Oh, Kuala Lumpur

October 23, 2024

Greetings Friends, Family, and Fellow Travelers!

Sara here with a brief(ish) newsletter from us this week. After two very packed weeks in Morocco, we planned a 10-day reprieve in Kuala Lumpur to catch our breath and catch up on school and logistical tasks. It’s been nice to sleep a little later, visit the gym, and hang in the game room. We love it here and wish we had longer to explore the city, particularly as we still haven’t quite adjusted to the time change and everyone keeps sleeping through breakfast (which doesn’t even end until 10:30). We’ve done some of the touristy things, like ascended to the top of the Petronas Towers, but mostly we are just enjoying a slower pace in a dizzying city. For example, there are times you’ll be following directions and suddenly realize that you are on the wrong side of the street and can’t figure out how to get where you wanted to go anymore, only to come face to face with a giant mascot in a panda costume. Crosswalks are merely suggestions for pedestrians and meaningless to drivers.

We think Kuala Lumpur is a great introduction to Asia for our kids (it’s their first visit to the continent and our third). The city is culturally diverse, and bustling and vibrant with pockets of quiet reprieve if you know where to look. We haven’t even scratched the surface of all there is to do here. Also, I am in the land of inexpensive massages, which is always one of my favorite places to be. No posts from others this week, but please enjoy Jonah’s video: https://youtu.be/H3XE5l03aXE

Some highlights:

Shopping: Our first full day here, we ventured to the Pavilion Mall to pick up some new clothes for Borneo, as well as some new clothes for post-Borneo, assuming the kids would finish destroying many of the items they’ve been wearing for months. Justin took the kids to see their first movie since we left the US, The Wild Robot. Disappointingly for our kids, the bookstores here package books in plastic to discourage sitting and reading. Alas, this is our kids’ absolute favorite thing to do in bookstores. We’ve discovered everyone in our family enjoys visiting local malls when we travel, particularly here in KL where there are multiple electronic stores next to one another.

Today, Calla and I walked to Central Market, which is a hub of shopping, food stalls, and arts and crafts. I treated us to 60-minute food/neck/back/head massages, where the massage therapists delighted over Calla, and we stopped at a sustainable art studio that helps combat plastics pollution by upcycling “waste.” Calla made a pink and purple beaded bracelet. We also visited the Illusion 3D Art Museum, which was frivolous fun for us both.

Street Food: I signed us up for a KL Street Food tour called “Sambal Streets,” which promised to take us to off the beaten path locations, sampling upwards of 15 different foods and beverages. In general, I love doing food tours in cities, particularly early on in our stay to get a feel for the local culinary scene. This tour did not disappoint. We began with a quick visit to a local market to familiarize ourselves with Malaysian spices, fruits, and vegetables. The best way I can describe Malaysian cuisine is that it’s a hybrid of Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian food traditions, with elements that make it uniquely Malaysian. Across visits to several stalls and restaurants, we tried various fruits (longan, mangosteen, longan, durian), as well as drinks (calamansi sugar juice, mango smoothie), and savory dishes (curry, satay, mee goreng). We all tried our hand at making roti, which tasted better than it looked while we were stumbling our way through the process. I also appreciated the tour guide’s emphasis on reducing food waste, as apparently Malaysia’s food waste is extremely high (Google says 8.3 million metric tons annually). Before bringing us any food, she asked us how many portions we would want between the five of us. Given the volume of food, rarely was the answer five, and I’m glad she was conscientious about not over-ordering.

A week later, we went to Jalan Alor, a street filled with food stalls and restaurants. The kids got grilled corn, juices, and dessert (marshmallow ice cream; jelly ice cream). Simon opted for squid, Justin and I tried stinky tofu, and as always, everyone ate dumplings.

Batu Caves & Firefly Safari Tour: While Malaysia has a sizable Muslim population, we did not visit any mosques while in KL. However, we saw several Hindu temples, including the ones part of the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves are famous for their nearly 300 colorful steps, which you ascend to reach the main caves situated in limestone said to have been formed nearly 400 million years ago. Monkeys swarm the caves, so we left all food and beverages in the car to avoid getting “monkeyed” as we now call it. After visiting the Batu Caves, we headed to the Sri Shakti Temple, and then drove to see more monkeys. We remained in the car as silver leaf and macaques swarmed us, and we were all hysterical with laughter while the monkeys played on top of the roof of the car and came up to our windows. After dinner, we stopped in Kuala Selangor for a firefly safari, which involved a peaceful 30-minute boat ride watching the fireflies illuminate the trees beside us. Bliss.

Batik class: After learning about it from the other family on our street food tour, I took Jonah and Calla to Jadi Batek for a batik lesson. Batik involves decorating cloth or silk using wax and dye. I knew absolutely nothing about batik before attending, but our quick crash course first began with us selecting our patterns. Calla selected a pre-traced/pre-waxed owl, I selected (not pre-traced or pre-waxed) flowers, and Jonah opted for the DIY option and drew a tiger. Calla was very patient as she needed us both to finish tracing and waxing before we could all paint together. First, I selected my pattern and traced it with grey pencil onto canvas. Then, I used the wax tool to trace over the colored pencil with golden wax. This was much trickier than I anticipated, though I only burned myself once, which – as Jonah pointed out multiple times – was once more than anyone else managed to burn themselves. Once Jonah and I traced our outlines in wax, it was time to paint. I though this was the most enjoyable part. The wax creates a natural outline, so unlike with other painting projects, it’s almost impossible to accidentally paint outside the lines. This is perfect for an inadvertent line crosser such as myself. You can change the variegation of the color using water, so my technique was to paint an entire segment with water and then use color sparingly on top of it. Viola – here are our projects!

Dinner with Simon: One of the things Simon most wanted to do on the World Trip was a “surprise tasting menu.” We were all set for this in Vienna until COVID took me out and I had to cancel our special mother/son dinner. As a result, I spent a long time researching restaurants in Kuala Lumpur that I thought we would both enjoy and were reasonably priced enough to justify taking an 8-year-old. Beta KL – which has a Michelin star – fit the bill. Their tasting menu pulls from culinary traditions across Malaysia, with a focus on local farming. Simon’s ADHD often makes it very hard for him to sit through meals, so he and I had several conversations about whether he thought he could manage a 2.5-hour dinner and what types of things we could discuss or do to help him stay focused. While the menu wasn’t a surprise to me, Simon didn’t look at it so that every course could be a surprise to him. We had three mini pre-appetizers, tapioca bread, three appetizers, a palate cleanser, a main, rice, and two desserts. Other than a few bites of a couple of the dishes, Simon managed to eat everything, along with two mocktails that made him sort of loopy by meal’s end. I asked how frequently the restaurant is patronized by 8-year-olds eating full tasting menus, and they said every 3-4 months. While we’ve had many challenges while traveling long-term, we are fortunate that our kids’ eagerness to sample foods from new cuisines is not one of them, and I was so, so proud of Simon for skillfully managing our dinner together. The food was great, and we had a wonderful time together.

Family Karaoke: There are karaoke joints everywhere, and we stumbled upon one on a glorious Monday afternoon that charged us $6 US dollars to sing our hearts out for 2.5 hours (plus a pitcher of grape juice on the house) in a small room all to ourselves. Justin and I both not-so-secretly love karaoke, and we thought Calla “tiny diva” Schmidt would also be game. That just left Jonah “I don’t like music” Schmidt and Simon “I only like songs with bad words in them” Schmidt to convince. Fortunately, there were many song and artists options to choose from, including tunes from both Frozen and Encanto, several songs from Hamilton, and a plethora of female singer-songwriters that allowed me to truly showcase my range. Justin and Simon duetted on “We Will Rock You,” Justin and Jonah duetted on “Thriller,” Calla and I sang “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Satisfied,” and all of us sang “Surface Pressure.” Simon insisted I sing a Taylor Swift song because he thinks I dislike Taylor Swift more than I actually do, and then took a truly loopy video of us singing “Shake It Off,” including fingers blocking viewfinders and camera flips. Anyways… it was a lot of fun. We have a ton of video footage that I have promised not to put on this blog. 

As we wind down our time here and get ready to visit Borneo, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about having multiple early wake ups, hotel check outs, and action-packed days again. Everyone is very excited about seeing animals in diverse eco-systems, so hopefully that will be enough to outweigh the challenges.

Sara’s Stats:

xo,
Sara, Justin, Jonah, Simon, and Calla