Kuala Lumpur - Batu Caves, Bukit Bintang, and a Bougie Dinner

To start our next day in Kuala Lumpur, we took a taxi (technically a "Grab," the local version of Uber or Lyft) to the Batu Caves. While the caves are accessible by commuter rail, from our hotel it was much faster for us to take a car, and we wanted to get there relatively early to avoid big crowds. There were already quite a few people there when we arrived a bit after 9AM, but it wasn't too bad. The site consists of a couple of Hindu shrines inside a supposedly 400 million year old karst cave with a giant multi-colored stairway leading up to them. A 140 foot high statue of Murugan, the Hindu god of war, stands in front.

On the way up the stairs, we saw monkeys, chickens, pigeons, and dumb tourists. One tourist was teasing a monkey with a plastic water bottle, and eventually gave it to the monkey, who dropped it. Because of actions like this, the site was quite dirty, with litter and garbage throughout. It was a bit jarring, and contrasted to the overall neat and cleanliness of most of the touristic sites we visited in KL. 

Arriving at the top, we entered a large cave which had a temple and a big open space, then another small set of stairs up to an open-roof cave with another small temple. Overall it feels large and open. On the way back down we counted the stairs and both counted 272, so that's the official number of stairs by our count.

Batu Caves is worth a visit, but unfortunately is a bit dirty, run down, and there are some really dumb tourists here so it didn't top our list of best things to do in KL. By the time we left it was getting pretty crowded, so we definitely recommend visiting early in the day.

The massive statue of Murugan.

A colorful temple outside the cave.

Looking out from near the top of the stairs.

Monkeys!

Inside the main area of the cave.

This place was nothing if not colorful.

Looking up through the back part of the cave.

Overlooking the temple site.

Another cute monkey.

Next we decided to mix up the vibe and opted to visit modern KL, so we took a Grab to Bukit Bintong. This area is basically a shopping district that is popular with tourists. We started with some iced coffee from Optimist Coffee, which was a cute little take out window tucked down a difficult to find alley. From there we visited the Japanese Don Quijote chain store in the Lot 10 mall...these are very Japanese. Overstuffed aisles and interior design where the expression "tone it down" doesn't mean anything. Overall, a really interesting and enjoyable shop for people (like us) that do tend to like Japanese things...with a KL twist.

It turned out that Lot 10 was essentially just a mall full of Japanese and Chinese stuff, and considering our last stop of this trip is Tokyo we opted to not wander around too much. KL has about a thousand malls, and most of them are essentially square 3-8 story atriums with shops surrounding...not really the same thing we'd consider a mall in the US, where they occupy acres and acres of land.

That said, for lunch we wandered a few blocks away from Lot 10 to the Pavilion Mall - a 1.6 million square foot 500+ shop mall with a massive food court called "Food Republic." For lunch we hit up a few stalls and got some laksa curry, chicken dumpling soup, fried chicken and okra to share. Overall, a yummy experience but not as great as the meals we had the night before. Paul continued his calamansi love from Singapore with a winter melon/calamansi beverage.

Optimist Coffee alley. This was not easy to find!

Who doesn't love a great mascot?!

If this doesn't scream Japanese to you immediately I don't know what would.

Uhh. What's this place called again?

Inside the Lot 10 mall.

Here we are at the Pavilion Mall. We loved all of the lunar new year decorations.

Food court lunch. Laksa, dumpling soup, and some fried chicken, rice and okra.

Paul was a happy camper!

There are a few nice pedestrian areas.

KL's second tallest building.

After lunch, we walked the relatively short distance to Berjaya Times Square, another mall. This mall wasn't as fancy and was a bit more dated than the previous two we visited. Paul's main goal here was to ride a roller coaster built into the mall! Paul managed to get three rides on Supersonic Odyssey, which was enjoyable and unique, and quite large for an indoor coaster. Meanwhile, David decided to dump a few dollars worth of ringgit into claw machine games... which cheated and would open their claw a bit at the top before moving laterally. Boo...

Bukit Bintang is a pretty interesting part of KL overall. It's obviously the center of the tourist industry for the city, with tons of hotels, malls, restaurants and shops. The area is more walkable than most of the city, but still not that easy to get around in overall, especially compared to Singapore, Seoul or most European cities. Traffic here is really a nightmare, but luckily it's served by multiple modes of transit (MRT, bus and monorail). If you visit KL, it's worth checking this area out, but we're glad we didn't stay in this part of town. Overall, it feels a little soulless and "Buckheady" for our liking (kudos to the ATLiens that get that reference).

Supersonic Odyssey's loop wrapping around a walkway.

Berjaya Times Square Theme Park is every kid's dream.

Main atrium for Berjaya Times Square, with the lunar new year decorations.

From Berjaya Times Square, we took the MRT to the National Museum (Muzium Negara). This museum is near the wooded hill we visited the previous day to see the Butterfly Park, the Bird Park and the Islamic Art Museum. We think it's super convenient when cities create a central district for many cultural centers like this! Kudos to KL. The museum itself was just ok. There were just a few large rooms that housed exhibits on the history of Malaysia, artifacts and a bit of good ol' propaganda about Malaysian "merdaka" (freedom). We'd recommend checking this placed out if you have the time but it's probably not a high priority.

Next door to the National Museum are two other small museums with a separate, but cheap, fee. One is called the Ethnology of the Malay World Museum and the other the Orang Asli Crafts Museum. These are all just essential a couple small rooms housing exhibits on the arrival of Malay people to the region and some daily life crafts used by people in the region. Again, if you have some time to kill or want to beat the mid-day heat for a short time they're worth a quick pop in. The three museums are interconnected by a small outdoor shopping area with a café, so it can be a nice way to spend a couple hours and they're pretty conveniently connected to the MRT. But do yourself a favor and don't accidentally leave your backpack at the café and not realize it's gone until you're two stops down the line back towards your hotel when you have a Catherine O'Hara Home Alone moment (but screaming "backpack" instead). 

Backpack in hand (thankfully) we opted to head back to the hotel to relax a bit before our fancy dinner reservations later that evening. We took a quick nap and went to the pool for sunset views in the breezy cool evening.

The National Museum!

Lots of cool artifacts.

Indonesian/Malay puppetry!

Main hall of the National Museum.

Ethnology of the Malay World Museum exhibit.

Museum campus, with traditional kampong housing with skyscrapers across the street. 

With headways this frequent, who's even concerned about leaving their backpack behind?! #us #yikes

Walking across the river back towards our hotel from the MRT station.

Those KL sunsets though!

Cool and breezy evening back at the hotel pool.

That evening we had our super fancy meal of the trip. We always try to do one really nice meal on vacation, especially when in a country where prices are cheaper. We booked dinner a few weeks in advance at Dewakan, a 2 Michelin star restaurant. We were only able to get a lot at 9:15pm, but toughed it out! 😏

We took a Grab car there, which had karaoke-style lyrics showing on the screen. Interesting ride! Arriving at the restaurant, the building concierge took us to the elevator and sent us to the 48th floor. The restaurant has amazing views. We started with a brief kitchen tour, an explanation of ingredients used in the evening's dishes, and tour of their fermentation pots, before being led to our table. This experience screamed 2022's movie "The Menu" at us, and if Ralph Fiennes showed up at any point we had the exits memorized!

The meal was 12 courses, with interesting ingredients and flavors and quite a few local/regional Malaysian ingredients. While Paul did enjoy the meal, it was not our favorite of our fancy "splurge" vacation meals. We much preferred Leo in Bogota and Karak in Valencia. David didn't really care for it overall, as the preparation was more European or just "global fancy food," rather than being Malaysian preparations. Of the individual dishes, Paul's favorites were the slipper lobster on breadfruit tortilla, the banana leaf ice cream on banana mousse, and a fermented rice ice cube. David's favorite was eggplant and mochi gyoza (the sauce was really good). After dinner we took a Grab back to the hotel.

The karaoke style screen in the Grab car.

The kitchen tour in Dewakan.

The ingredients.

List of courses. Not very descriptive!

The first little snack was pretty. And those are the Petronas towers in the background.

This dish was an origami folded "frog."

A really cool looking slipper crab taco.

Raw venison. David was not a fan.

We're almost at the mid-point and Paul's still smiling!

An interesting dish with lots of flavors and textures, including a preserved egg yolk and crunchy rice.

This sauce was delicious.

Yes, that's a pigeon cut in half down the middle. Brain included...

A really interesting fermented rice ice cube.

Banana leaf ice cream!

This was a stack of cookies with different chocolate flavors.

Another dessert, with the Petronas towers.

Another view of the Petronas Towers.

Great views!