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Malaysia, Part 2 |
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Wednesday, February 27th
We managed to drag ourselves out of bed a little bit earlier today -- well some of us. Sleeping Beauty had a little longer in bed than us.
After a leisurely breakfast of jam on bread while watching The Little Mermaid II on the computer, we caught a taxi and headed back into KL. The traffic was much heavier today than yesterday. We got out at the Petronas Towers again and were just in time to hop back on the Hop On Hop Off bus as our tickets were still valid. We rode the bus to the Menara KL tower. The views were amazing and we could see quite a distance even though the sky was hazy.
Some of the landmarks we spotted were the Negara and Merdeka Stadia...
...the Petronas Towers...
...and the ferris wheel and lake at Lake Titiwangsa.
It was Hazel's turn to be the photograph star while we were up at the viewing gallery. A nice Indian mother wanted to take a photo of Hazel but Hazel was not at all interested and hid behind me. Then later when she was sitting down and not paying attention, the lady snapped her picture. Are we oddities?
Here you can see Merdeka Square including the Padang (field) and Sultan Abdul Samad building.
After our trip up the tower and back down again (in the super fast lift), we caught the bus to Chinatown. The sun was out in force today so it was uncomfortable to mill around. We stopped in the first cafe we found. They were quite friendly and suggested we have a few side dishes with some rice since most (all!) of the main meals were meat-based. So we had boiled rice, nice greens in garlic sauce, soft tofu in a seasoned soy sauce and David had some honey barbequed pork. The older man who waited on us took a shine to Hazel and wanted her to dance with him but she refused. He showed us the picture of his grandchildren he keeps in his wallet. Everyone here has been very friendly. We considered going to the major shopping area to try to find a replacement hat for Hazel as her butterfly hat disappeared somewhere between the tower and Chinatown. But, the taxis on Petaling street wanted to charge us 15 ringgits to go to Lot 10, the major department store. This is a rip off as to get all the way out to the suburb Mont Kiara, where we are staying, is only 10. So we walked a little bit to try to find the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, gave up and found another cab that would take us back to Mont Kiara on the meter. It was a less than pleasant ride! I thought the driver might have had a twitch but David said he was just panicky because he wasn't sure where he was going. Anyway he drove in 3rd gear the whole way, straddling two lanes of traffic and constantly making this motion with his hand almost like he was crossing himself and then rubbing his head. I was very glad when we arrived in one piece! We stopped into MacDonald's (another place I never, ever go to in the UK!) for a restorative ice cream. Hazel had a strawberry sundae while I braved a red bean sundae. OK, but wouldn't really recommend it! Basically the same as the strawberry version only mine had beans floating in the red goo.
(That looks like a ManU sticker! And the car is a "Hobbit." I wonder if you could sell Hobbits in the US?)
We decided to eat in the apartment this evening so paid a quick visit to the supermarket for some oyster mushrooms and eggs to make a mushroom omelette. David and I spied some kimchee so we bought a tub of that, too. It's a lot stronger than anything we've tried in the UK or made at home. We've only managed one bite each so far. Is it supposed to taste of fish? Hmm, maybe not. On the other hand after the initial odd taste of Fried Hard Tack, these little biscuits are incredibly moreish. We eat them by the handful and yet the bag never seems to get any emptier. |
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