Adventures of David and Paul: Kuala Lumpur

The next day, our first full day in KL, would be a packed day - probably the busiest of our trip, visiting multiple sights and neighborhoods and eating a whole lot of food. We started with breakfast at 103 Coffee near our hotel. This was a trendy cafe with interesting cold brew "cocktails." We also had some Earl Grey french toast with house made yogurt and rose honey syrup. Definitely a hip breakfast.

Morning view from our hotel room.

103 Coffee did indeed reimagine black liquid.

Paul's coffee had an apple coffee foam on top.

The french toast looked and tasted delightful.

After breakfast we took the train to the large forested hill just west of the downtown neighborhoods that features a variety of outdoor attractions. We first went to the Butterfly Park, mostly because it was directly on our route. It could use some updating, but it was a nice little garden with hundreds of butterflies and a few exhibits on insects in Malaysia.

We continued along to road to the KL Bird Park, a large aviary that is a big tourist attraction. It is mostly outdoors, with some areas open air and some covered in huge nets, plus a few indoor exhibits. We spent a couple of hours walking the grounds, seeing a wide variety of birds. We had a funny moment when a little girl (maybe two years old) was walking and not paying attention. She walked right up to a stork she didn't realize was there, and jumped back in shock when she turned around and found herself face-to-face with the large bird. We also saw a stork pestering a monitor lizard.

Across the street from the bird park is the orchid garden, which is a small, free, outdoor flower garden. There's not too much to see but it was a nice place to wander around for a bit.

The rail stations in KL are clean and easy to use.

A blue iridescent butterfly on some flowers.

David in the butterfly garden.

Paul enjoying the butterfly garden.

An orchid mantis, camouflaged like a flower.

These egrets were all over the bird park.

They even had a little family of turkeys.

Well that doesn't look too comfortable.

This stork was not happy with the monitor lizard.

There were peacocks throughout the park, and a few monkeys.

Very happy peacock.

Ready for her closeup!

Boy howdy.

Have you ever seen so much side eye? From both subjects of this photo no less!

Overview of one of the large open areas of the bird park.

Main sign for the Botanical Garden. Pretty!

A covered area of the orchid garden.

While walking from the butterfly park to the bird park and orchid garden, we noticed not a lot of people were walking around this area. Possibly because of the heat, maybe because of the hills and winding roads, and maybe the car culture of the city, but almost everyone was arriving by car or tour bus. We didn't mind the walk, as it was mostly shaded, there wasn't much traffic, and we even saw some monkeys along the route. In general, we didn't find many people walking in Kuala Lumpur, especially compared to Singapore.

We next walked to the Islamic Arts Museum, which is right on the edge of the forested park area. This museum was probably the most impressive museum we visited in Kuala Lumpur. It was in a multi-domed building and had excellent exhibits, all with English explanations. We started with a light lunch at the Moza restaurant inside the museum (including two drinks each to stay hydrated!), then spent a couple of hours looking at exhibits on Arabic calligraphy, Muslim art, and mosque architecture.

Wild monkeys!

The roofline of the National mosque, across from the museum.

A nice lunch at Moza. It was mostly Lebanese-ish.

Moza was minimalist and cool.

Modern calligraphy art.

Merdeka 118 and a minaret viewed from the museum.

The "inverted dome" in the main atrium.

Another big dome, above an architecture exhibit.

The museum's "Damascus room."

One of the rooftop domes of the museum.

Finishing up with the museum, our next stop was Thean Hou Temple. Kuala Lumpur is pretty easy to get around, with lots of train options (MRT, LRT, monorail, express train, and commuter rail) but also Grab which is a ride service like Lyft or Uber. All of the options are pretty affordable. In this case we used Grab since the temple is a little out of the way and not readily accessible by transit. Thean Hou Temple is relatively modern, built in the 1980s. It's still a very impressive temple, with an elaborate series of roofs and a hilltop site with great views. The temple is dedicated to the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, and is affiliated with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. It was very busy, and it was a hot and sunny day, but we enjoyed looking around the temple and its grounds. It's definitely worth visiting.

The front plaza of the temple.

Yay for lunar new year!

David with year of the dragon decorations.

There were thousands of lanterns strung across the plazas and courtyards.

Views of the city from the temple.

The colorful interior.

Lots of candles and incense.

The lanterns made a cool shadow pattern on this sunny day.

Did we mention the temple was elaborate? There was a dragon and a phoenix on this roof corner.

The back-side of the temple had a really colorful staircase!

A rainbow bunny behind the temple.

By now it was mid-afternoon and pretty hot, so we decided to take a car back to the hotel to rest a bit before heading out for the evening. On the drive back, we happened to pass through the little India (Brickfields) area of Kuala Lumpur, which was cool to see. That evening we had plans for an organized food tour, so we wanted to chill out in the a/c and freshen up beforehand.

Driving through Little India.

Passing historic buildings.

The brick lattice work on our hotel provided some natural shade from the sun.

View from our hotel in the late afternoon, complete with a monorail train.

That evening we had a tour booked for dinner - the "Off the Eaten Track" food tour. These small group tours had great ratings online, and we thought it would be a good way to try lots of different foods. It ended up being one of our favorite things we did on the entire trip. It started at a train station south of town (Taman Paramount , so we took the train there and met up with our guide, Karlson. Nobody else had booked for that day, so we had a private tour with him driving us around in his car. We had a lot of interesting conversations with him throughout the night about Malaysian culture and customs.

Malaysia is a blend of cultures, but there are three dominant ones, and they were the focus of the food tour. The first stop was a hawker stall market that mostly had Malay food. This market was similar to ones we saw in Singapore, but maybe a little less put together. Here Karlson arranged for us to eat steamed chicken mince, satay, fishcake, goat stew, and nasi lemak.

Merdeka 118 gleaming in sun en route to Dang Wangi station.

Nasi lemak to start our food tour!

This was probably the best satay of the trip.

The first market from the street.

After having our fill of Malay food, we drove to the second stop, a modern indoor restaurant/market with a variety of Indian Malaysian foods. The restaurant was a local chain (maybe 3 locations in total) starting from one small shop in Penang. Here we had some delicious dosa and chicken, but the most interesting item was the "roti tisu," a huge paper-thin cracker-like cone with butter, condensed milk, and sugar as a desert. Several people sitting near us were getting this and it was a bit of a production when it was brought out.

By the point we were slowing down - two dinners is a lot to manage, especially with full knowledge that a third is to come. While at the Indian restaurant Karlson told us a bit about the housing costs in KL. He, and a few friends, were interested in buying a flat across the street from the restaurant as an investment. They went and looked at it before finding out the owner wanted something like $700,000 (USD) for what was essentially an apartment with three bedrooms. This really surprised us, as Americans, and fully understanding that Malaysia is still a developing country. Seems like homeownership is a difficult issue globally. That said, Karlson explained that Malaysians, like Singaporeans, are also guaranteed some form of public housing, but the process seems less organized and successful than in Singapore.

Second stop - this Indian restaurant.

Making the giant roti.

Lots of foods to try.

Dosa with dips.

The roti was HUGE. Also, say hi to Karlson!

The roti tisu. We did not eat all of this.

The final stop was closer to the heart of Kuala Lumpur (and our hotel), in Chinatown. We walked around the neighborhood a bit, then made our way to a restaurant on the main food street. The place we went happened to be celebrating the end of lunar new year that evening, so there were dancing dragons, a drum band, and fireworks in the street. It was really cool at first, but was incredibly loud so it made it difficult to order food and eat. Overall, it was still a neat experience, and once we were eating the food was really good (although we were stuffed at this point).

After hanging around a bit and continuing our chat on Malaysia and US customs/issues, we wrapped up the food tour and Karlson drove us back to our hotel since it was only a few miles away. Overall, we would 100% recommend you do something like this if you visit Kuala Lumpur. Malaysian food is complicated and it's very helpful to have someone introduce you to the different key items, flavors and customs of the three primary ethnic groups in the country. We had a bit of an advantage coming up from Singapore where the food is similar, but if this was our first stop this tour would have set the stage for the rest of our culinary experience in Malaysia.