Daddy Travels Miles & Points

Ok…so let’s go back to Kuala Lumpur. It’s now Sunday. We started our morning a bit rocky. We had arranged for a car service to take us to church. The car service was not available. We took a cab, but the cab driver did not know his way around. He stopped and asked for directions. We ended up missing church, so we just went back to the hotel.

We were told that the pool at JW Marriott was going through renovation. We were advised to use the pool over at the Ritz Carlton. What? Yes, we had to drag ourselves for five minutes and walked over to the glorious Ritz Carlton. What a chore! Imagine that? The Marriott made us spend our morning swimming at the Ritz! Tough!

After our morning swim, we headed back to the JW Marriott for our free brunch. This was a feast. There was your typical pancakes, eggs, sausage breakfast. But, we opted for the more Asian-flair. For instance, I had the Nasi Lemak – a traditional Malaysian breakfast with rice, cucumber, peanuts, fried anchovies aka dilis, some red spicy sauce, and chicken. That was different. I enjoyed the fresh juices way too much, I had one too many cups of the dragonfruit juice….something that I paid for so much later!

After breakfast, Suresh came to pick us up for a mini tour of the city.

We went to Batu Caves, a half hour drive from the city. Again, it was humid, and we walked up 272 steps to get to the main part of the cave, and another 60 steps up to another section of the cave.

There was ongoing construction. We noticed people were carrying a bucket of sand as they made their way up. We asked them why they did so. It was their way of helping with the construction. Of course, we had to do our share and helped with carrying our buckets as well.

Inside the cave were different images and a series of temples. There were many who were just there to observe, while others took their time and go about their religious practice. After exploring the inside of the cave, we began making our way down. We found ourselves entertained by all the monkeys who were freely interacting with the crowd.

Next stop was Istana Negara or the National Palace, home to the head of state of Malaysia. It wasn’t really a place that we could go in to. Kinda like the Buckingham Palace where we were only allowed to take pictures outside the gate, and that’s exactly what we did here. The heat kept rising, we had to wear sunblock. It was that hot and humid.

Not long after, we decided to head to KL’s Chinatown. We walked around the street market. It had rained at this time and fortunately, the market was covered thus it kept us all dry. At this time, we had just a little over an hour to kill before our scheduled visit at Petronas Twin Towers. Nancy checked the review on Merchant’s Lane. It took quite a bit of an adventurous search to find this place. It wasn’t exactly like McDonald’s. It was an obscure restaurant that was tucked away upstairs. You really have to find it and so glad we did.

We walked in and were led to upstairs to a very spacious, airy restaurant. It was busy, filled with guests. There was an option to sit outside, but with  humidity and all, I opted for us to sit indoors. We shared a table with a group of students from Malaysia. When we looked at the menu, every seemed so inviting. We ordered spaghetti bolognese, Pipit’s Nest (fries with onion rings, chicken tenders served with cheese and mayo sauce), and Hongkie Beef Stew – cantonese style roasted beef with dark gravy and mashed potatoes. This was super tasty, on the peppery side, but delish!

Directly after dinner, Suresh drove us to Petronas Twin Towers. The ticket was around $20 USD/person. We had a 5pm scheduled entry to go up to the tower. It gave us an appreciation of the vastness of Kuala Lumpur. I was surprised that the tour wasn’t exactly super crowded. It was highly controlled by the tour group. We didn’t feel rushed or anything. It was still bright when we went up the tower, and I was glad we chose this time time of day.

Aaaaahhhhh that was it…..that was our full-day in KL. We decided to head back to Singapore. So thankful for the idea of hiring a driver. Nancy and I were knocked out in the back seat during the what seemed like a 4-hour drive back to Singapore. Joey kept Suresh awake, and all I remember was I must’ve snored really loud during the entire trip, and frankly, it was the best nap ever!

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