Awake before 7, I killed a bit of time this morning before deciding that a quiet iced coffee and some of the delectable little doughnuts I found yesterday were just what this morning needed. Now it’s 8:30 on a bright sunny Saturday morning – the first clear sky during my time in Kuala Lumpur – and the city is quietly bustling: the basketball courts are full, soccer games are under way, a naked little boy is riding his training-wheel-clad bike in front of the shop across the road, traffic is moving quietly along as-yet-unpacked streets and the streetside restaurant where I sit is coming to life, it’s now-familiar blind patrons dropping in for a breakfast of curried cuttlefish, beef and clams – with a side of liver if they wish.
I’ve watched the goings-on for a little while – people pointing and spooning toppings onto plates, the women ladling sauces and dropping peanuts into rolled up cones of waxed paper – and just decided that, while the plates full of meats in red sauce, rice, boiled egg, cucumber, peanuts, sambal (chilli sauce) and little crunchy fish might not be the complement I’d planned for my iced coffee, I can’t resist trying what looks like a very tasty breakfast. I’ve now got my own small portion of curried beef and clams (when in Rome… But I’ll skip the cuttlefish and liver, thank you) with all the accompanying bits to enjoy while I enjoy sitting on the sidelines of life down this busy street.
As it turns out, my breakfast is this awesome blend of flavours and textures: soft, slightly chewy clams, fluffy rice, the richness of hard boiled egg yolk, the tender beef and then the crunch – the peanuts, fish and cucumber add this awesome lightness to a beautiful breakfast that falls just on the right side of spicy so as to be able to cure whatever ails you. Yum. Another win for Malay food.
Yesterday was hot. H-O-T. Breathing what seemed like pure water, Rich and I put foot in front of foot and covered a good bit of ground on our quest to explore the city. We started with a stop at the restaurant I’m at now – I’ve become familiar enough with one of the girls that we wave and shout hello each time I pass by – for some breakfast snacks and, after asking questions about different cake and gelatinous-like morsels, we walked on with a little bag of those doughnuts I’m now craving. Moving north, I took him to another favourite stall that I had discovered the day before, and we sampled some Indian pakoras, banana doughnut balls (think Timbits on serious steroids), fiery caripaps (curried potato in short crust pastry, and a mysteriously plain doughnut that had shallots in the batter. Confused by that last one.
Our wandering led us down an unused trail (“exactly the kin of place tourists should avoid,” according to Rich – sorry, Mom!) alongside the river where we could see a number of surprisingly clean homeless men who’d set up base under the bridge across the water, then into Chinatown for some tea, dim sum and a dragon dance, and on to the city centre where we toured the museum and main square before zigzagging our way to and through Lake Gardens Park using a very-nice-looking-but-impressively-pointless map. Emphasis on “pointless.” The gardens were our effort to escape the heat. It found us. Not only did it find our weary little selves, but it slapped us about the head a bit, picked us up, threw us in the air, and body slammed us to the ground. We were beat. My theory is that had it not been for the jet lag, we probably wouldn’t have been quite so worn down, but we were and there just seemed no escape from the oppressive heat. We made our way home via the most direct route possible – no longer using that treasured map – and sought shelter for a couple of hours (behind eyelids, in Rich’s case) before setting out to tackle the city again.
Starting with a now-mandatory stop at my favourite little street joint for a taste of their soup (chicken broth, thin egg noodles, chunks of chicken on the bone, spring onions – no idea what the whole thing is called) and a little sardine puff, we then caught the monorail to Bukit Bintang in the city centre so that we could make our way to the 33rd-floor Traders Hotel bar to check out the sunset views of the Petronas Towers. Given that I’m prone to find Rich’s penchant for rooftop bars a bit pompous (sorry, my love), I was pleasantly surprised. Bright and airy, with a row of sunken booths lining the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Oh, and a lap pool taking up the entire centre space, making passage on the marrow walkway by the booths a little exciting if there are two of you heading in opposite directions. Drinks were relatively expensive – priced around the same as ones from home – but good enough to make this non-mojito drinker order a second while we watched the towers light up the night sky. We found dinner along the night market restaurants of Jalan Alor: smoky sweet chicken wings; deliciously spicy chicken, beef and mutton satay; roast duck with rice for Rich; a gigantic bowl of curry mee for, well, me, that I couldn’t make my way all the way through. We walked back to the monorail (with me singing the first three bars of that song from the Simpsons) and home to bed feeling like we’d done this busy mish-mash of a city quite a good bit of justice. On the books for tomorrow: eating! :)
Grateful for: air conditioning, satay
