Malaysia - and the king of fruits
Our adventures in Malaysia started with a fairly quick bus ride from Singapore to Melaka. Probably the comfiest bus ride of our lives, actually. The leg room would have been enough for two people, and the chairs reclined enough to almost be considered beds. That's also the reason we ended up sleeping through half the journey.
At our destination we stepped out of the bus into the scorching heat of the midday sun and quickly made our way to our accommodation to escape the heat. We dropped off our bags and went hunting for our first Malay meal, which ended up being a sizzling Hokkien mee noodle dish in the central shopping mall of Melaka. Malaysians love their shopping malls, but more on that later.
After a quick exploring tour we made our way back to the hotel to wait out the biggest heat. Then we headed out to see the various night street markets that are open only on the weekends (it was Sunday so our last chance). The two main streets of the city (including the famous Jonker street) were completely packed with all kinds of stalls (mainly food and souvenirs). Along the way we tried a few things, most notably a freshly squeezed mango juice, fried quail eggs, and some local fried noodles (mee goreng). Some light rain accompanied us to our hotel for the night.
The timing of our visit was slightly unfortunate, since our only full day in Melaka was a Monday, when museums tend to be closed. So instead we decided to walk around to see the most important and interesting sights of the city by day: Dutch square, Chinatown, Jonker street, various temples, and riverside.
During the day we had to escape the heat multiple times so we spent some time in the heavily air conditioned shopping malls, where we also came across a local tea chain called "Chagee" that we fell in love with. The cold white peach oolong milk tea is definitely something worth trying out.
We finished our day off with an hour long relaxing thai massage, focusing on foot reflexology, back and shoulders. This made our feet brand new and ready for new adventures.
The next day we made our way to the capital of the country, Kuala Lumpur, home to the world's 2nd tallest building (Merdeka 118, 679m), the world's tallest twin tower structure, the Petronas towers (452m) and also enough shopping malls to spend weeks browsing through the stores. More on those later. We took advantage of the pool at our accommodation, found our lunch spot for the next days, and took an evening stroll to the Petronas towers.
The first full day we spent by joining a free guided walking tour, and leaving the tour with a lot of interesting facts about the history, architecture and politics of Malaysia, and of course lots of recommendations. Fun fact, throughout the history of Malaysia (~60 years) the average term for the prime minister has been 10 years. During the last 5 years, the average has dropped from 10 years to 1 year.
After the tour we strolled around the area for a bit longer, visited a few malls, before finding a great Indian food court, where we tried three different kinds of Indian bread (roti, thosai and naan), all with their own sauces, accompanied by a tasty and spicy chicken curry, bringing the total cost to a whopping 24RM (~5€).
The final full day started by visiting the Batu Caves, an enormous Hindu temple structure, mostly built inside a natural cave system. The temple itself is very impressive, with all its statues and ornaments, including a 43m tall statue of Murugan, the Hindu God of war. Throughout the different temples, buildings and stairs we were accompanied by dozens of very very cute monkeys. They were proudly showcasing their agility by jumping up and down the walls of temples, fences, and between branches, never wasting by an opportunity to snack on some munitions provided by passers-by (bananas, apples, chips, you name it).
We then decided to venture into the world of shopping malls. Can't miss out on the shopping experience in the capital of shopping malls. In total we visited around 5 or 6 malls, most of which were no further than 100m apart from each other. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is the Berjaya Times Square. This gigantic shopping mall/hotel/university building looks innocent from the outside, but the inside is where the magic happens. It is the only shopping mall in the world with an indoor theme park. Unfortunately the entrance to the theme park was not free and we didn't end up visiting the park, but even from the outside it looked very impressive for being contained withing a shopping mall.
In anticipation of the sunset, we made our way to a rooftop bar on the 59th floor of a central hotel, for a breathtaking view of the city skyline by sunset. We had a direct view of the thee landmarks of the city: the Petronas towers, the Merdeka 118, and the KL Tower. We enjoyed some locally inspired cocktails with the city slowly illuminating itself for the night.
On our final walk, we decided to finally try the king of fruits, the durian. This is the smelliest fruit in the world, so much so, that it is sold in airtight plastic wrapping, and is strictly banned from all hostels, hotels and public transportation. Our tour guide the day before even suggested to use mouthwash after eating it, because toothpaste alone would not get rid of the bad breath it brings. On top of that, the smell is so sticky the fruit is served with plastic gloves. The taste divides people, you either love it or you hate it. To be fair, neither of us loved it nor hated it. To me personally, the taste was not very pleasant, but not horrible. The consistency is reminiscent of a solid pudding, but not the nice kind. Unfortunately the tour guide was right and the taste did stay in our mouths until we finally got hold of some mouth wash (better part of an hour). Overall experience: worth trying, but wouldn't do it again.
That concludes our Malaysian adventures. Stay tuned for more stories coming up from Bali! :)
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