Kuala Lumpur - Going out in style

---

Nick: Well, after almost six months of travelling around the world we are finally here at our last stop before we return home to England: Kuala Lumpur. After all of the cheap hostels, hotels, lodges and guesthouses we'd frequented during our trip, we had decided to splash out and live it up in some plush accommodation for our final few nights...and our initial research showed that Kuala Lumpur - or 'KL' as most people call it for shorthand - was just the city to provide a little bit of luxury! The city frequently draws comparisons with Singapore, for the towering buildings found in the city centre and abundance of upmarket bars and restaurants. With plenty of big money sloshing around the city, there were an abundance of fancy hotels to choose from; in the end we booked ourselves into spacious one-bedroom serviced apartment near the city centre, an Eastern and Orient development called 'St Mary's Place' (this had nothing to do with the Saints football stadium of almost exactly the same name, promise!). After our relatively short bus trip from Melacca we arrived at our chosen accommodation early in the afternoon. It was a big place, including three huge towerblocks of apartments that surround a gorgeous swimming pool in the centre, and it took us a bit of wandering to find the place to check in! Our apartment wasn't quite ready for us yet, so leaving our bags with reception we headed out to find somewhere for lunch.

Soon enough, we found ourselves in an enormous shopping mall with a wide array of eateries to choose from. We eschewed the 'proper' restaurants in favour of the good ol' food court, the sort of place that had served us so well in many other Asian cities we'd been to. Sure enough, we were very soon sat at the communal tables with two very cheap steaming plates of delicious noodles (including the Char Koay Teow that has made a number of previous appearances and established itself as a firm favourite) and a couple of cold, refreshing ice teas. By the time we'd eaten and made our way back our apartment was ready. We were pretty excited to see it in the flesh, having pored over the website photos many times in eager anticipation, and after letting ourselves in we weren't disappointed. The apartment included a great kitchen with a fridge and freezer (the snazzy variety that even makes ice-cubes - the pinnacle of sophistication in our book!), washer and dryer, a huge lounge and dining area, a lovely big bedroom and - perhaps the best bit of all - a massive bathroom with a great big bathtub, separate shower, and 'twin vanities' (which evidently means two sinks). The place was located on the corner of the tower, and so two sides of the apartment consisted entirely of huge glass windows, offering great views of the adjacent towers. It was an absolutely perfect place to spend our final few days!

After spending a while revelling in our luxurious new digs, we went back out to the shopping mall we'd been to earlier ('Pavillion' mall) to pick up a few supplies from the supermarket. Having been without a kitchen for so long, there were a few treats on the list; top priority for me was some fresh milk, which we hadn't had for months, as well as some cereal, bread and butter for toast making, and a carton of fruit juice - heaven, after so many generic 'American breakfasts' that seem to the staple fare of most places we'd stayed! In the spirit of indulgence, we also picked up a couple of bottles of wine, some cheese and crackers and a bar of chocolate! We decided against picking up any bits and bobs for the coming lunches and dinners...aside from the fact that the apartment was a bit limited for cooking equipment, we were intending to take advantage of KL's swathe of amazing restaurants with the last of our budget! We lugged our bags of goodies back to the apartment, showered and changed into fresh clothes before heading out for the evening. Having had a very late night out the previous evening, and an early-ish start to catch the bus, we were both a bit jaded (not least because I'd had a stinking cold bug for the last three days) and decided to keep it fairly local for the first evening. As such, we ended up back at the Pavillion mall, tucking into yet another guilty pleasure: a greasy cheeseburger and fries, in front of the football (the Saturday lunchtime match, which kicked off at 20:30 local time). Once dinner was dispatched we went straight back to our digs, keen to take advantage of having a comfortable place of our own to relax for the first time in a long time! The rest of the evening was spent planted on the sofa, a glass of wine in hand and more football on the big TV...lovely!

The novelty of having our own place hadn't worn off by the following morning, both of us really enjoying the benefit of all the tasty breakfast goodies we'd picked up the previous day's washed down with a cup of hot black coffee. Once fed and dressed, we hit the streets to take a wander about the city centre area, or 'KLCC' as it is referred to by everyone here (big fans of acronyms, it would seem). If, like me, you are impressed by very tall shiny buildings then you will be impressed by KLCC, as they are present here in abundance. And they don't come much taller, or shiner for that matter, than the Petronas Towers, at the foot (feet?) of which we found ourselves after a short walk through the pleasant park nearby. A quick Google check tells me that these towers are 452 metres tall and include 88 stories; I can report from personal experience that it takes a serious bit of neck-straining to look up to the top of them! It is possible to take a trip up the towers, but we'd been advised previously that this was pretty pricey, and a similar experience could be had going up another of the city's soaring structures, the simply-named KL Tower, so we remained on terra firma for the time being. Our confined wanderings around the area found is another shopping mall - there seem to be an endless supply of them here - in which every shop was selling top-end brand goods: Gucci, TagHeuer, Dior, etc. etc. as I mentioned previously, there seems to be plenty of money knocking around here, for some people at least. After nosing around the place and doing a bit of window-shopping we began making our way back to base. En-route, we found ourselves in yet another shopping centre, this one a it more of a budget option it seemed, with countless small pop-ups selling tourist tat, iPhone covers and so on. The central area of the building seemed to be playing host to an X-Factor style talent show, with assorted unlikely individuals doing their best to woo a panel of three judges. We watched for a while, fascinated by an elderly chap dressed up in a huge crown and some sort of pearly-queen style jacket, belting out some sort of dance number...very odd. On the way back we popped back into the food court at the Pavillion mall for another dirt cheap, slightly late lunch, this time going for a huge bowl of curry laksa.

Back at the apartment, once lunch had digested a bit, we decided to make use of the big swimming pool (from which it was possible to see the tops of the Petronas Towers peeping up above the skyline) and spent thirty or forty minutes splashing about, having a swim and being pummelled in the adjoining jacuzzis. By the time we'd had a post-swim shower and chill-out, it was getting on for early evening and time to go out again. This time we were intending to walk down to the adjacent neighbourhood, Bukit Bintang, where plenty of bars and restaurants were said to be found. However, after walking about the place for a good hour or two, building up a bit of a sweat in the high humidity that seems to be an ever-present characteristic of the city, we hadn't settled on a particular restaurant and found ourselves back in our own locale. In the end, we settled on an Italian restaurant, Sarah going for a seafood linguini whilst I chose a spaghetti carbonara. At this point it is notable that we'd caved into the temptations of 'western food' for two evenings in a row, and it's probably worth pointing out that KL, being a monied, cosmopolitan place has a multitude of restaurants to suit all tastes. Indeed, in the snazzy business district in which we'd based ourselves, it was almost easier to find western-style food than the usual local stuff. We had decided that our approach during our time here would be to keep it local at lunchtime, and go a bit more upmarket for dinner. So that's our excuse! After dinner, and being a Sunday, there was once again some footy to be watched so we found a suitable bar and settled in for a couple of hours, before heading back to our own place for the rest of the evening. One of the advantages of being in Asia is that many of the premier league football matches are shown on tv, with none of the ridiculous subscription charges that are required at home; the downside is the unsociable kick-off times! As such, between 23:00 and 01:00 I was able to watch the Saints match away to Watford, a drab 0-0 that entertained no-one. So that was worth staying up for.

Monday's agenda included a trip to the bird park, so after another good brekkie of cereal and toast (the novelty still not having worn off) we took the monorail a few stops to the west of the city centre and walked through the botanical gardens to the entrance. The KL bird park is a huge walk-in aviary, so rather than walking from cage to cage to watch the birds, visitors can walk amongst them. The park itself is divided into a number of different areas according to bird types, but whilst some birds clearly need a great level of containment and isolation from the public (huge ostriches, I'm looking at you), for the most part many of the birds are all muddled in together, finding their own little niches within the park area. There were loads of different types of birds, including (deep breath) hornbills, ibises, peacocks, parrots, lorikeets, flamingoes, herons, ostriches, emus, owls, eagles, doves, grouse, and plenty of others too. Near to a small cafe where we'd stopped to grab a drink, there were lots of nests in the lower branches of the trees, with downy little chicks all squawking for food and making quite a din. Perhaps our favourite place was the parrot section, which included a photo gallery in which visitors could pay for the privilege of having a family photo taken with everyone draped in a variety of incredibly well-behaved parrots, cockatoos and lorikeets (we gave it a miss but enjoyed watching how well trained the birds were). Around about that time, the clouds set in and the rain started coming down, lightly at first and then more and more heavily. It turns out the downside to a huge open air walk-in aviary is that there are very few places to hide from the rain! Over the next hour or so, we managed to take sanctuary in a variety of dry spots as we tried to work our way back across the large park to the entrance, including a brief stint in the Education Centre; we now know all there is to know about egg development! Pleasingly, this area also included a big glass tank divided into two sections, the larger of which was filled with scores of fluffy yellow chicks, and the smaller of which contained three little ducklings. The chicks could seemingly see through the glass partition and seemed really excited/agitated, trying to get through to them, and the ducklings themselves were 'giving it back' to the chicks on the other side of the glass. It was weirdly like segregated sets of football fans having a go at each other, albeit significantly cuter! Anyway, the rain eventually eased off enough for us to make our way to the front and grab a taxi back to our apartment.

What with the miserable weather and having taken a bit of a soaking, we whiled away the remainder of the afternoon enjoying hot drinks and hot showers until it was time to go back out again. After a couple of fine-but-nothing-special dinners we'd decided to take a more targeted approach to this evening. Our first stop was a nearby bar called 'Taps' which specialised in craft beer, a real treat after having been stuck with generic lager for the entirety of our time in Asia. It turned out to be a pricy treat, but the two glasses of IPA were real lipsmackers and a great set-up to the subsequent meal. For dinner, we'd picked a well-reviewed place called 'Skillet at 163' which, like many of the fancy restaurants in KL, was affiliated with one of the high-end hotels. Now, those of you who have read some of our previous blog entries will be aware that for particularly good meals I like to give a blow by blow account, and this will be no exception! Having ordered our starters, main courses and a bottle of wine, we were presented with an amuse-bouche of "soy protein topped with coconut cream, compressed pineapple, pink peppercorn, maldon seasalt and a microherb". That was how it was described to us anyway, or something like that. Either way, it was a truly delicious and complex little bundle of tastiness and hopefully indicated good things to come!

Our starters came out one at a time so we could share them; first up was some Vietnamese spring rolls. All fairly straightforward, we'd thought, but the waiter had told us that they liked to do things a little differently at this restaurant...and it turned out that, rather than being wrapped in the usual rice paper, these spring rolls were wrapped in a very thin layer of mooli (a.k.a. daikon, the huge white asian radish), a novelty which worked well and made for a very refreshing starter. Up next was more of a classic, a warm scotch egg, halved and served up on an asian salad - the twist here being that the meat was in fact chicken (we think) as the restaurant was a no-pork zone, owing presumably to the muslim majority in Malaysia. Whatever it was, it was the best scotch egg we'd ever had! So far so good. Main courses came out in due course: duck confit with a pumpkin mash and braised red cabbage for Sarah, a chicken 'mille feuille' for me, chicken layered with sheets of won ton pastry, served up with asparagus, arancini balls (fried risotto, for the uninitiated - if you haven't tried them: do), a Malaysian curry sauce and some other seasonal veg...phew again! In keeping with the meal so far, both dishes were excellent and despite the complexity of ingredients (in my case) worked really well. After all that, we were too full to order a desert, which was lucky really as when we'd paid the bill we were presented with a complimentary square of brownie (topped, of course, with a microherb!) which was just right. What a meal. We rounded off an excellent evening out by heading back to watch a film and digest a bit before going to bed.

By Tuesday morning, I had been suffering from a pesky cold bug for a full week, although it was finally starting to show signs of petering out (I'd long since christened it an Asian Superbug); unfortunately, after putting up a strong resistance for a few days Sarah had copped it a day or two previously and so neither of us was feeling particularly wonderful. After a slow start to the day, we eventually dragged ourselves out of the apartment to go and see some more of the city. A fairly short walk took us to the KL Tower, located on top of a hill and therefore, despite being a shorter structure, reaching a greater overall height above sea-level than the Petronas Towers. Arriving at the base of the tower, we were immediately assailed by people trying to sell us the tickets to ascend to the observation deck. It all felt a little bit like being railroaded into something, so, being the worldly-wise travellers that we now are, we made our excuses and left to take a bit more of a look around and scope out what was going on. As it turned out, the people selling the tickets were indeed the real deal, they simply had the manner of rip-off merchants! So substitute 'worldly-wise' for 'cynical'. Our tickets included a trip around an adjoining aquarium, which took all of ten minutes to stroll around and included plenty of very big fish in very small tanks, and then it was time to go up the tower.

So: having been up a celebrated tower before (the CN Tower on Toronto, since you ask) I like to think of myself as something of a seasoned expert in the ol' tower game. I mean, you get in a lift, go up a bit, get out of a lift and take a look around, then do the whole process in reverse to get down again...right? Turns out I knew nothing. We were told we could visit two levels of the tower, a revolving restaurant bit (fifteen minute stay, MAX) then down one level to the enclosed observation deck bit. Sounds simple enough, but evidently the logistics of moving up to and between these two different levels of the KL Tower was on a par with coordinating the Olympic Games, with scores of staff all over the place to manage the operation of the lift, check tickets, control the flow of people into/out of the lifts, check tickets again, take a photo, check tickets again, take another photo...sadly, I am not exaggerating here! Despite all of this, we somehow contrived to end up on a completely different level, holding the door open for one of the staff whilst he took bags of rubbish out, before going all the way back to the bottom before going back up...well, anyway, you get the idea! Fortunately the views from the revolving restaurant and the observation deck (which were essentially the same) were spectacular, despite the unfortunate thick haze blanketing the city at the time. We spent a good twenty minutes or so looking out from all aspects, admiring the soaring towers of KLCC which looked so much smaller so all the way up there. It was interesting to see the Petronas Towers from pretty much the top, rather than craning our necks back, and we could even make out our apartment.

Once we'd finished drinking in the view, we made our way back down, avoiding the many stalls selling miniature KL Tower souvenirs and electing not to buy the superimposed photograph and personalised keyring (so that's what all those photo's were for!). Walking back down the hill, we stumbled across a path through the surrounding bit of forest, which included a number of elevated pathways, a sort of canopy walkway, which made for a pleasant descent to street level. From there, we walked to Chinatown to have a look around; there isn't a huge amount to say, really, other than that there were multitudinous market stalls selling the usual assortment of t-shirts, the ever-present selfie-stick and assorted other plasticky crap. What with our late start, it was getting on for mid-afternoon by this stage and lunch was well overdue, so we ducked into the first half-decent looking cafe we found and tucked into what turned out to be a cracking bowl of noodle soup with dumplings. After lunch, we made our way back to Adams Towers for an hour or two of relaxing, blog writing and getting ready to go out.

As we were now down to the very last days of our big trip, and with some budget left to splurge a bit, we'd booked ourselves into another decent-looking restaurant: 'Graze', locate at the KL Hilton. Indeed, we'd decided to have one really swanky meal before we left, and after much scouring of the fine dining venues available (of which there are many), we'd finally settled on this one as the prices were, well, just that little bit more reasonable! We took the monorail out to KL Central Station and it was a short walk from there to the restaurant. Being a little early, we took a seat at the hotel bar and had a pre-dinner cocktail to get things going whilst we admired the view outside the soaring floor-to-ceiling windows of the freeway and a building site. Deterred from having another drink by the steep prices, we chose instead to head up to the restaurant a bit early and hope that our table would be ready. Well, there were no concerns on that front, as the restaurant was all but empty, save for a pair of businessmen at one other table, so we were soon sat at our table and perusing the menu. Looking at the prices on the wine menu nearly turned my (remaining) hair white! I won't go into the details, suffice to say that even the cheapest bottle available was almost three times the cost of the perfectly decent stuff we'd enjoyed the previous evening (daft to compare apples with oranges, of course, but the lack of a reasonably-priced table wine always bugs me, especially when the food menu is not especially pricey, and screams of wine snobbery). We limited ourselves to an eye-wateringly priced carafe (half bottle) of pinot noir and made our orders. Opting to go straight in for a main course, I ordered a dish of braised beef cheeks served in a rich gravy with mashed potatoes, whilst Sarah went for the herb-crusted cod loin with spinach gnocchi - both of which were, to be fair, very good. Disinclined to have a pudding, we paid the bill and started heading back to our part of town. It had been an absurdly expensive meal for what we'd had, which was a shame; the food itself was fairly priced and very good but the cost of the drinks was prohibitive. Imagine how I chortled when I saw that we'd paid over a fiver for the mineral water! The previous evening's restaurant was always going to be a tough act to follow, however, and we concluded that from now on we would not fall into the assumption that 'posh' always equals 'better'! Still, once safely ensconced back in our cozy lounge with another film on the go and a (much cheaper but perfectly drinkable) glass of wine in hand, the evening ended on a high note!

Wednesday morning came around, and we entered our last full day of travelling! Rather than heading out again, we decided to enjoy our last morning by taking things easy, having a lazy breakfast and doing a bit of reading. What with my cold finally showing signs of clearing out, I made use of the gym facilities at our residence and squeezed out a good exercise session - despite all of the walking we'd done over the last few months, it was quite clear that all those indulgent meals and drinks had taken their toll, and it served as a sign that amends were going to have to be made when we got home! Feeling refreshed, it was a nice hot shower and then out to get a quick and easy lunch...our last one in Asia! There was no contest really, it took us no time to decide that we would go for one last bowl of delicious Char Koay Teow each - yum! We will need to dig out a recipe for that dish and learn how to make it at home. After lunch, we just wandered about the shopping centre for a while, taking things easy and enjoying just roaming around, until finally we decided to head back. A short time was spent pottering about the apartment, preparing a few odds and sods for packing up to leave. At around 18:00 or so, we went out for our final evening.

Having been a little bit underwhelmed by what was supposed to be our 'grand going home celebration meal' the previous evening, we'd spent a bit of time thinking about where we would go for our last dinner. We hadn't intended on having an especially fancy meal on this last night, and we'd shortlisted three restaurants. One of these - 'Cuisine Gourmet by Nathalie' (a French restaurant in case you couldn't guess) clearly stood out above the rest, but looked suspiciously, well, fancy. Learning our lesson from the previous evening, we opted to swing by earlier on and check out the menu and wine list to make sure it was not ridiculous. When we turned up at around 18:00, to an empty bistro with a few waiters hanging around, they happily showed us the wine menu. A quick look confirmed that there were some reasonable wine options, the food looked great and happily there was no stuffy dress code, so I could eat comfortably in my travel-weary shorts! With all our boxes ticked, we thanked the waiters and said we'd come back later on...I don't think they believed us at the time! With a dinner venue sorted, we made our way back down to 'Taps', the craft beer place we'd visited a coup nights previously, and treated ourselves to a couple of glasses of strong IPA, before paying up and returning to the restaurant (presumably to the mild surprise of the waiters).

Both of us were buzzing with the excitement of heading home to see family and friends, and reflecting on the six months of travelling we agreed that it should be something of a celebration of the wonderful time we've been able to spend together, all of the amazing places we have visited, the people we have met, and all of the incredible memories that will last a lifetime. To mark the occasion, we kicked things off with a wonderful glass of champers; deliciously cold, light and nutty! A small, warm crunchy roll appeared on our bread plates alongside little pats of butter whilst we made our orders. As we waited for our starters to arrive, a complimentary trio of amuse-bouches was provided: a spoon of courgette cream topped with a won ton wafer, a small vessel of gazpacho, and a beef jelly served up in a creamy basil concoction; each one of them was an absolute delight and raised the expectation levels of what was to follow. Choosing a starter from the menu had been tricky as they all sounded great, and in the end I'd gone for a 'Maldives red tuna salad with foie gras, beetroot and a foie gras coulis', whilst Sarah had chosen 'wild mushroom and egg big ravioli, spinach and mushroom purée, morel emulsion and fresh herbs'. Yes, I did have to look up the menu to remember all that! The starters duly arrived, alongside our chosen glass of semillon sauvignon blanc each, were both impeccably presented and tasted even better. In particular, Sarah's mushroom dish was especially...erm...special! It was one of the most astoundingly good-tasting plates of food that either of us had tasted. Thankfully, as with the aforementioned amuse-bouches, the portion sizes were spot on and let plenty of room for the following mains (hurrah).

With both of us waxing lyrical about the standard of the food so far, our main courses arrived. Again, each plate was an absolute feast for the eyes and we couldn't help yet again showing our sheer classlessness by taking photos of them before destroying the beautiful craftsmanship! Sarah's choice was a lamb shoulder tortierre (sort of a minced lamb patty thing), seared courgette and aubergine, roasted tomato and preserved lemon. For myself, I'd chosen some pan seared New Zealand alfonsino fish (no, I'd never heard of it either, it's good) with a chorizo crust, served with a preserved lemon carrot purée, celery tempura, carrot emulsion and a reduced fish bone jus. I mean, it had a foam on it! If Masterchef has taught me anything it is that a foam is the sign of a top notch dinner! As ever, I struggle to find the words to describe just how good both of these dishes were, so I will simply say: very. Veryveryveryveryvery good. Once again, the portion sizes were just right and even after all that we had enough space left for a shared dessert - a 'revised opera', which turned out to be (I think) a mixture of mousses (one chocolate, one lighter - coffee?), encased in a thin, rich chocolate shell, which we accompanied with a shared glass of Tokaj. Absolutely divine.

So there you have it - that the last time anyone will have to read one of my usual blow-by-blow accounts of a wonderful meal! It was the last proper meal of our 180 days of travelling and it had turned out to be not only the best meal of the entire trip (which is saying something considering some of the incredible food we've had along the way), but probably the best meal that either of us had ever had - literally. The head chef came out at the end of the meal to ask us how it had been, and we couldn't have been more effusive in our praise of the food and the service - she was glowing with pride by the time we'd finished, and rightly so! On an absolute high after such a good evening, we paid our dues and went back to our apartment to start thinking about our long trip home. Despite an early start the next morning, we were far too excited for an early night and instead spent a couple of hours listening to music and having one last glass of wine whilst we packed the rucksacks for the final time. Eventually, at around midnight we hit the hay to try and get to sleep; the alarm was set for 06:00, and we had one more flight to go!

---