We got up today and decided that we needed to figure out laundry so that we had enough for our trip to Borneo in a few days. David had been given a business card for a laundry service that works with the hotel when we checked in. He tried calling the number and the man on the other end of the line either didn’t understand or it was a wrong number. David went downstairs while Caitlyn was getting ready, and told the man at the check-in counter what was going on. He told David that if we bring the laundry downstairs, he will call the man for us and take care of it. David runs back up and grabs the dirty laundry. The man pulls out a small luggage scale and weighs it for us. It came out to 5.9kg, and we were told that it is 10 ringgit per kilogram, and that they round up. 60 ringgit is a pretty good deal, especially for not having to do it ourselves and even compared to the prices on self-service machines! He told David that we could pay either now or when the laundry comes, so we opted to pay later. Caitlyn came downstairs and we decided today was a good day to use the free coffee/tea voucher we were given upon check-in to a restaurant next door. We enjoyed our drinks and headed out to start our day. We walked towards our first stop on the list, but it was pretty far away. We also had gotten up a little later today, so we decided to go ahead and knock lunch out along the way. We found a very highly rated Chinese restaurant called Yut Kee.
We get to the restaurant, and while there was a sizable line out front, they told us it would only be 10-15 minutes. We were seated in around 10 minutes and checked the menu out. Chef Samuel had recommended this place, and we looked at both his list of food recommendations and the recommendations line and decided to get the Curry Mee (noodles) and the chop chicken. The curry mee was fine, but didn’t blow us away. The chop chicken was essentially a cheat meal, it turns out. This is a very authentic restaurant, but the plate of chop chicken came out and it looked, as Caitlyn said, “like something I would get at the Freeland Diner”. It was a piece of chicken-fried chicken sitting on a plate of gravy with corn, peas, potatoes, and onions. It tasted pretty western, but did have some Asian spices inside. Apparently it is one of their most popular items, which was a little confusing. It did taste nice, but certainly is not what we expected.
Our first real stop was a small local mosque in the northeast area, just northwest of the Petronas Twin Towers. We can’t remember the name, but it doesn’t really matter. When we arrived, we had trouble discerning what the entrance was. Caitlyn said from her research that this may be kind of like going into a random church at home and we decided that even though it is apparently historically significant, it wasn’t worth the awkwardness of trying to go inside. We enjoyed looking at the outside some before walking onwards.
Our next stop was the Patronas Towers, one of Malaysia’s most famous landmarks. We put it in our maps and started the walk. We eventually find a bridge called the Pintasan Salome, a beautiful pedestrian bridge that helps to cross a very large highway and a river. We go through this, enjoying the slight shade that it provided, before exiting.
On the way to the towers, we walked through what seemed like very poor neighborhoods. It was interesting to see this part of KL as most of what we have seen is either more business-oriented or more populous areas. We walked through a very Arab area before eventually finding ourselves close to the towers in a much more central area. We crossed the street after many crosswalks and much waiting, and finally arrived at the entry to the Petronas Towers.
They were absolutely stunning, and we entered hoping to find a way to get towards the top to see the view. Inside, we realize that most of this area is basically a large mall. We walked around a little bit before going to get some cold drinks from Family Mart because we were pretty thirsty and gross. The mall was a little confusing and didn’t have many directories, so this took longer than we wanted. At this point, we realized that we really didn’t have enough good clothing for Borneo. We had recently looked into the website some more and they highly recommend long clothing to prevent bug bites amongst other things. We decided to walk around the mall and look for some good long clothing. We went to probably 4 or 5 stores before we finally found one named Uniqlo that Caitlyn found a nice dress and a jacket in. We hadn’t found much for David, so we tried underarmour, Nike, and other stores before finally finding a Colombia. We hit the jackpot here! We both found multiple fantastic safari-style shirts and Caitlyn found a great UV-protective baseball cap. We were excited to have some good clothes for Borneo, and decided to head back to the hotel to drop off our bags before continuing on with our day.
We took a grab in the interest of time, and after dropping our bags off, we took a grab to the Batu Caves. This is one of the most famous sites in KL or even all of Malaysia. Any time we mentioned going to KL, everyone first told us we need to go to the Batu Caves. We arrived and could see why. A GIGANTIC 272-step (David counted) colored staircase leads from the ground up to a beautiful cave high in a mountain. Next to the staircase is a statue that made the one in Penang look like a toy. This is apparently called the “Murugan Statue” and is the tallest statue in Malaysia and one of the tallest in the world, towering over everything at 140 feet tall.
We started climbing up the fun and colorful stairs, looking at all of the hundreds of monkeys walking around everywhere. We are happy to report that all of the climbing up the subways, monuments, and temples over the past few weeks had really improved our stamina and strength. Though very high up, we really did not have any issue and flew past almost everyone walking up.
Once we hit the top, we turned around to enjoy the view. Sadly, slash and burn operations in Indonesia as well as some bad weather coming in did impact the view. The weather really started to sour and we saw dozens of lightning strikes in the distance. We realized that the rain was imminent, so we turned around and went into the cave.
The ceiling of the cave was MASSIVE, and multiple structures were built inside. We walked around the inside of this giant room, strategically avoiding some rain as there were a few holes in the ceiling.
We eventually decided to head back outside and head back down. At the entrance to the caves, Caitlyn decided to take a few pictures overlooking the city and David went ahead downstairs. Just as David reached the bottom and got to a covered area, the rain started POURING. Caitlyn was only halfway down at this point and was subsequently soaked in the few seconds it took for her to even get her umbrella out. She finally reached the bottom to find a bone dry David (who probably did point out a little too much how funny it is that he got under cover just in time). The rain slowed down at one point and we tried to walk around and explore some, but we decided to stop at a building on the property with some cover and wait a while longer. We waited for a few minutes until the rain stopped and got a few more photos and explored the rest of the area.
There were some nice buildings that required no shoes, and with the dirty state of the water on the ground and David having worn socks and tennis shoes, we decided to only look briefly from the outside.
After we finished exploring we took a grab to the KL tower. The KL tower is a beautiful telecommunications tower that you can see from almost everywhere in the city. At night, it even lights up! It is the tallest tower in Southeast Asia and the 7th tallest in the world at 1,381 feet. We arrived after a substantial grab trip and went inside to try and figure out tickets.
The ticket price was quite expensive so we checked Klook (a great website for buying discounted tickets to almost anything) and found the prices were MUCH cheaper. We tried to buy a ticket but realized that they would only sell tickets for the following day. We decided to hold off on the experience, and explore the grounds.
There was a beautiful nearby building we saw from a distance that looked like it had a rooftop bar, so we dug around on Google maps to try to find it. We eventually figured out which building it was in and walked over. We asked at the lobby if we could head up and they gave us a laundry list of reasons why we couldn’t including that they typically require reservations, they were full right now, and they have a dress code that David was breaking. We decided that maybe it was dinner time, and we figured with the large middle eastern population and how much we enjoyed the food on our first night, we would try for some more middle Eastern! We found a close by restaurant with good reviews named “Arabella” and headed over. We were pretty much the only customers, with one man smoking hookah outside and one man sitting at a table in the back that was just sitting at a table and talking on his phone some. We ordered the falafel appetizer and the mixed grill set. The falafel had a nice taste but was extremely dry.
The mixed grill was fine but didn’t hold a candle to the first night.
Caitlyn also felt very uncomfortable as she kept getting stared at by the man in the back, which pretty much ruined the meal for her. We finished our meal and planned how to spend the rest of our evening. We got an alert of a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the US embassy tomorrow near a nice park that we had planned on going to, so we figured we we go tonight so we could still see it. There is a light show every night and we had just enough time to make it for the 8:00 show.
We navigated through roads, pedestrian bridges, and through buildings to eventually find the beautiful enormous fountain where the show takes place.
We found a nice seat in the front near a majority of the fountain jets and waited for 8:00. The show was really nice and they ran through 3 songs (Eye of the Tiger, a Spanish song, and a third one) which choreographed lights and fountain jets.
Once finished, we ordered a grab home. Our GPS wasn’t very good, but we put the pickup for the Mandarin Oriental hotel nearby and eventually found it. We waited outside the Mandarin Oriental trying to look like we fit in until our driver got us. We decided to grab a bottle of wine from a wine shop just 2 blocks from our hotel (very strange to see a wine shop in Southeast Asia for us!). We grabbed a bottle and went to our hotel. We remembered that the laundry was supposed to be done, so we asked the young girl named Priya at the front desk about it. She wasn’t the one dealing with us earlier, but we assumed she knew how the laundry worked. She was confused at first but eventually indicated that the laundry would be up in our room. We paid her the money for the laundry and asked for a receipt so we didn’t get asked for it later. She started writing something down and instead decided to take a picture of her holding the cash on her phone. This felt like the opposite of a receipt to us, but it was a small amount of cash and we didn’t want to keep trying to communicate so we gave up and headed upstairs. In our room, we quickly realize that there was no laundry. We headed back down and she called the man from earlier. She eventually told us that it would be ready tomorrow or maybe the next day. We asked for the money back as we hadn’t received our service yet. She was a little reluctant but we said we were told we could pay later and still hadn’t received our laundry. Money in hand, we went upstairs and had a glass of wine and went to bed.
Steps walked: 20,453
Miles walked: 9.71
Bluming Travelers 