1 Utama with Liz

Today was my visit to the shopping centre to beat all (but one) shopping centre: 1 Utama. Lena had built this place up as some kind of Godly place, which to be frank, it was. Needing a good reason before Lena would take me, we were going to meet up with one of Lena's friends from her days of music (long since passed), Liz.

One thing I am thankful for in KL is the left hand driving, a remnant from British Colonisation. Having cars on the left gave me some confidence to drive whilst over here, Lena's dad kindly putting me on the insurance for my trip. Sitting in the driving seat was slightly daunting, having only done it a couple of times prior but I was starting to get the hang of it, it basically boiled down to being a selfish ass and neglecting your turn signal :).

As we arrived at 1 Utama I started to see what everyone was going on about, it was HUGE! Positioning ourselves within the multi-storey car park, we exited the 4th floor parking straight into the mall. Looking down we could see the vastness of it all, combined with the fact that large stretches of the OLD section were under renovation just made it seem all the larger. As we were heading for lunch and not in much of a mood to shop we barely scratched the surface of what was on offer. Thankfully we would be coming back tomorrow for another lunch date and hopefully more exploring.

Lunch was nice, we decided on an italian place called Delicious which certainly proved to be true. Having tried so many nice asian dishes I found myself weakening when presented with the opportunity to have a burger. After choosing something comfortable for lunch I decided to be slightly more adventurous with the drinks and settled for a mango/peach smoother, completely forgetting that it would have milk. Even with the fiasco with the drink the lunch was delicious (Ha!), we then made a small detour on our way back to the car to explore the food level, awesome.

When we got onto the lower level I spotted something that had me brimming with nostalgia; Cinnabon! In my home shopping centre of Milton Keynes there was briefly a Cinnabon which I had adored but sadly the rest of the public disagreed and it went the way of the dinosaur with a year, to be replaced by a soup store, which still remains. With that shop, I had fallen in love but had come to terms with the fact I wasn't going to have one any time soon. Imagine my surprise at seeing one, just sitting there in 1 Utama, this place was truly paradise :).

I helped myself to one and Lena had a collection of chocolate covered pretzel fingers which were really nice. Sadly though, like a lot of things drenched in nostalgia, I found the Cinnabon to be great but not otherworldly; the price you pay for putting things onto a pedestal. I was still happy I got to experience one again but it wasn't quite the experience I had hoped it would be.

Maybe I'll have another tomorrow...

Failed Twin Towers Visit & Successful Mall Visits

As many Civil Engineering buffs will know KL hosts the largest pair of Twin Towers in the world; The Petronas Twin Towers. These Islamic inspired towers sit centrally in the city in their own luscious grounds and holds some simply amazing views of the surrounding landscape. Not wanting to miss out on this treat we decided a visit was in order, so we set off at an eye watering (at least to me) 7am in order to get in line early for the tickets. The towers only offer a certain number of tickets a day and they require people to queue for them meaning 'First Come, First Serve' was in effect.

Arriving at the towers around quarter to eight I felt confident we would be served. Looking up at the towers as we approached I felt myself getting slightly giddy; I've never been one for vertigo but I felt a twinge for some reason. As we got into the complex we managed to find the escalators to the tourist section, cloistered away around a corner to keep tourists away from the businesspeople moving through the site. When we reached the bottom we realised 7.45am was far too late, apparently some losers had been camped out since 6am!

As the mass of people pushed there way around it became apparent that we weren't going to be getting onto the tour today. The system stupidly works by giving 500 tickets out and asking people how many they want, once 500 is reached, poof!, no more tickets. Feeling dejected we inquired about getting tickets for another day and were told to come back at: 11.00am, 11.30am, and 12.00pm. Deciding to err on the side of caution we decided on 10.45am, and whilst we waited, food!

The Petronas Towers is host to over 80 floors of office space and to serve all these people they have built a shopping mall (a Malaysian past-time) in between the two towers. I soon discovered prices similar to the UK and baulked; the high prices of the UK are going to take some getting used to when coming home :(. Despite the prices we soon found a gem hidden amongst the other 'overpriced' gems: Rotiboy.

Rotiboy is a bun shop, something which may seem a bit bland to devote an entire shop to but they are everywhere apparently. Due to our early arrival we could only sample the Classic (butter & sugar bun) as everything else was being cooked. For simple bread, butter, and sugar I was really surprised! The bun wasn't quite savoury or sweet but somewhere in between, the baked coffee-flavoured crust gave a nice sweet crunch with a soft, salty, butter-soaked centre. I was starting to fall in love with eastern baking.

Following on from the failure at the Towers we looked round the shopping centre and were planning on going into some museum attached to the towers but sadly it was aimed at an age group a little too young for us, time has a way of glossing over some of these things when looking back on them.

As we were now in the middle of KL and no ride home, Lena's dad had dropped us off on his way to work, we decided it was time to take in some of these shopping malls KL was so famous for. Using our map as a guide we headed off towards 'The Pavilion' shopping mall. The problem was that maps make distances look deceptively short, coupled with the fact that it was KL in the middle of the day. In my mind we may as well have been walking in the Sahara. Not the best introduction to KL on foot, I still maintain that driving is the way forward...

Pavilion felt a lot like shopping malls in the UK; 80% clothes. Sadly these weren't your TK Max's or Primarks, and seeing as I'm not exactly svelte they wouldn't really have anything I could fit into anyway. Even so it was nice to be inside, accompanied by some italian gelato did put the icing on the cake though. As it became apparent that very little money would be exchanging hands we moved onto the bermuda triangle of shopping, in the sense that your money will never be seen again once you enter it. There were a group of 3 smaller shopping centres clustered together that offered cheaper products, one of which proved to be technological mecca!

The first two shopping centres were a maze of floors and small stores selling all manner of items, and with a lack of windows it slowed the passage of time and got me very disoriented; much like alcohol! Oddly the first two malls were interconnected by only one exit and appeared, at least to me, to be identical. Now I'm a man who likes to shop but I felt I was reaching my limit, the combination of shopping and extreme heat just made me feel so tired but all of that was washed away when we hit the techocentre (not its real name).
(Lena explains: Sungei Wang and Bukit Bintang Mall are the two connected malls the white one is talking about, not very interesting to him as it was mainly cheap shopping for me. He found Eden when I finally agreed to leave and take him to Low Yat Plaza, where we spent the rest of the day.)

Trying to get to the techo rave cave was difficult as apparently it wasn't deemed worthy as a place to put onto tourist maps and we had to rely on Lena's navigational skills. I'm not going to lie, I did think the place was closed or Lena may have imagined it, as it was 4 years ago :). Oh how I was wrong! 7, count 'em, 7 floors of tech with everything you could want in order to sustain your technological thirst, I found my energy coming anew as my body filled with the rejuvenating energy of the gadget lord; in other words, I was excitable. For hours we scoured the place to find all manner of gadgets and tech, it was so vast I instantly came to the conclusion that I was going to have to come back here again for a full day of searching. The hours inside the place rumbled by with my trusty companion Lena bartering like a champ! Despite her being less enthused than me she didn't show it, haggling with everyone she could, exploiting the language barrier I couldn't overcome.

As our time in the shopping malls came to an end we met Lena's dad (yes we spent a full work day in shopping malls - love the student life!) for dinner where we dined on JUMBO prawns with noodles (Soo Kee's Son's Sang Har Mee on Jalan Imbi - RECOMMEND!) and beef & scallions with noodles; both of which the place was famous for. The ginormous prawns were delicious, and I'm starting to get good at peeling them, although I will never become accustomed to eating the brains.

The End of Potter

As days go this one won't be quite as mammoth as some of the days just gone; food was sampled, malls were visited and Harry Potters were watched.

Having heard so much of the malls of Malaysia we decided to visit one which was pretty much a spitting distance from Lena's. I find this to be one of those big differences between the UK and Malaysia; in the UK you always look for your local supermarket, comparatively in KL you look for your nearest Mall which would outnumber supermarkets in the local area by some great margin. The mall of interest today was the Tropicana City Mall, a small mall by KL standards although it would give Milton Keynes shopping centre a run for its money (my local). The tidbits on todays lunch menu were: 1901 hotdogs (the brand name, not the number we had); filled buns, a savory sausage one, a nice mediterranean one, a third which filling escapes me and a butter filled bun which was very sweet; baby octopus skewers, quite sweet and not as crunchy as I was preparing myself for; and lastly, chocolate waffles, not particularly Asian but screw it I wanted one!

With all of the food out of the way we sauntered around the mall trying to decide what we wanted to do, I'm not going to lie eating more was an option. In the end we decided on Harry Potter in 3D, simply because we couldn't be assed with waiting an extra half hour for the non-3D version. Loved the film, it had everything the first half lacked, it was action packed and fast paced! Upon finishing it I realised that the book was too long for 1 film but not really long enough for 2 which resulted in the first half being quite drawn out and dull; enough with my review, bring on sleep!

Cultural Blitzkrieg...

We were put up on the floor of Lena's grandparents lounge, and when it is almost an identical set-up to what I've been having in KL alarm bells start ringing, but I am getting off topic; CULTURE!

The theme of the day was definitely culture with: a second cave visit, making all others seem small; a museum trip telling the history of the Ipoh area; a chinese temple, now with monkeys!; and finally, another temple, boasting a lot of different statues. Before all of the days wonderment could begin we set out for some Dim Sum, which is quickly becoming my favourite meal! The restaurant (Foh San, Ipoh), like all Dim Sum places, was packed and I had to stand menacingly near a table in order to get them to pay and move on quickly; POWER TO THE CAUCASIAN! I simply must stop shouting in this blog, most unbecoming... any-who..

The breakfast was fantastic as always with the table littered with every manner of dish I could think of, although there were a lot of dumplings. Without further adieu, here is our feast: Black pepper chicken SiuMai, having had a lot of the frozen kind back in the Cam I am loving the freshly prepared kind and the pepper gave it a nice kick, an all round nice dish; Prawn Siu Mai, in case I hadn't mentioned it the 'Siu Mai' are those dumplings I was referring to, sadly I don't think prawns to them justice on their own, far better ones out there; Scallop & Prawn Siu Mai, now thats what I'm talking about, the scallops give it that edge which makes them superior to the prawns alone; steamed pork ribs in black bean sauce, having gotten so used to seeing ribs as something on the brown colour chart I have found these pale white ribs to be very flavoursome and just as succulent as any other type of ribs; Char Siew Pau, you should already know my stance on these buns, otherwise for shame!; Century egg with pork, not too shabby, not going to be trampling people underfoot to get it though; Lastly, mango custard pudding, I genuinely though the inclusion of mango would get me to like custard, sadly not, my search for a fantastic Asian desert goes on...

With breakfast out of the way we went off to the Gua Tempurung Caves. Now these are some caves, much like those yesterday which had a temple carved into them today's caves were also limestone. The cave system also boasted an impressive step count but being contained entirely within the caves I had no idea of how high we were climbing. At the peak we could see down into the black abyss that people were apparently keen to go crawling through, I myself passed on this generously insane idea, instead opting for the dryer option of trekking back the way we came.

Once back in the land of the sunburnt we moved onto the next stop on the tour; a nice big temple. Now, having been to many a temple on this trip already I found this one to have much the same as all the previously with the one main exception; monkeys! Those rascals were everywhere, but they did seem to prefer hanging out by the shop where they heroically attempted to carry off a whole coconut (keep in mind they are about as heavy as the monkeys themselves) before being shooed away by the storekeeper. Well not wanting to let their efforts go to waste we bought a bag of peanuts and began to feed them, what do you know there were soon more monkeys than we had nuts to give.

Once monkeys had been thoroughly fed we moved onto an area which was rife with temples, the only discernible feature of all of the temples was the level of upkeep afforded to each. Although a single temple did stand out, simply due to having an over abundance of statues; a clear sign of someone adding too many zeros on the statue ordering form. With templeing starting to wear on the senses, we made haste to a small museum and heritage house showing how the people of Ipoh lived 'back in the day'. It was very interesting to see how much information and pieces they managed to cram into such a small space, it also reflected just how small everyone was back then as I seemed to hunch quite frequently.

As my poor legs and seared shoulders were beginning to wain I was relieved to collapse in the car and enjoy a nice leisurely car ride home to Ipoh. When we got back we still had a little bit of time to kill before dinner so I settled in for some 'interesting' chinese TV shows. As I was getting comfortable Lena's grandpa brought out an electrical engineering book from late 1930's to early 1940's. Whilst slightly damaged over time I was amazed to find I was able to recognise a lot of what was there as being from my own syllabus at Cambridge; either it is such bedrock information that everyone needs it or the course at Cambridge is so antiquated it has been lifted from the early part of the 20th Century!

Dinner: seafood, lots of it! Although ribs were also on the menu in the traditional sense, I found them to be kick-ass, to coin a phrase so often used by the finest literary agents. The rest of the meal was: jumbo prawns which required peeling, I am slowly becoming desensitised to the dismemberment of sea-creatures to the point that seeing the brain dangling from the main prawn body doesn't faze me in the least; Lai Yau Sotong otherwise known as squid in flaked egg, this took me a while to realise that it was actually squid but even so it was delicious and Lena and I still have no idea how they manage to fry the egg flaked so well; long beans with belacan, a veggie dish which garners my contempt for having the shear gaul to be a vegetable at a dinner which is quite clearly a seafood only affair; bean curd with mince pork gravy, I can't seem to find much love for bean curd but thankfully the gravy saved it by offering some tasty mince with some tantalising sauce; and finally, Motherflipping SHARKS FIN SOUP!!!!!! Whilst this sounds hardcore it is a little more subdued as the sharks fin comes in fine strands which absorb the flavour of the surrounding soup, I found the soup to be delicious and the sharks fin added some textural variety to the dish.

With dinner over we made the long trip back to Ipoh where I...stayed awake keeping Lena company as she drove. Am I a good boyfriend or what!

No Rest for the Sunburnt!

Well, with Perhentian past us we had to get on with the rest of our trip; 2 hours of sleep later we were on our way to Ipoh! Both of Lena's parents hailed from the food conscious city so this was a family visit in addition to sightseeing.

Having had such a brief sleep on both bus and mattress I found myself getting to Ipoh really fast, sleeping the whole way really helps. Even though Lena's grandparents are in their 80's I was the one who felt sluggish; no sooner had we arrived than we were whisked off to lunch in town. If I thought KL was cheap then I was in for a shock. Everywhere was ridiculously cheap and filled with foods I hadn't tried yet.

I had been warned that the best (possibly only?) thing to do was eat and it certainly looked that way in the car, so many restaurants, cafes and roadside stalls. After having a quick lunch (Unlimited satay on demand, Popiah, and Kai See Sa Hor Fun - Chicken soup noodles - Ipoh's Specialty. Apparently water from the limestone mountains surrounding Ipoh is the secret behind the silky smooth noodles! MUST TRY!) at the Khong Heng Coffee Shop we headed off to one of the most known landmarks in Ipoh, the Perak Caves.

The Caves themselves put the Batu Caves to shame for the shear number of steps to reach the nosebleed inducing peak dwarfed its rival. The caves themselves are primarily limestone, something common in Ipoh and is thought to be the reason why Ipoh's noodles have such a distinctive taste compared with other Malaysian cities. Thankfully the caves were cool and damp with some areas exploiting aerodynamics to offer a wonderful, natural, fan system; pure bliss!

After our treks through the mammoth cave system we were on our way back home, or so I thought. As we made it back into Ipoh I was given a tour of the local area and some of its rich history, such as Concubine Lane where all the rich men kept their mistresses. As the story goes Lena's great great grandfather had a mistress out there and his eldest son took an interest - one day while he was with the mistress his father came a knocking forcing him to flee through the back window; what a rascal!

I have a confession to make, I've been neglecting my posts and have had to write these from notes I made and those notes are sadly quite poor when it comes to what we did for dinner and sadly my poor, humidity saturated brain can't quite recall it either. If Lena can remember then hopefully she can enlighten you!

Perhentian calling

I had just gotten past the issue of jet lag only to stay up to 5am a few days later, I am such a glutton for punishment...

As I wrestled myself into the world of the living I thought to myself 'never again!', how wrong I was going to be. The day started off as most days so far, breakfast. If anyone is unaware of Malaysian shopping malls then quite frankly you haven't lived! The city of KL alone boasts a staggering number, if I spent a day in a mall every day for my entire trip I wouldn't get round them all.

The mall we were visiting today was the SS2 Mall very near to Lena's house. It had opened as recently as last year and was still showing some signs as there were still unoccupied space on all floors which looked to be a long way from completion. Having only experienced Milton Keynes this was quite a novel experience seeing such a young building. I later learned that malls were being opened at a rate of one every year (modest) and this was a common sight in KL The main purpose of our visit today was trying out a newly opened dim sum restaurant.

The food on show was typical dishes found in dim sum: siew mei, char siew pau, steamed pork ribs, squid, prawn balls and shrimp balls. The collection was great with many dishes of the highest calibre, at least to me. Lena and her dad felt it could have been better, but I was sold! Having had a bit of dim sum before I remember some meat buns I had a fondness for which turned out to be pretty common and too filling for most as people prefer to nibble on smaller dishes in order to experience as much as possible.

The rest of the morning and afternoon played out as expected with our time spent lazily moving around the mall and making final preparations for the trip to Perhentian. The prep was largely small things from pharmacy stores.

When the trip was complete we made final preparations and... headed out for dinner, this trip was not going to be kind to my waistline. Prior to our 9 hour coach journey to the docks we went for a bit of food in nearby section 17. Just like all meals before this one was filled with new tastes of a huge variety. Squid, chicken & beef satay, beef & scallions, ABC soup and some slightly more western dishes of broccoli and fried chicken. It was nice to see some western dishes on the table but I only felt compelled to eat the fried chicken as I seem to have a natural hatred of broccoli.

With dinner over we headed for the bus station, which is a far cry from the bus stations of the UK. Upon arrival no one seemed to know which area to head towards and were generally being unhelpful, so much so, we nearly missed our bus which we wait over an hour for. Thankfully aboard the bus we started our journey and began to relax, that was until we found that our driver would have preferred a career as a street racer, one of the most uncomfortable bus journeys I've had :(

Mahjong, Bitches!

I'm beginning to feel like this trip is oscillating between days of unrelenting action and those spent at home. I say this because today we stayed in and used the pretence of packing for Perhentian to absolve ourselves from having to leave the house.

Sadly a full day inside was not meant to be as one of Lena's friends popped round, a girl called Julie (who is a Chindian apparently?). Feeling that our lethargy wasn't going to make for the best company we went out the night market, whilst there was still daylight. Once there we wandered around looking for any small scrap of food we could force down or anything I could try that would be funny to witness (I assume this was the case, I was starting to get paranoid).

The food scavenger hunt got off to a bad start with me coming across the first dish I could say I disliked, fish paste noodles (Asam Laksa). I warn you now that I don't have the correct Malaysian spellings for these dishes but rather vague descriptions. The fish stuff was thankfully accompanied by some prawn mee which I had tried before so finished it off to wash the taste of foul fish from (alliteration!) my mouth. After dabbling in the roadside noodle dishes we set off for snacks from the various market stalls, first stop peanut and sugar pancake thing (freaking awesome) (Tai Kao Meen). With all this food drinks were an inevitable and I got my first taste of pearls which equate to be jelly balls which in NO WAY improve the drinking experience; every sip I had to contend with one of the buggers which greatly reduced my enjoyment of...a...peach...drink? Can't even remember the flavour I'm that disheartened! (SCREW YOU JACK BUBBLE TEA IS THE SHIZZZZZ!!!)

As we wandered round some more we settled on some satay sticks which I have enjoyed previously so had high expectations...which were not disappointed; Freaking love satay, especially the peanut sauce stuff :). Riding on my satay high I strolled into some place who used liberal amounts of deep fat frying, I sampled: a spring roll, a prawn cracker thing, and what turned out to be tapioca balls. I thought I was buying fried wantons, imagine my surprise! I can sadly say it wasn't a nice surprise like waking up realising its a Saturday but like waking up and realising its a Monday. Well today was shaking my adventurous streak, several repeated dishes and a couple of awful foods, things were looking dire, but no sooner than that thought came through my mind BANG curry puff, kicking ass resumed again!

Leaving the market on a high note we rolled our way back to our little place and got Hang round. A new entertainment was to be brought out this fine eve, Mahjong! Having never played the game before I was curious on the mechanics and I quickly found, like backgammon, gambling improves it. To make things sweeter I seemed to be on a winning streak/beginners luck, I managed to win 3 out of 4 of the first games. Although as the night progressed experience took over and I was swiftly pwned by Hang, and to some extent Lena (I let her win!).

The exciting and daring world of Mahjong kept us going into the wee hours of the morning (5am for me), but sadly age and being sleepy won out and I retired to bed with the fevered sounds of Hang and Lena chatting in the background...

Lena's edits: Jack woke up at about 7am to find Hang and myself cuddled on the single bed (just like the good old days back in high school!) whilst he was asleep by himself on the queen bed.. Suspicious? Threatened? No. His only thoughts: Sweet.. Lesbians! zzZZZzzz...