deals in deep fried Japanese food , like tempura and spring rolls and such...
Theres a sushi counter where they'll make any special sushi you want , and then there is a bunch of ready made sushi for you to eat straight away...



Theres fresh fruits available and ice cream..


(I tried some dragonfruit <the pink and white ones on the left> , pretty okay but nothing too special)

Theres also cakes , biscuits , jelly and puddings available..
And finally there is a counter full of drinks machines with lots of juice AND you can walk up to the bar and select some of the cocktails there and he'll make one for you (alcoholic cocktails and beer included) and its all inclusive of the price.
The price however is pretty steep , and by that I mean its about £9 per head - for an eat and drink as much as you like for however long you like BBQ buffet including seafood.

We ate until we came close to throwing up , semi-related...
Apparently in the girls toilet they had toilets which had two holes , one for pee and one for poop?
Im not entirely sure as I heard from mum and then little brother went to take picture , but... weird...



And semi-related to that , The place im staying in at the moment belongs to a girl around 20 who is in university... Now if I was the daughter of a rich person and was told to pick a shower head...



..Id probably go with this one too.
Semi-gross : it had a small curly hair stuck on the bit that sprays out water...

Malaysia/Singapore Day 10 - Mid-Valley shopping mall

July 27th
Kualar Lumpur
Summary : Sushi buffet and then a walk around Mid-Valley shopping mall

Today was actually pretty uneventful , in the morning went to see one of the cousins and my uncle - did nothing there really , saw my dad's condo which he bought a few years out (its currently being rented out to some med students apparently , has a small swimming pool and such - no air con because my dad is a scrooge landlord. poor students. )
After waiting around doing jack shit for about 4 hours in the morning we went to Mid-valley , we had a lovely lunch at 'Sushi King' - one of those conveyer belt sushi places where the plates come around and you just grab whatever sushi takes your fancy.



The main advantage of doing it in Malaysia at this place is that its way cheaper , eating at 'Yo Sushi!' in UK... plates of different colour range from £2 to around £6 , as such you can eat about 5 plates before going broke - we'll say you had £20 to spend.
Sushi King on the other hand , the plates ranged from 2 RM to 6 RM , an equivalent 30p - £1.20... im sure you can see where im going with this...



We racked up the plates , the total bill for 5 of us came to about 100 RM total , there was also a little promotion where it was BOGOF for the first 5 sushi plates so saved... like.. 10 RM there (£2).
The rest of the day for the most part was just roaming the supermall looking at things to buy , buying some clothes (got a few shirts and some shorts - pretty cheap here , good quality stuff for about £3 - £5 each or something).
Also , fish reflexology seems to be all the rage here...



Not sure exactly how it works but you put your footsies into the fishies and then the fishies eats your footsies... or something.
Also had a lovely ice cream - after eight flavoured.
We then went to a supermarket to buy fruits , there were some food stalls outside (as there are everywhere in Malaysia) we got to try Kaya Balls - which were yummy , kinda like american waffle mix but with a small dollop of pandan sauce inside.
The supermarkets here seem to work slightly different than they do in the UK , fresh fish and things are just.. there...



Wouldnt happen in the UK, all the animal activist assholes would probably come in and break them free or something , RSPCA stuff etc.
Another seafood restaurant for dinner , they also like to have fish tanks for you to be able to choose your fish or just so that they can have the fish fresh (tastes better) , inside one of the tanks were these peculiar guys...



They look... intresting...
Dinner was nice , but not as good as the expensive place yesterday - the main drawback about a good meal is that all subsequent meals don't taste as good :/
Back to the flat and then nothing much happening really , will probably go to bed soon...

Malaysia/Singapore Day 9 - I get to sleep in the princess bed?!

July 26th
Langkawi / Kualar Lumpur
Summary : Touchdown in KL again results in being shown around our new home for the next week or so , a seafood dinner and a walk around a huge mall.

Woken up at 8am by the phone , our last morning in Langkawi
We went for a bike ride around the hotel , 5 RM for an hour - we rented 3...
20 minutes later we were all hot , tired and very sweaty , riding around on a crappy bike in 36 degrees sun or something ridiculous like that. Took a few pictures but i'll just put one up of the scenery..

We returned to our hotel room and had a shower , ate some mangoes and malaysian cakes and then it was time to start getting ready to go - packed our bags and checked out and then headed to Langkawi airport. Nothing much to report there , check-in and everything went fine , had 'Nasi goreng angung' which was some form of spicy chicken rice with egg combination - was damn spicy. Also had some of my mum's nasi goreng which was nice.
As a side note , there were alot of ninja's at the airport in langkawi , I sneakily managed to photograph a few , see if you can spot them



After arriving at Kualar Lumpur airport (after playing lots of Star Ocean PSP on the hour or so plane journey) we met one of my uncles (term used loosely as i dont really know who he is but i call him uncle) , he is - to be blunt - rich as furk.
He took us back to his apartment(s) where we're going to be staying whilst in Kualar Lumpur.
The apartment is 3 floors and has is nicely decorated , air-con in every room , shiny tiles/doors/everything... the only real downside is that because we're staying in one of the apartments which isnt exclusively his - the room me and my brother are staying in is a big girly purple room , it has princess drapes near the bed D:



Another noteworthy 'feature' of the room (if you want to call it that) are the 5 (FIVE!) puppies living in one of the rooms , apparently they're chihuaha's but I personally dont know shit about dogs so i cant comment. At one point somebody decided to open the glass door seperating the dogs from the lounge and one of them jumped over the safety fence thing and ran around the room for about 3 minutes sniffing and licking everyone.



Some genius then decided to try and open the gate slightly to get the loose one back inside - they all burst out , like a dam of puppies had just been opened , saliva and hair and barks flooded the room.



So hyperactive they appear as ghostly blurs in most of the pictures i tried to take...
Dinner was at a localish place called La La Chang Seafood restaurant or something to that effect , la la's are like baby mussels fyi.
We had lots to eat , a large fried fish , king prawns , fried veg , chicken , sea cucumber , la la's , and some seafood soupy stuff.
Didnt really take any pictures because it was all relatives at the table and i didn't want them to think I was a total weirdo , managed to sneak a picture of all the mussel's I ate though.



After this , uncle took us to this gigantic shopping mall filled with every shop ever , despite being full I was drooling by the time we finished walking around - we were only walking through quickly - so many food shops! cakes , ice cream , beard papa , cinnabon ,some other crazy looking asian pretzely place.. Hope we go back there some time , could easily have dinner just eating all of the snack foods. Heres a picture of the giganticness..

It had a ton of floors , i think 8 or so and they were all really long and wide as well.
Definately a far cry from Langkawi's 2 floor tiny 'largest shopping mall' , it feels so nice to be back in civilization - even little things like TV's are a welcome return.