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Malaysia，Kuala Lampur and more September 25, 2016

The last 2 days of our 5-day, 4-night Malaysia tour was in Kuala Lumpur. The hotel was a 3, at most 3.5 star hotel in a mid to lower section of the city. The surrounding area gave us creeps in the evening when we went out for a walk after dinner. A section of a street had several restaurants, all with dark interior and very few customers. Several people were sitting around on the outside with nothing to do. We decided to stay in our room and watch TV.

The KL twin towers is the headquarter for Malaysia’s national oil company, Petronas. It is also known as Petronas Towers, or Menara Berkembar Petronas to Malay people. I believe that the towers were built when oil price was high and Petronas was flushed with petro dollars. At current price of oil, a big building like this will be impossible to get it off the ground. Of course, being a national company, Petronas, for sure, had government’s support financially and politically.

It is an impressive building with stuning architectural design and eye-catching details. It was built in two stages: the first tower was built by a Korean company and the second one by a Japanese company. Our local tour guid told us that the bridge in between was used to stablize two structures.

In the base of the two buildings is a modern shopping mall. Almost every store we see in a typical American shopping malls has a presence here. When we were there one mid-afternoon in August, a fashion show was taking place but we couldn’t stay to watch models walking the stage.

Our tour guide took us to the old royal palace but we were not allowed to visit the inside because it is not opened to tourists. All we could do was to take a picture with a guard and admired the granduer of the palace from the outside. Boring. A bigger and more beautiful palace was built for the king and his wife. The more modest one was set aside for tourists now.

Three other places we were taken to were shopping stops: a 肉骨茶 shop, a coca shop and a tin trinket manufacture shop. 肉骨茶 is Bak-kut-teh in Fujian dialog which literally translates as ‘meat bone tea.’ However, the ‘meat bone’ dish dosen’t have amy tea in it. Instead it is a soup dish made.from pork bones, herbs and mushrooms. The coca shop sells Malaysia coffee while the tin shop wanted to sell us expensive tin cups, status, trinkets and useless displays.

Since a portion of tourists’ spending goes to our tour guide, we bought some to show our support. A few in our group bought large quantity of 肉骨茶 as gifts and many packages of coffee but no one bought anything from the tin shop. To generate interest in tin goods, the tin shop took us in for a tour and gave us a chance to make a small（5 inch）tin dish from a flat and round plate. We all had a good time but it wasn’t enough for anyone in our group to buy anything from the store.

I believe that these are coca nut which are used to make chocolate. Inside the nut is a white-colored seed about the size of a ostrich egg. It is used to make white chocolate.

We also went to the Kuala Lumpur Tower which is a 421 m （1,380 ft）high telecom and broadcasting tower which actually appears to be taller than the Petronas Towers, because it is built on a hill. Amidst the city of Kuala Lumpur stands the Menara Kuala Lumpur at 515 m （about 1,700 ft） above sea level.

At the top of the TV brocasting tower is a revolving restaurant and a buffet lunch there is included in our tour package.

Other places we went to included:

A buffet dinmer at Muslin restaurant where I saw a mouse running around in the back when I got lost searching for a bathroom. The performance was entertaining.

For one dinner, we went to a famous Chinese restaurant because Jacky Chen went there once . It was crowded with many tourists but it had dirty table, broken and wet plates, plastic table cloth and messy floors. The food, I don’t remember any. I mixed some chicken broth with rice and ate it with some vegetables. It was on a narrow street filled with potholes, people walking along cars which was kind like night market in Taiwan. The air smelled rotten because almost every stands on both sides of the 400-yard street had at least one durian opened up for tourists to buy or to eat on the spot. Samples were given out and I was terrified because of that smell. Again, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t want to come there. Not for 肉骨茶 or the night market.

We also went to a  bazzar in the city centet in KL. It has probably 200 stalls and shops selling cheap goods to tourists. Not my cup of tea. 逛逛而已.

On the way to the airport the morning of day 5, we went to the new administration ‘city’ for Malaysia’s federal government which is about an hour south of Kuala Lumpur by bus. The city built from scrstch was the brain child of the former premier of Malaysia who wanted to seperate country’s financial center（Kuala Lumpur）from the political center. The new city was carefully designed with impressive buildings, beautiful mosques, wide streets and gardens.

The mosque we went to opened to the tourists. Another one built by metal on the other side of the river was for Muslims only. Apoarently the tourists were good enough to be allowed.

The last stop befoe flying back to Taipei was lunch at a large（~200 seats, almost all were 10-tops round tables) Chinese restaurant which offered tranditional (as traditional as it could be away fron Hong Kong) Cantonese food. This was probably the only semi-decent restaurant that we went to when we were in Malaysia. But, our lunch was rushed, the taste.was okay and the service was quick. Every table in the restaurant, almost full at 11:30 in the morning, had the same food and the food was probably prepared before we got here.

The revolving buffet restaurant at KL tower was okay too even though I didn’t care their Indian and Muslin foods. It did have some western food which was not too bad.

All in all, it was fun and our tour guides and bus driver were great. Being able to visit KL was fun. Resorts were just okay if I had the right mind to enjoy the stay but I wouldn’t go there again.

Kuala Lumpur is a modern city with a lot of people, many skyscrapers and busy traffic. But a few hundred yards from the city was backward, not very clean and poor. The food we had was nothing short of terrible probably because I was too picky.
Well, there you have it.