Tarta De Nata Anyone?
Our plan today was to metro over to Chinatown and from there walk that area and then walk back to our hotel. The sky was full of grey clouds and because of the rain last night it was noticeably cooler.
With all the rain we decided to stay close to home last evening. We went down to the hotel restaurant and feasted on lamb chops! I know what you’re thinking. Expensive dinner. It was just CDN$12 with potatoes gratin and veggies. A fine glass of red wine would have been the best to accompany our meals, but this is a Muslim country so I had a refreshing glass of honey lemon with soda. Not the same, but nice.
I had a pretty good view of the tower from where we were seated. I enjoyed watching all the lights change colour as the clouds ebbed and flowed around the top. We were sitting outside with an unimpeded view.
The clouds eventually rose and a full light show with rapidly changing colours ensued. It was pretty cool! And yes, I sent a couple of videos to the kids🙄
A short walk outside followed dinner.
This morning after another good breakfast we walked to the Metro. Now seasoned pros, we purchased our tickets and headed for Chinatown.
In the early part of the morning we saw a little of KL’s underside. It didn’t seem to be as bad as other places we’ve seen, but it was certainly there. Every big city has its share of this difficult issue, with seemingly few successful solutions.
We ventured into the shopping district of Chinatown where almost everything and anything is probably available.
There are several core shopping areas. The place in the above photo leads to a covered shopping street and also to the very large Central Market building on the left.
Petaling street is the original street in Chinatown. It’s named after the tin mining town that the street led to, Kampong Petaling. The name ‘petaling’ apparently refers to a type of tree that produced high-quality timber in the area. The Chinese evidently know this street as Tapioca Mill Street because of the tapioca mill that was located here in the early 1800s. Interesting history!
In any event, we wandered up and down this busy, hectic street that is now filled with local people as well as tourists from all over the world.
The vendors often called to us with an invitation to come see their wares. Apparently I need a new watch because more than one hawker suggested that a Rolex watch would suit me. I guess they didn’t like my new Garmin!😂
As mentioned, one can purchase almost anything in this market. In the writer’s opinion, some things should just never be combined, or for that matter sold!😬
Durian fruit aside, there was lots of other food and merchandise for sale in the market. Some of the food was very aromatic, emitting a very wide range of smells. Pretty interesting.
From there we decided to walk to the Masjid Jamek Kuala Lumpur mosque which was built in 1908 on the site of two earlier masjid. We weren’t attired quite correctly for this experience, but you can always count on the clothing police to set that straight! At least I like green.😅
And I thought AM looked much better in purple than the previous brown, right?
As mosques go, I thought this one looked much better from the outside than the inside.
Inside is nothing like the amazing mosques I’ve seen in other parts of the world. This one was pretty blah, but perhaps this is the norm in this part of the world and more common with newer mosques. You might recall that the inside of the mosque we visited in Malacca was also pretty drab. Something for me to Google.
We met a lovely German couple at the mosque. During the usual introduction process, when we arrived at our countries of origin part, they said, Canada? The 51st state?😡 We knew then that we had met some kindred spirits. Similar political problems in both our countries and real concerns about the future. Clearly a distinct dislike for the clown to our south and his South African side kick who they reminded us is also interfering in their upcoming elections. Our paths crossed again several times during our walk.
We began to follow a specific route, the Colonial Walk.
This led us to Independence Square which was quite something in the middle of the city.
It’s a substantial area surrounded by buildings from the colonial period. No doubt the huge field was used for polo, cricket and horse racing in its time. It affords wonderful views of the old buildings with the more modern city skyline behind.
Looking back at the mosque as we recrossed the Klang River which is encased in cement and fully channelized.
We walked back into Chinatown to find a restaurant that we’d spied earlier. A Portuguese restaurant! You have to remember that Portugal was the first colonial power to arrive in Malaysia, literally years before the Dutch and British. They have their own history here.
Turned out that they bake tarta de nadas here! We spoke with the young woman who runs the place. She moved here just over a year ago from Lisbon when her cousin called her and pleaded with her to come out and help him. She has a masters in education, but in Portugal she could only find a teaching position that pays poorly, just €1000/mth, the equivalent of about CDN$1500. Times are tough for young people in Portugal and we’ve seen and heard about this issue during our numerous visits to that lovely country. In any event, her father strongly encouraged her to come to KL to work for her cousin who paid for her flight and her first months rent. She says that financially she’s miles ahead and will return home when her pockets are full of money.
From there we walked back to Pedaling Street for another quick walk through when it was much busier and we stopped in a Chinese temple for a moment.
From there we walked all the way back to our hotel along a frankly quite busy route that Google maps prepared for us. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes like today they don’t.
Some nice building reflections!
We will shortly head out to dinner, likely at the huge mall under the Patrona Towers. These malls have some excellent restaurants which a generally well priced. A wander in search of some night life and of course the lights is sure to follow!
A long travel day tomorrow as we head away from the coast and up into the mountains that run down the spine of Malaysia. Hopefully the weather holds as we have been looking forward to this part of our travel. Looking forward to this!!
That’s it for today. Thanks for checking in!
Geoff 🐉🇲🇾
Distance Walker - Wandering & Wondering! 