Jepasheyeyo: Summer Vacation 2013 Part I (Malaysia)

Alyssa and I got back from vacation last night. Like our adventures in Japan and the Philippines last winter, this was an eye-opening and amazing experience that I will never forget.

We took a four hour train-ride to Seoul on the evening of July 29th. We stayed in a hostel overnight so we could get to Incheon Airport by 7:30 AM for our flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital and largest city. We slept for about four hours, woke up at around 5:30AM, and began our journey to KL. The flight was relatively short (6 hours) but I made sure to sleep as much as I could on the flight so we could hit the ground running. After we claimed our baggage, we hopped on a shuttle bus for about an hour to "The Golden Triangle" in the center of KL. Our friends Jake and Stacey had been there for a few days already so they greeted us at the bus stop and brought us to the hostel. Once we dropped our bags off, the fun started.

KL is a melting pot of Indian, Chinese, and Malay cultures that mix together to make this place very unique. Hinduism and Islam are the two major religions in Malaysia, both of which I knew nothing about. I really didn't know what to expect when we arrived in KL, but I was pleasantly surprised. We passed by a Hindu temple on our walk to the hostel. The smell of incense and sounds of chanting radiated from this place constantly while people stopped for a quick prayer to the shrines of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. It was like clockwork: 5:30 AM and sunset were they main prayer times. At these times, the temple was completely full of people praying, singing, eating, and burning incense or candles.

Our first stop after dropping our backpacks off at the hostel was food street...I'm not sure if this is the official name, but this is was we called it, because there was a lot of...food :) Our first Malaysian snack was satay skewers. They served mutton, chicken, and beef skewers cooked over coals, served with a delicious peanut sauce and sliced cucumber. I'd had this before in the states, but it tasted so much better in KL. It was really cool to watch the cook fan the flames (literally...with a hand fan) and work through the commotion on "food street". For me, the hardest part about travelling is knowing where to go eat. Thanks to Jake and Stacey, the research was done for us! They brought us to some really delicious places and it made the whole "where should we eat" question a lot easier to answer. At another point during our stay, we went to another place just a few stalls down for some curry noodle soup. It was an amazing bowl of spicy, coconutty, slightly peanutty broth poured over very thin egg noodles and lotus stems...and some other random unidentified edibles. If you're ever in Kuala Lumpur, find "food street"...trust me.

The next day we woke up early to make our way to the Batu Caves. It's a series of caves in some limestone cliffs north of KL. Little did I know, one of my lifelong dreams was about to come true...there were wild monkeys EVERYWHERE! I'd seen them in zoos and on TV, but I'd always wanted to see one in the wild. They were scattered all over the 250ish stairs we had to climb to enter the first cave. Inside the caves were Hindu shrines scattered all over the place. Up another smaller set of stairs, there was another cave with a main shrine and more monkeys! I actually fed one...and it hissed at me.

After the Batu Caves we continued on to do some more of the touristy things to do in KL, including a visit to the Petronas Twin Towers, and some shopping for counterfeit goods at Jalan Petaling Street in Chinatown. Alyssa and I aren't very good at haggling, but Stacey taught us the ropes and we got some good practice in before moving on to Thailand and Cambodia.

After Stacey and Jake left KL, Alyssa and I spent our last two days exploring a bit more. We took a hop-on hop-of tour of the city to see "Little India" (the Indian part of town), The National Mosque, KL Tower, various parks, etc. We ended up stranded when the buses stopped running and accidentally stumbled upon a really cool local street food market about an hour walk from our hostel. We stopped, and ate, and continued walking. We passed though local neighborhoods and alleys...it was really cool to see the local lifestyle and although we were tired after it all, it was completely worth it.

One thing I brought back with me from our trip was my appreciation for mosque architecture. Cathedrals, churches, and temples are beautiful too, but I'd never actually seen a mosque, and the ones we saw in KL were spectacular.

The majority of Malaysians are Muslims and our visit was during the last week of Ramadan, which added a certain level of cultural insight to our experience. We spent about two hours sitting in front of the Masjid Jamek mosque waiting for the sun to set, watching the Muslims gather together, the women wearing their Hijabs (some are very beautiful, decorated with small gems and intricate stitching), waiting to break their fasts during Ramadan...I think I took about 150 pictures of the same mosque, but it just looked more and more beautiful as it got darker outside.

Overall, Kuala Lumpur was a great cultural experience and I'm so glad we chose to visit. Our original plan was to go to Hong Kong and Macau, but we decided to go somewhere else because flights to Hong Kong were too expensive. I wouldn't change a thing.