I had never been to Kuala Lumpur before. This was quite strange given I used to live in Singapore. The travel between the two cities is convenient and I would have expected that at some point I would have gone to visit. Yet other than one airport transit, I had somehow managed to miss out on ever actually going into the city.
This all changed with a trip organised by myself and Todd.
He was on school holidays and I was looking for somewhere to visit whilst on my own break. With him in Jakarta and me in Hong Kong, we decided to meet "in the middle" in Kuala Lumpur.
We spent the next few days just wandering around Kuala Lumpur, looking for interesting sights and enjoying as much of the local cuisine as we could.
From the perspective of two tourists who were well accustomed to Asia, there wasn't too much to the place that stood out for either of us. The city itself was nice enough, but it seemed to be relatively inoffensive and maybe even lacking in a bit of the uniqueness that other cities in the region had to offer. There weren't too many attractions or cultural locations for us to visit other than the Petronas Towers and after a bit of wandering, we felt like we had seen most of the city's highlights.
What stood out for us was less about the city and more about the local culture of the people. In particular the food culture.
We spent most of the evenings we were there walking up and down the multitude of street food locations dotted around the city. The most famous of them all is Jalan Alor. It's definitely a bit touristic, but there's a great vibe to the place along with having a huge number of options to choose from.
It was all the Malaysian style of food I had grown up with whilst I lived in Singapore, but ultimately all a bit better. The flavours seemed a bit more intense and all with a bit more character than what I remembered eating. Todd was keen to eat everything, but he lacked the knowledge of the foods so he deferred to me to order. It was an easy task to satisfy both our wants in KL. The curries were lovely and well rounded. The rice was fragrant and deeply flavoured. All the satays were grilled to a perfect crispy exterior whilst still being juicy. When I ordered the sambal stringray, I could see a grin come over Todd's face.
It was a good trip, but I didn't think I would be racing back to KL anytime soon. Being here reminded me a bit of the Singapore of my youth. It was a fast modernising city that was still a little bit behind with some other places. It seemed to still have that nice mix of the more innocent atmosphere that comes from a less developed place, but with the ever increasing streaks of modernity that were slowly taking over. Singapore now is a place that barely resembles the memories I have, and I'm sure that KL is headed in that direction as well.
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