Kuala Lampur - Malaysia Truly Asia

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Kuala Lampur. Shopping lovers’ paradise. Food lovers’ paradise. Greenery lovers’ paradise. Massage lovers’s paradise! The 3 days I spent in Kuala Lampur, We had the pleasure of enjoying each one of these to the max. I shopped for shoes like crazy, we ate yummy food like famine stricken hungry kids, looked long and hard at the vast green highways and soothed our eyes and ended the days with a supped relaxing back massage.

We stayed in Bukit Bintang- in Hotel Oasis Garden. From our hotel, walking distance to Bukit Bintang Plaza was literally 2 minutes, to Pavillion it was about 6 minutes and to the Times Square shopping mall it was like 10 minutes. You can well imagine from the location of my hotel what a fabulous shopping spree I have had. As the cherry on top of the cream, VINCCI was having a month long sale–giving up to 70 percent discount on shoes and bags. I had never bought so many shoes in a span of 3 days in my life before and to top it off, I brought VINCCI shoes as gifts for my sisters too!

It’s not an exaggeration at all to say that Kuala Lampur is a shopping lovers’ paradise. Whether you want to buy high end designer handbags or fake ones, whether you want designer shoes or stunning less expensive varieties, whether you want hijab or clothes- go to Kuala Lampur! The Pavillion makes you wonder how much money some people have that they can afford the designer brands and BB Plaza lets you buy as exotic shoes and bags at a much cheaper price. Every other person is carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and you can’t tell the difference of who is carrying the original and who is carrying the fake one. Times Square is a place where an entire day will fall short if you want to see what’s available in all the shops- and decision making is a real challenge given the variety of things available. Siam, being the most wonderful husband as always, did not stop me and “let me shop till we drop”- literally! At the end, we had to be careful to keep the cash aside to pay the airport taxi.

A visit to the Twin towers is a must to complete Kuala Lampur vacation. We did go there but on the very last day. Apart from the architecture, I was not much drawn to the shopping centre as I had already done that in last 2 days. But the food court was great- it has restaurants serving every type of food- Bangladeshi, Indian, Aarbian, Japanese, European, Vietnamese, Italian and of course Malaysian! The place is, though large in square feet, but too small to accommodate the overwhelming hungry crowd on a holiday. But that’s part of the fun too- to stand behind people who are still eating so that we can make them uncomfortable and they will eat fast and empty the seats for us!

Hotel Oasis Garden is a comfortable hotel that provides the basic needs only- no facility like breakfast or room service is available there. But it was perfect because the location of the hotel is extremely good in terms of proximity to restaurants too. Just opposite our hotel was a great Arabian restaurant, KFC, McDonalds, Subway, few steak houses and of course, my favourite- Secret Recipe outlet. My one advice for anyone going to Malaysia is to eat at the Secret Recipe. I loved their Tom-Yum soup, their grilled chicken with mushroom served with rice and corn. Siam loved the Vietnamese noodle soup. We had also tried a Thai rice and shrimp dish which was yummy too. And the cakes- oh the cakes! They are mouth watering- soft, not over sweet, and delicious looking. Each variety of cakes are as delicious as the other. At times, I had to drag myself away from Secret Recipe so that we could try some other restaurants too. The street cafes serve as yummy food as any expensive restaurant. We definitely tried the Malay food Nasi Gorang Lemak and Nasi Gorang Ayyam and we both liked those. Overall, food in Kuala Lampur is mind blowing.

No need to mention further how we spent the days-that’s already understandable. But we enjoyed the nights more as we watched movies together. We watched The Avengers and The Battleship. I very much wanted to watch The Vow- but we couldn’t get tickets. So guess what Siam did? We downloaded the movie in our laptop, bought fries and milkshake from McDonalds and had our own movie night in our hotel room- awesome!

China town was just a 5 minutes walk away from our hotel. Like all China Towns all over the world, this one too was a crowded place loaded with street cafes and vendors selling cheap replica stuff all around you. Though I cannot eat authentic Chinese food, it is none the less a pleasure to walk through the crowd, bargain for fake stuff and to take photoes of the overhead decorative lanterns.

People in Malaysia are very warm and friendly. I was most impressed by the taxi driver whotook us to airport on the day we left. I forgot his name but he was a very well behaved andquite knowledgeable man in his fifties. From him, in the hour long journey, I learnt a lot aboutMalaysian culture, politics and economy.

It was a super relaxing holiday. Unlike our other vacations, we didn’t do much adventure inKuala Lampur. We slept late, ate a lot, shopped a lot, took regular massage to further relax andalready relaxed body and watched movies. 3 days passed too soon- and the money too!

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