My journey to Kuala Lumpur could get a post all to itself! I was supposed to fly from Singapore, but *someone* booked their ticket for December 29 instead of November 29 and didn’t discover this fact until after getting up at four am and taking a taxi to the airport. So, I ended up taking a bus instead, which was roughly a seven hour journey. The bus was quite nice though — my seat reclined and had a foot rest, and they served snacks and hot drinks! The boarder crossing was an interesting cultural experience. There was a massive line to get stamped out of Singapore. I chatted with two nice Malaysian ladies from my bus while we waited for an hour. There were hundreds (or more??) of Chinese tourists crossing the boarder by bus. My bus was all Malaysians and me, so when it was time to cross the Malaysian boarder, they all got in the local line and flew right through, and I had to get in the hours-long line with all the Chinese tourists! The bus has a helper to get you through the boarder crossing, and she wasn’t having any of that. First she tried to get me in the locals line by appealing to three different boarder control agents, and when that didn’t work, she just moved me to the front of the line! I felt a little bad (I think we all know I’m a rule follower) but I was also glad, since I didn’t want to hold up the entire bus for hours! 

On my first evening in town I had an experience that was one of the highlights of my trip… a food tour! A local foodie took us around KL to a bunch of popular street food stands to try some Malay foods. Some of the more normal things we ate were rice with toasted coconut, chicken satay, roti with banana inside, and beef rendang. Some of the more outrageous things were dessert squid (squid stuffed with sweet rice in a sweet sauce), cow stomach satay, and cow tongue satay. The dessert squid was one of the most disgusting things I have ever tasted in my life. But the experience was awesome. He also took us to the market. We got to try all kinds of fruits (my favorite part of the tour, of course). I loved the mangosteen! We also ate durian — we each had to take two bites because he said it tastes different on the second bite. That was true, but I still wasn’t a fan even after the second bite. It wasn’t as bad as the squid though! We also tried some vegetables, including dog fruit, which is eaten raw and looks and tastes a bit like garlic, and stink bean. He told us everyone will know if you eat a lot of stink bean because it makes your gas have a certain smell! We also tried cashew leaf, which made your whole mouth go dry when you chewed it! We went to the meat market too, and that was the most challenging part of the experience for me. Seeing the animal parts was difficult (we saw a man pushing a cart full of cow’s heads), but that wasn’t actually the hardest part. It was the hygiene conditions! Everything was just sitting out with no refrigeration and the scraps and run-off just poured into channels on the ground to flow out into the street. Apparently I have a hang up about food being clean. Who knew. The food tour was a fun and interesting experience and I loved it, even though I ate meat. 

Another highlight from my time in Kuala Lumpur was my trip to the Batu caves, which is a Hindu temple set in a natural cave. The site was under construction and everything was wrapped in scaffolding, so that took something away from the experience. But we decided to visit Dark Cave, which is a conservation site nearby, and that was really cool. We saw bats and insects in the cave and I learned a lot. I did some Christmas shopping at the Central Market (mostly tourist junk but I found a few gems), and visted the Textile Museum, which I loved for all the traditional embroidery and beautiful hand-made fabric on display there. I also took a walk in Old Little India, an area where locals do their shopping. I enjoyed seeing all the shops and fabrics. I got a lot of attention there. I’m guessing that they don’t see a lot of tourists in that area. I met two sweet girls who were visiting from Sabah (another part of Malaysia) for a school competition and they tried out their English skills with me. There were lots of giggles involved.