The Petronas Towers? Nope, I didn’t stand in line in the early morning waiting for free tickets and permission to ascend to its lofty heights. I don’t even think you’re allowed on the actual top of Malaysia’s Twin Towers. So it seemed like a much better idea to go to Skybar for a fancy drink and a view of Kuala Lumpur. One negroni and a glass or red later, and the ear-shattering techno dance music didn’t even bother me. AND I didn’t fall in the pool. Double yay.
I’ve been in KL (pronounced “Kay-El” by everyone here) for three days, staying far off the beaten track with a friend of a student of my mom’s. He lives in a new, upscale subdivision called Bandar Sunway, near the Pyramid Mall, which I believe is the eighth or ninth biggest mall in the world. We saw it today. There are 5 parks: a scare park, a water park, the amusement park, the wildlife park (zoo), and an extreme park (ATV’s, paintball, lagoon kayaking—there’s a manmade lagoon by a rich guy who funded the whole development). There’s also a skating rink. If it’s not the 9th biggest mall in the world I’ll be embarrassed for the world.
It also has about a bazillion restaurants. No, not an actual bazillion, but a lot. There isn’t a single foodcourt area in the mall. Instead there are just restaurants everywhere, and there’s an Asia Way full of Chinese, Mala, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Vietnamese mini restaurants. There are tons of upscale chain and non-chain restaurants (everything from KFC and Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, to an Asian cupcake chain, and tons of dim sum). There are ice cream shops, both Asian and Italian. Shaved ice. Bubble Teas. And then there’s the clothing stores and accessories boutiques, and a year’s worth of window shopping. There’s a treadmill demo and massage chair demo area. And you can even surf in the water park.
The mall is also connected by “jungle walkway” to the University next door, so the guy I’m staying with gets to look at Malaysian tigers on his walk to the mall for lunch. Which is what we did. And then we had lunch of lemonade and nasi lemak (spicy sambol sauce with rice, hardboiled egg, mini dried anchovies, roasted peanuts, and a couple slices of cooling cucumber), green curry, and beehung sambol (vermicelli rice noodles fried with chili sauce) and left the eye-popping megabuilding. We are probably the only people to ever not binge shop in this mall.
We’d spent our first day in Malaysia in downtown KL. We started in Chinatown, bought some pork bacon (I didn’t) in a place where sausage comes in squares like origami paper. We (I didn’t) tried some chicken floss. We (I did) tried some dried durian chips and durian crackers. And we tried homemade herb jelly in Chinese tea. Well, it might have been tea. I didn’t have trouble sleeping, so maybe not. It wasn’t sweetened, but they gave us a little container of honey to pour over top. It came in a little plastic takeaway container (or we could have eaten in, but we were very much being ignored by staff and were happy to take out). The bitter black jelly for eating in was served in cups in a giant gold Chinese tea server, and made for an incredible presentation. When we saw the same setup a few blocks over we were less impressed. Ah, tourism.
And Chinatown was very touristy. Even with Chinese New Year still on and music with live Chinese drums like Japanese taiko playing, and a temple full of incense and people making offerings, and mandarin oranges on trees, and men dressed like dragons dancing, and hawker stalls full of Chinese, it was touristy. But the food…
Buns and dumplings and satay and Malay food mixed with Chinese—hakka. Lots of soy and chilies and stir-fries. Pork and chicken, beef and fish. Hot and fiery. Salty and sweet.
We were trying to figure out lunch when I saw a restaurant advertising bird’s nest soup. We’d just come from Ton Sai, Thailand where the birdsnests are harvested, and we knew how hard work it was…and how dangerous. The pickers scale dangerous cliffs, often unroped, to collect the nests made from the spit of a special kind of bird called the swiftlet. In the climbing guide to Ton Sai it warns not to climb in the area where the nests are picked because the harvesters have every right to shoot you…
The nests sell for $2,500 per kilo! But in Malaysia, with the Ringett (local currency) working in our favour, a little bowl of soup for 228 RM (about $72), was almost not ridiculous. Split in two, our $36 snack was a foodie’s dream come true.
What was it like? The noodles are bland. It’s served in a light syrup soup. Just sugar and water and the nest, which is like fine vermicelli noodles. They keep their texture in the warm (but not boiling) soup. They’re not crunchy like kelp noodles, but not mushy like rice noodles. The sweetness covers any actual flavour, if there is any.
We then wandered through an Indian section of town, catching some Chinese fruit and vegetable stands on the way. So many chois! Bok, pak, etc. and made out way up to the Petronas Towers. We took a picture outside. That was all we needed before heading back to Sunway to head with our new friend up to an organic fruit farm an hour north of KL.
More on horizontal papaya, picking calamansi limes, and seeing my first giant snake slithering away to come…
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