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HE SAID... We left the Kuala Kangsar bus station at midday and began our final journey back to
Kuala Lumpur. With only a 10 minute toilet break at 1.30pm, we arrived in KL at 3pm. The bus station was right underneath our hotel, so we jumped off the bus, walked up a few stairs to the lift and within no time at all we were checking in at Ancasa Express. We unpacked and relaxed in our room, checked email for the first time in two days and then headed out for a late lunch across the road at Restoran Anuja. We’d walked past this place the first day we were here. It was absolutely bustling inside and we wanted to try it, but we were still a little nervous at that stage. It was fantastic to walk in, sit at a small plastic table and order
roti canai (flat flaky Indian bread served with curry sauce) and
teh tarik (pulled sweet milky tea) without a care in the world. It was absolutely fantastic, especially the fish curry. Feeling refreshed, we picked up some snacks and walked back to the hotel in the pouring rain. Kuala Lumpur’s recurrent afternoon thunderstorm had been
raging overhead for the past hour.
We headed out to Central Market at 7.30pm to pick up a few gifts. As we were leaving the market, we stopped to watch a Malaysian dance troupe performing what appeared to be modern dance routines in traditional costumes in the car park. It was entertaining to watch, but not terribly well rehearsed. We then wandered the streets of Chinatown looking for a place to eat, eventually opting for Restoran Seng Kee at 9.30pm. What an incredible find! We shared a Majestic BBQ Pork Noodle dish, and it was sensational. We sat at a small plastic table on the footpath of Jalan Sultan and had one of the most memorable dishes of our Malaysian holiday. The barbecued pork was incredibly rich and caramelised – it was just so good. It was also a bonus to enjoy a beer with the meal. We caught up with a couple of travel friends at the Reggae Bar before calling it a night at 11.30pm. We wandered back to the hotel, caught up on our travel notes and finally crashed at 1am. We were leaving Malaysia tomorrow, and our penultimate day had been fantastic. It is such
a good feeling to suddenly feel comfortable in another city…
We woke late at 7am – it was our last day in Malaysia. With an 8pm flight, we planned to make the most of our late checkout. We headed down to the hotel restaurant at 8.30am and had a basic breakfast of coffee, juice, cornflakes, eggs and toast. We then used our room until midday for packing, writing and generally preparing for an overnight flight to Melbourne.
We headed out for lunch at 12.30pm to the Old China Cafe. We took a slight detour through Madras Lane on the way, as we had not yet experienced Chinatown’s Wet Market. It was a difficult street to find, tucked away from the madness of Chinatown’s main streets, but its subculture was amazing. Only metres from the tout–driven madness of Jalan Petaling, this was an unlikely sanctuary of fresh fish, butchered carcasses, vegetables and fruit of all descriptions. At times the smell was unbearable, especially in the midday heat, but the atmosphere was poles apart from the stereotypical Chinatown vibe. We hardly saw a tourist in this narrow bustling warren of food stalls. We eventually emerged at Jalan Sultan and made
our way to the Old China Cafe. We’d lunched here a few weeks before, and it seemed fitting to have our last meal here, as our last experience had been so good.
We shared an
ikan bilis sambal (deep fried anchovies in a chilli sauce),
nasi lemak (chicken curry, coconut rice, dried anchovies, spicy sambal, boiled egg and peanuts) and
kari kapitan chicken (coconut chicken curry), and each dish was fantastic. We quenched our thirst with iced local coffee and iced lemon tea, and Ren finished the meal with one of her favourite desserts –
sago gula Melaka (sago pudding in coconut cream with palm sugar syrup). I finished the meal with my last
teh tarik in Malaysia, and I know I’ll miss this incredibly refreshing beverage. After a long and relaxed lunch, we headed back to the hotel at 2pm. We changed our clothes, checked our packs and jumped into a taxi at 3.30pm. After four fantastic weeks, we were on our way to the airport.
The trip to the airport was very entertaining, as we had a fantastic taxi driver. It has to be said that Malaysia has some of the friendliest and most affable taxi
drivers we’ve come across in our travels. He asked where we’d been and what dishes we’d tried over our past month in Malaysia. He was very proud of his country and pointed out all kinds of interesting (and not–so–interesting) facts as we sped along the highway. He tried to convince us to take a detour into Putrajaya (Malaysia’s administrative centre) at no extra cost, because he wanted to give us a guided tour of the planned city’s stunning new architecture. However, we were getting a little weary and it sounded too much like a tour of Canberra City, so we opted out. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and continued his amusing commentary until we arrived at KL International Airport at 4.30pm.
SHE SAID... We left Kuala Kangsar in Perak and travelled back to
Kuala Lumpur on a public bus. One thing I’ve noticed about public buses in Malaysia is that the undercarriage luggage compartments are never big enough to hold much luggage. Andrew and a few other members of the group were the last to get to the luggage compartment and were told to put their bags inside the bus. Thankfully the last row of the bus
was empty, so it could act as a luggage dump. I wonder what would have happened if it had been a packed bus?
We arrived at Ancasa Hotel and got one of the horrible rooms on the railway track side of the building again. It was here that I finally remembered to take a photo of the ‘kiblat’ sign on the room ceiling. It has been on the ceiling on every hotel room and I still can’t believe it had taken us three weeks to figure out what it was...I initially thought it was the something to do with a cable in the wall! Andrew finally figured out it was pointing west to Mecca.
I’d had a bad headache all the way in the bus – completely my fault. I have a bad habit of restricting my water intake on bus trip days and it eventually catches up with me. I didn’t get to this one in time and it felt like a migraine. We settled into our room and went looking for lunch. We didn’t want to wander far, and by now the afternoon thunderstorm had hit, so our choices were limited.
Then we remembered a
small restaurant – across the road from the bus station at the foot of the overhead pass – that we had noticed on our midnight walk to the 7–11 on our very first night here. We hadn’t felt confident to walk in then, but after a month in Malaysia, we recognised a
mamak nasi kandar (Indian Muslim) place when we saw one. We walked into Restoran Anuja and ordered two
roti canais, a
teh tarik and a coke. The service was fast and friendly, and within minutes we were eating a delicious meal. It felt really good to feel comfortable in a place that felt foreign a few weeks ago.
Our trip has once again gone way too fast. We had just two more days in KL and then two flights to get home. We rested until 7pm, met the rest of the group to say goodbye and walked to the Central Market for some shopping and a meal. The group were heading to Jalan Alor, but having already been there several times, we wanted our last dinner in KL to be somewhere new.
The Central Market is just down the road from Chinatown, and it is housed
in a beautiful blue and white art deco building. It’s mainly full of stuff for tourists – souvenirs, jewellery, batiks and prints. However, it also has a row of really cool antique shops with amazing stuff, but at amazing tourist prices too. We meant to have dinner at Precious (a branch of the Old China Cafe we loved so much), but we got so carried away with our shopping that the kitchen had just closed when we arrived. Oh well.
We wondered back into Chinatown and perused all the street food stalls. We assessed two criteria before we even looked at the menu (if they had one) – the number of locals eating there and the smells coming from the open air stoves. We finally decided on Restoran Seng Kee on Jalan Sultan. We ordered their signature dish of Majestic BBQ Pork Noodles – springy yellow wanton mee noodles in a perfectly sweet and rich pork mince sauce with chopped bbq pork on top, and bok choy to balance the richness. Each piece of pork was crispy, lardy and meaty – happiness!! I had got into the habit of spooning
sambal belacan (chilli sauce with shrimp paste) onto everything,
but this dish was just perfect the way it came out of the wok. I don’t think I have enjoyed a noodle dish this much in a very long time, or even ever. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I think it was the best pork noodle dish of my life! Unfortunately, all the photos of the ‘best pork noodle dish of my life’ have turned out dark and grainy. The street didn't have any lighting, and the only light source was above the woks in the outdoor kitchen.
After that gastronomical revelation, we joined Anne–Louise and Wendy for drinks at the Reggae Bar down the road. It was loud, but we had a very funny debrief about the trip and then said good bye to the girls.
We had our last breakfast at the hotel (the fried noodles were again the best dish), but we were mindful not to over indulge, as we wanted to have a last big celebratory lunch in KL. Before we left Australia, we had made lunch reservations at Atmosphere 360, the revolving restaurant at KL Tower which offered a Malay food buffet. However, after travelling around Malaysia for four weeks, we wanted
to be specific about what we had for lunch and we both agreed that going back to Old China Cafe would be a fitting end to our trip.
We spent our last morning and afternoon doing low key things, as we had checked out of our hotel room and didn’t want to break into a sweat before our flight that night. So we only set ourselves the small task of trying to find the hawkers in Madras Lane (we had tried and failed before). When we eventually found them in a little lane off the wet market, we tossed up whether we should have our last lunch in Madras Lane, but decided to stick to our original plan of Old China Cafe. However, I definitely want to eat here on our next trip to KL.
At Old China Cafe, we ordered
ikan bilis sambal,
kari kapitan ayam,
nasi lemak and, of course, I ended the meal with my most favourite Malay dessert –
sago gula Melaka (sago pudding in coconut cream with palm sugar syrup). What more could we have asked from our last balmy afternoon in KL?
We’ve written a lot about how Malaysian food and
culture has been heavily influenced by centuries of trade, migration, colonisation and trade. Personally, I think the Chinese, Indian and English influences are most evident in Kuala Lumpur. There are pockets of concentrated fusion everywhere, but KL offers a wide and very accessible selection (even though the Penganites and Melakanites would heartily scoff at the Peranakan food in Kuala Lumpur being compared to their versions). I also think the tapestry of Indian, Chinese and ethnic Malay cultures is more finely woven in KL than in other parts of the country.
As far as getting to know KL, I think we gave it a really good go. We used as many forms of public transport as we could (local buses, the monorail, LRT and KTM Komuter trains) and managed to spend time in most of the key inner city neighbourhoods that we had read about before our trip.
At about 2pm we meandered back to our hotel under the threat of the afternoon thunderstorm, changed into our travel clothes and awaited our taxi to the airport.
Well that’s nearly the end of the trip. We’ll probably write again on the flight back home.
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El Eterno Caminante
Greg
ahhh :-(
It's always so sad when I read a blog about the end of a trip haha!! Glad you guys had an awesome 4 weeks there though!! Loved reading the blogs and food pics!! :-D