Day 7: KL, in a day

Today was the catchup, touristy day, where I tried to cram in just about as many of the KL landmarks that I could. While I’ve been enjoying my time in KL, I’ve generally missed most of the postcard places, and with only one day left it was time to fill in some gaps.

First stop of the day (after breakfast, a dosa with condiments at a random streetside eatery) was the Batu caves just north of KL, and by just north I mean these are about 20 minutes’ drive in early morning traffic. The Batu caves are a big Hindi thing, there’s the postcard huge statue of the god of war out front, behind which 272 rather steep steps took me to a temple dedicated to, I don’t know, all things Hindi I guess. Everything I know about Hinduism wouldn’t fit on the back of a small postcard, but this religion seems to like making colourful temples with weird, crazy statues. I know this sounds like I’m writing off one of the world’s oldest religions, but please accept that I’m talking out of ignorance, not malice. One day I may have the time learn about all of the things, but that wasn’t this day.

However, I do try, when entering temples, churches, and other places of worship to be respectful, quiet, contemplative, and that’s what I managed here. I appreciated the art and sculpture, and didn’t run around madly like the monkeys this cave is famous for, and some tourists who didn’t have the excuse of being, well, monkeys. I my not know much about all the religions, but I know a little about animals: I know enough that it’s usually a bad idea to deliberately get too close to a mother nursing young, and some folks there are probably lucky the monkeys’ instincts tend towards evade rather than stand and protect.

I rrived too early to check out the Dark Cave (opens at 10am) so instead wandered around the area: there’s a fish pond with some huge catfish and other fish (It seemed a bit overstocked to me but I’m no expert). I also found another cave, full of sculptures that tell the story of Rama, which was interesting.

Deciding not to wander back up the steps for the Dark Cave (it was hot, I was sweaty, and part of me wasn’t feeling the love for a cave full of bugs and bats) I grabbed back to KL to the KL tower (driving past a burning car crashed into roadside barriers). I bought a ticket to go all the way to the top, the outside sky deck, an wandered around. The view was awesome, even limited by heat-haze, though I must say, for a communications tower that is the 7th tallest free-standing structure in the world (thanks wikipedia), I would have thought the 4G reception would have been better, as I did struggle to get a signal.

In addition to the sky deck, there are a couple of sky boxes that stick out over the edge with clear glass floors. Of course I had to wander into these, and took a couple of snaps of me lying down, looking suave and sweaty while feeling a little shitscared, but hey, that’s what it’s all about.

Then it was a couple of floors down to the enclosed, air conditioned observation deck where I found out I could have got a snow globe souvenir with my picture in it — unfortunately the only pics of me were with a horrible greenscreen background when I first arrived, all sweaty and slightly confused as to why someone wanted me to pose for a picture. I wandered around the deck for a while before deciding it was time for food.

I did some googling for something good and spicy, and eventually decided that the Lot 10 basement food hall had potential. I think it’s a western thing, but I rarely expect food halls to have great food. The Lot 10 hall has good reviews, and was designed to be like a hawker market but inside and comfortable.

Chili pan mee grabbed my attention, and it had a queue of local people which I took to be a good sign, and it was. For 11MYR I had a bowl of noodles, ikan bilis, mince, and egg, with a bowl of chili paste and a soup on the side. I noticed that a lot of locals were only putting half of the chili in their bowl, but after a taste I put all of mine in, and it tasted flavourful but not deadly. I think my tolerance for chili has improved somewhat, as a couple of the beforementioned locals were sweating after a half measure. Mixing everything together, this all tasted wonderful. Salty spicy fishy noodly goodness. It was probably a good thing I didn’t discover this place sooner, otherwise I’d have had all my lunches there.

I grabbed a couple of small durian pancakes on my way out before taking a wander to DurianBB Park. I’m not sure where the park was, as it was more of a big grass hut with colourful shipping containers than a park, but I didn’t come here for the nature, I came for the creamy goodness that is durian.

The kind and friendly staff presented me with a tasting tray of three varieties (who knew durian had varieties?), the Golden Bun (D13), XO (D24), and Musang King (D197), suggesting I go from lowest to highest number. The D13 was probably the most fragrant, yet was quite lightly flavoured. D24 had a beautiful, creamy texture, but the D197 was my favourite, rich, sumptuous, delicious.

I think they were a little surprised to see a westerner (also, I was their only customer, I think they get busier in the evenings) so they also gave me tasters of their durian mooncake (awesomely delicious!) and durian coffee (a bit weird, tasted more of banana and evaporated milk).

After a nap back at the hotel, I made one of those decisions that would end up being awesome. Waking up to the sound of thunder, I came very close to deciding not to go to a nearby rooftop bar, but then a crazy and spontaneous part of my brain insisted that I should go out. Thanks to googlemaps pointing me in the wrong direction, and the really bad address description, it took a little while to find, but it wasn’t long before I was heading up to level 34 of the Menara KH building to the Heli Lounge Bar.

Just in time for happy hour. For all of the reviews talking about how expensive alcohol is in KL, I happily sipped lychee martinis at 30MYR each (show me a bar in Perth that does a lychee martini for $11-12). As I finished my first, we were given the all clear to go upstairs (it’s a working helipad by day, and pop-up lounge bar by night) so I grabbed another martini and carefully climbed the two flights of steps to the top.

As you’d expect, it’s a pretty good view from up there, close to the KL and Petronas towers, with no edge wall or anything other than a rope barrier around the roof. So it’s an infinity bar, really. The lightning and thunder was still around, adding to the ambiance, but the rain held off. I guess being a Monday, and the weather being inclement, it wasn’t very crowded either. Sipping away at my martini felt really good, and would have only been better if L was there too.

Having made peace with the world, and not wishing to run the risk of being publicly alcoholicly inappropriate, I headed back down to Jalan Alor for dinner. After passing all the regular stands, I decided to head to an indian eatery just off the side, behind the main stalls, where I discovered a pretty good curry buffet patronised entirely by locals. The server helpfully explained all of the dishes to me, and was strangely pleasantly surprised when I beat him to the punch on the dahl, itseems they don’t get many outsiders braving the steps down there. I could also add something about benefitting from a bit of male privilege here, as I felt fairly safe wandering into a restaurant that, aside from one family, was full of men. Even as a male, walking in was a little intimidating.

Full of fine curry, I headed back up to the Whisky Bar for one final dram, Tomintoul 21 year old, before heading back to the hotel to pack, and then repack, hoping that all of the breakables were protected. Then set the alarm for way to early, in order to get my 8.55am flight.

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(written 23/24 October as I was too tired to blog and needed sleep…)