Four Weddings but No Funeral (Too Much Mousse)

Breakfast at the Hilton was such an elaborate affair, it’s worth mentioning. I think Jane will agree when I said that neither of us simply had the culinary palette or skills to tackle Malaysian and Indian breakfast foods. This Hilton does not cater to Westerners, but we played it safe between fruit, eggs, yogurt and pastries. Because this is a Muslim country, it’s illegal to bring pigs or pork products into the country. Jane saw lots of signs; I missed them all. Instead of pork sausage they had chicken sausage. In lieu of pork bacon there was streaky beef bacon. 

There were many foods I could never stomach for breakfast.

There were also foods we couldn’t identify. Name tags didn’t help. 

Jacob was our driver guide today. He seemed to take his responsibility to us very seriously. We were given safety warnings, scam warnings, and toilet cleanliness reports. He really loves his job and it shows. 

First, the Batu Caves, a Hindu holy site and shrine built into limestone cliff caves. The plaza was filled with monkeys which Jacob expressly forbade we feed for our own safety. He checked to make sure we didn’t have any food or snacks on us, so I’m guessing the monkeys play rough. 

Here we are in our ultra covered up outfits. After climbing 140 feet, we were melted and already sweaty.  

Next stop, the Batik factory.  Batik fabric art is a major component of Malaysian culture, to the point of being featured on their money.  This guy was painting silk scarves. 

They let us give a try at it ourselves, on this tourist grade cotton scarf. 

They didn’t pressure us hard to buy something but they had a beautiful array of batik fabrics to look at or purchase. 

The Chinese temple was Jane’s favorite stop of the day. We enjoyed discovering new details all over the building. 

Jane found her zodiac sign, the rat. 

We encountered 4 weddings but no funerals at the temple today. Jacob says we are very lucky, usually seeing one is a treat. 

This building, Merdeka 118, loomed over us all day.  The is the nearly completed 2nd tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalid in Dubai. It was not open for tours yet but gorgeous from any angle. 

The hibiscus is the national flower, and public art and signs were decorated with it all over town. 

This is the national monument for the triumph over communism and homage to the fallen in both world wars. 

Malaysia has a King and Queen that rotate every 5 years. They live in this truly massive $1B palace complex. Only royalty that are Malay and Muslim can be king and queen. 

One is never allowed to tour this place. This picture from the front gate is as close as you can get. 

We had really worked up a sweat and got pretty thirsty. The available cold drinks were unfamiliar, but we are adventurous. 

… too adventurous. All of these drinks had to go in the trash. We drank too warm water instead. 

 Ext stop was the National Museum of Malaysia, telling the history from prehistoric times to modern day.  Our tour guide hinted to always double check what you e learned from outside perspectives, because the winners write history. As a Christian Malaysian with Indian heritage, I guessed he maybe had opinions about some of those facts. 

Jane particularly enjoyed samples of Malaysia’s craftsmanship with wood. 

I enjoyed the artistic details in clothing and household goods. 

Even the museum itself was an homage to classic Malaysian architecture. 

We stopped at Kuala Lumpur tour and went to the top. 

The Petronas twin towers was booked for later in the evening. 

There was some confusion about our destination list. I had a different list than Jacob did. He showed us his instructions from the company which validated that he took us all of the places we were supposed to go.  Turns out they swapped the botanical garden with the museum. Jane and I decided that wa AA good trade considering how steamy hot it was in our conservative clothes. As I was reading his instructions, I noticed it said he was expressly forbidden from taking us to the chocolate shops or coffee shops. Hmmmm… I didn’t like the sound of that.  I asked him and he said he would be fired if they found out that he took us there. He is getting married July 17th, and his job is very important right now. He said some people don’t like those places because they are hard selling them things.  He said they leave bad reviews sometimes and that tarnished the company. He made eye contact in the mirror and asked me, would you want to go to a chocolate shop?  I promised him we could keep a secret and that we very much wanted to go to both a chocolate and coffee shop.  He rerouted us immediately to both. 

The kingdom gave out a ton of samples. 

Here’s Jacob explaining chocolate bean origin and chocolate production process. 

Jacob will get the full complement of stars in his review which will never mention chocolate or coffee. We all 3 were co-conspirators after that. 

We had dinner at our hotel, because we had only a short time to rest before heading out again. This buffet was seafood themed and immediately filled up after opening with mostly Japanese families.  These petite folks wowed us!  They packed it in. They started before us and were still going strong after we were tooo full, putting away plate after plate of roasted meats and seafoods. 

Bibs were issued to all. 

Action stations with steak, meats, lobster, and crab were the anchors on a bizarre array of seafood choices. The Japanese people weren’t touching the sushi. I polished off the entirety of the salmon sashimi anyway. It was superb!

Dessert offered a dazzling array of mousses and plenty of other familiar and unfamiliar choices. Jane did a tour of mousses. She now thinks she will never need to eat more mousse. 

We headed for the Petronas towers for a tour. Our driver arranged for a street photographer to take our picture before we enter up. We laughed so hard about the pictures we almost couldn’t stand. 

All in all, we give hugely positive reviews to Kuala Lumpur, and we barely scratched the surface.  On the other hand we were not so comfortable wearing long sleeves and pants in this climate. Malaysia women and many men were wearing long sleeves and jackets (yes coats!). We just couldn’t understand. Our driver Jacob says they don’t want their skin to turn darker, but that seemed an odd explanation. One could protect skin without a coat. I will never understand I guess. 

Off to an early flight to Singapore in the morning!  There is only one more day before Jane moves in with her host family.