After being here over two months, Jeff and I finally got out to explore yesterday. The embassy, our housing, and the school are all in a more low rise, residential area of KL called Ampang. Across what I call "the big road" (real name Jin Tun Razak) is the KLCC (city center) neighborhood, anchored by the Petronas Twin Towers. It's full of parks and malls, and we did a good job exploring a lot of it over the course of one afternoon.
We started at the embassy, where one of the CLOs guided us and three other people across the big road and into KLCC. On the way back, I took a picture of the road, just to show that I'm not exaggerating. This is not a hop, skip, and a jump kind of road.
Luckily, there's a pedestrian bridge, which is where I took the picture from. After the pedestrian bridge, came the tricky part. We had to cross another, smaller road, and then our guide cut us through a parking lot to emerge up within view of KLCC. There was a cool statue.
Then, we took a left and walked by the restaurant where they filmed one of the opening scenes of Crazy Rich Asians that's supposed to be set in NYC.
It's the scene where Nick asks Rachel to come with him to Singapore, and they get photographed. The actor is actually from Malaysia, and apparently it's much cheaper to film here than in NYC. The best part though is that the background women are mostly from the embassy. I have made it very clear that I am happy to participate in any sequel filming that may happen! It's also supposed to be a good restaurant, so Jeff and I are hoping to actually eat there soon.
We crossed another street and cut through another parking lot, but we had our eyes on the prize all along.
One of our friends saw us trying to figure out pictures, and she offered to take one of the two of us.
We got even better pictures though once we were out of the parking lot and in KLCC park proper.
It's a lovely park, but at this point it's only open to vaccinated people, 12 and up, who are exercising. We're hoping it opens up more soon, because we've heard there's a great playground there.
We walked around the park and past the entrance to the convention center where they have been holding vaccination drives. Jeff got a good picture of the towers with all the Malaysian flags outside the convention center.
Around the other side of the park is a man made pond with various water features. Apparently, it's usually quite a show, but it's been turned off for quite a while. When we were there, it looked like people were working on it, so hopefully it will be up and running again soon.
Across from the pond was our first mall of the afternoon, Suria KLCC. We all got out our phones and prepared to scan in. In order to get into the mall, you pull up the national app called MySejahtera. First, we showed our profile screen with vaccination status to the guard at the front. Then, we used the QR scanner to scan into the mall, and, finally, we took our temperature at the standing thermometer. This is the new normal for entering buildings in KL.
Suria KLCC is a good size mall. There's the main atrium, and there are branches off in various directions.
It's also fun to look up. They have a Petronas Twin Towers discovery center at the top that's unfortunately closed for now, but looks like it could be fun when it eventually opens.
When we walked in, I could have sworn that I smelled Auntie Anne's pretzels, and when I looked down, I saw one!
This is great, because we want to come back with the girls, and having pretzels and lemonade as an end of the walk treat will be a great motivator. There's also a big bookstore on the top floor that should be fun for the whole family to explore. Our group didn't go in, but I did my best to ask the guard if children were allowed. We eventually settled on a hand gesture to show a small person, and he said "little can", so I think we should be good. There are some places that let kids in so long as their parents are vaccinated, but it seems to be a decision made independently be each establishment.
After the bookstore, we went all the way to the bottom of the mall to get to the passage that goes under the mall and the convention center. This is faster and cooler than walking all the way around it on the outside. It's quite a long passageway, but they've done their best to make it bright and colorful. Some of the ceiling art especially was very interesting.
We came out on the other side of the convention center near the aquarium, which is also not open yet, but hopefully will be soon. Then, our guide took us up to an air conditioned, elevated walkway to get to more malls.
The walkway is connected to the train system, and it brought us over to the area where we were staying at the Istana during our quarantine. We recognized the blue glass building from our window view. The walkway branched off in a few different directions, but there was signage to keep you on track. Our destination was the Pavilion Mall.
This was even bigger than the Suria mall, and it had tons of stores. It also had an interesting mix of Chinese and Japanese design influence. This is the year of the Ox, and we're approaching the Autumn Moon Festival, so there is a mix of decorations around. The theme is Hop and Joy,
which explains the giant bunny.
Apparently, the bunny has displaced the ox from pride of place.
We just rolled with it though.
Upstairs, near the ox, we found an area that sells Japanese things. It's called Tokyo street, and the entrance is all set up with fake cherry blossom trees. Picture time!
Then you walk down a row of shops set up to look like a Japanese street.
The path to the mall is an open air row of restaurants, but there are also more restaurants downstairs and a food court. So much to explore!
By that point though, we really needed a snack, and we were standing right in front of another Auntie Anne's, so it seemed meant to be. I had to take a picture of the flavors though. The green one is green tea. Only in Asia! Jeff wanted the jalapeno cheddar, and they were willing to make it for him, but it would take 15 minutes, and we didn't want to hold everyone up. Something to look forward to for next time.
There was also a bakery that delivers this really cool circle cake that I want to try out.
Eventually we emerged back out onto the street.
We crossed the road and walked passed Fahrenheit mall to Lot 10.
I am SO glad we had someone with us who knew what she was doing, because she took us down some stairs to an underground (literally) Chinese food court. We did our check in and got a special sticker to show that we were vaccinated and could therefore take off our masks to eat. There were TONS of places to choose from. Jeff went the duck route.
It was fun to watch the guy prepare it, but Jeff wasn't too impressed with the flavor of the noodles or the butchering of the duck. The method for meat here seems to be to just hack at it with a big knife, regardless of where bones may be.
I followed our guide to another stall that had several tempting options. It's about 4 RM to a dollar, so the pricing was great. Several dishes in this region have the word "cake" in the name, but there's no cake involved. It just seems to be way of saying, mashed together.
Our guide said her favorite was the fried radish cake. Now the only time I've ever had radishes is raw in a salad, and I can take them or leave them, so I was skeptical, but she hadn't steered us wrong yet, so I figured, why not? I watched the guy make it. He had the radishes prepared ahead of time, and he added them to the frying pan. You could see him testing them by pushing on them as he cooked.
There were also shrimp, and he added in some eggs, plus some mystery delicious sauce. At the end he threw in a bunch of bean sprouts and scallions. The finished result was DELICIOUS! I am now a fan of fried radish cake!
I was so elated with my new find, that I was brave enough to dip my fork in the provided hot sauce for a try. Yikes! I'm getting better about eating spicy food, but the top of my head about blew off with one drop, so I did not use that on my fabulous fried radish cake.
Our guide told us that the top floor of Lot 10 had a similar array of Japanese restaurants that she hadn't tried yet, so I'm eager to hear her report, and then I'll go eat whatever she did :-)
By that point, we were full and tired, so it was time to walk home. We retraced our steps through the Pavilion's open air eating area and back up to the elevated walkway. Then, back down through the aquarium doors and into the convention center, but instead of continuing all the way back to the first mall, we went up a set of stairs and came out in front of the convention center.
It was starting to get overcast, but the towers were still impressive.
We walked confidently back through the various parking lots, remembering where we needed to cross, eventually back over the big road, and back to our car parked at the embassy. Jeff kept track of our entire route and said we walked over eight miles. It was a fabulous adventure, and we made it home before it got truly dark.
We're excited to try it again with the kids and explore even more. I'm not sure if we'll take them all the way to Pavilion on our first try, but I really want that fried radish cake again :-)
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