Day 6: KL, sticking to it

Today was a fairly solid reversal of fortune compared to yesterday. I decided not to overextend myself and to check out a few more places local, and on the whole it paid off.

I kicked off with doing my laundry, by which I mean going to where I got my last clothes washed, finding them closed, and walking across the road to a different, less swanky place. These folks charged me 10MYR, and told me to come back in a couple of hours.

Having been quite haphazard in my eating patterns, I decided to make a concerted effort today to eat 3 meals, and to be approximately regular in doing so. For breakfast I checked out a dim sum restaurant just down the road from the hotel. I’ve walked past almost every day, and been tempted to check them out, but there were never may people eating in there. Today it looked busier, so in I went. Unlike cart-based dimsum, this was an order off the menu situation, so I went with fried radish cake, sui mao, and fried meat dumplings, and pu-erh tea.

The pu-erh was like no pu-erh I’ve ever tasted. It was bland, watery, and probably got laughed out of Yunnan, if it even ever went near there. Not a good start, but then the radish cake came out, and it was as good as any I’ve ever had, crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and with a bowl of soy and chili. The sui mao were okay, nothing special but I’ve had worse, but the meat dumplings were probably 60% something green and leafy, which was a little disappointing but was probably the universe’s way of balancing the lack of gai lan on the menu. Overall I think the dim sum in Perth has nothing to worry about from this place.

It was up and down the hill to Pavilion, one of the swankiest malls in KL. Fearing that it was full of designer stuff I’d been steering clear, but some online reading suggested that not only was Pavilion huge, it had reasonable prices away from the top end stuff. So I checked it out, and am happy to say that it does indeed have some cool, different stuff that had been lacking in my previous outings, so much so that I fairly quickly had some full bags and awesome pressies for a few folks back home.

For lunch I figured I’d check out Pappa Rich in the Pavilion, to see how it stacks up to the exported version. So I got the nasi lemak and a groovy looking layered cool drink that also had grass jelly in it. I’m sure there’s a knack to consuming the jelly without having all the ice, but stuffed if I know how. The nasi lemak was fairly underwhelming, dry rice, okay sambal, slightly overcooked fried chicken. I guess it was a bit pleasing to see that in KL the Pappa Rich menu also isn’t very spicy.

Back a the hotel I dropped off all my bags, shopping and laundry, before heading out to Fahrenheit 88, the less swanky mall next to Pavilion, to grab a massage from the Thai Odyssey outlet there. So for the next hour I was prodded, twisted, and elbowed, all the while wearing some unflattering supplied pyjamas, but I’m feeling a bit better for it now.

After a short break, I figured it was time for me to try another of Malaysia’s signature dishs, satay. Some googling suggested the best place nearby was called Fat Brother, on Jalan Alor. At Fat Brother you grab a seat, tell the serving guy that jou just want water, no beer, and then grab the metal plate on the table in front of you and take this to the Fat Brother food stands. These two stands are covered in rows and rows of different satay already on their sticks, waiting for you to put them on your plate, give the plate to some guy who arranges cooking, and then your sticks are delivered to your table. And if you haven’t had enough, you can always go get more. Pricing depends on the colour of the send of the stick, each colour is worth a different total. I noticed that they were doing their best to direct me towards the more expensive optionsonce I worked out the code. They had a great selection of things on sticks, mushrooms, meat of various kinds, offal, vegetables, tofu, seafoods, all sorts of yummy things. I generally went with the classics, chicken and lamb, but also had the tofu, and chicken wrapped in pandan leaves. On the table were three pots of condiments: the standard satay, a soy based sauce, and the spicy satay sauce (this wasn’t so spicy). These were all pretty good, so now I can tick the box that’s I’ve had satay in Malaysia.

Then it was back to the hotel where I’m looking at all the last minute things to do and places to see before I fly home on Tuesday. So tomorrow may feature more durian, the Batu caves, a tower, more shopping, and some packing, as I’m on a very early flight out on Tuesday.