Tag Archives: Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur

I’m pretty sure it’s official. I’m going to Asia in 2017. This is the Wikipedia picture of the skyline of Kuala Lumpur (KL). This city is usually my base city when I’m wandering in Asia, primarily because of the cheap air connections into and out of the city. A person can always get from one place to another by air, but they can’t always do it cheaply. There are lots of flights leaving KL for locations throughout Asia that are very inexpensive. Plus, I like this city. A lot of backpackers pass through the hostels and it’s a cheap place to reside while I rest up between sub-adventures.

Bar-B-Que – Malaysia

Bar-B-Que - Malaysia

Bar-B-Que – Malaysia

Asians call it Bar-B-Que and I guess that’s what it is, if you are comfortable that you can have Bar-B-Que with peanut sauce. Anyway, they take a variety of foodstuffs, put them on wooden skewers, color code the skewers as to price and then grill-to-order. Oh, and another thing, while you can get chicken, pork, fish, squid, shrimp, frog, and, if you take the guy aside, maybe you can get a little rat or snake, but, there’s no beef. "No beef?" I enquired. "No beef!" the head chef said in his best Asian-English, looking at me like I was some kind of rube from Terlinqua, Texas and never heard of Bar-B-Que before. So, there you have it, the Chinatown version of… Bar-B-Que.

India Street – Kuching

India Street - Kuching

India Street – Kuching

It was India Street in Kuching, Malaysia. You knew when you arrived at the lcoation that you had hit the old part of the city market area. It was also very close to the bus stations, which weren’t really stations at all. They were just a bunch of buses parked in the same area that picked up passengers. Strangely, the bus system seemed to work really well without a lot of formal administration. I rode it several times. Notice how India Street appears to be wet. That’s because it was. It rained everyday that I was in Kuching. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes a lot for a long time. It cut into my tanning time. And my touring time.

Chili Sauce – Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

Chili Sauce - Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

Chili Sauce – Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

I would have thought it was ketchup. But it’s not. In many countries in SE Asia, when you see a push-pump out in the condiments section, it doesn’t contain ketchup, it contains chili sauce. Ketchup you have to ask for. So is the chili sauce hot? You’re kidding, right? You’re asking me if the chili sauce is hot in places like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia where you can’t get bland food? Yes, it’s hot. I usually cover my nachos in jalapenos back home, but I’ve had a couple of situations in SE Asia when I really regretted taking a bite of food, because it contained some of the hottest chili peppers I’ve ever had the displeasure of tasting.

Mosque – Kuala Lumpur “Masjid Jamek”

Mosque - Kuala Lumpur "Masjid Jamek"

Mosque – Kuala Lumpur "Masjid Jamek"

Masjid Jamek is supposed to be the oldest mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I can’t say that it is or it isn’t. I can say that it was supposed to have been built around the turn of the century in the early 1900′s. I can say that I like the way it sits, among the palm trees. It is very close to the center of the city. From here. I can easily walk to lots of other tourist attractions. Plus, there’s a subway station right beside the mosque.

Dinner 2 – Kuala Lumpur

Dinner 2 - Kuala Lumpur

Dinner 2 – Kuala Lumpur

It was my second dinner in KL. This time I went a little more into my Epicurean Mode. I had extra rice and added some veggies. The sauce on the rice was supposed to be less spicy than the sauce I had the first day. I’m learning that I need to dip my own sauce. Malaysians don’t really understand the English term "less spicy" as well as I would like. The juice is mango. The cost was a staggering $2.

Plaza Low Yat

Plaza Low Yat

Plaza Low Yat

The sign says that it’s Malaysia’s largest IT lifestyle mall. That means it has seven floors of electronic stuff. I’ve never seen so many laptops, cameras, cell phones and other electronic gadgets assembled in one place for sale in my whole life. The place was huge. I got lost once trying to find an escalator or elevator to get out of the place. It was so upscale I was embarrassed not to be carrying a smart phone.