Swamp Ass and Street Food

Is it possible to be a sweaty mess for two weeks and still have an absolute awesome time. The answer is yes. Malaysia is HOT, people. And not like 95 degree hot, but 95 degree with a 100% humidity and scorching sun rays hot. So hot in fact you might consider wrapping yourself in diapers and calling it a day. But the breathable type, otherwise you’d just feel stupid walking around in diapers.

And we thought Europe in August was bad. That heat is child’s play in comparison. Anyways, we quickly learned to beat the heat like the locals do and have a great time while doing it. We’ll get to this.

Let’s back up. After watching turtles attempt to hump each other in Seychelles (it was as awkward as it looks), we landed for a quick pitstop in Colombo, Sri Lanka for a couple days. We had high hopes for visiting Sri Lanka initially, but we were itching to get Southeast Asia for the Chinese New Year so, for better or worse, we used Sri Lanka mainly as a stopover to break up the flights. Side thoughts, the action in Sri Lanka is more inland. While we knew this, we still opted to chill out in Colombo. If you plan to visit, you can probably avoid Colombo altogether, in our humble opinion. We’d like to give the rest of the country a chance to shine since we didn’t see it this trip, so until next time Sri Lanka!

First stop on our Southeast Asia tour and we find ourselves in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We instantly fell hard for the city’s charming people, the food, oh my god the food, and their love, no, obsession is probably more accurate, with malls.

Malaysians
It should be noted that we knew nothing of Malaysia, except what we learned from Zoolander, which was nothing, except that there is a country named Malaysia. Oh, and they haven’t heard of Mugatu, so scratch that off your “ways to bond with Malaysians” list.

It was definitely not what we had pictured. Kuala Lumpur is an extremely modern and very diverse city. Huge, cool looking skyscrapers everywhere, impressive public transportation, as well as unusual architecture and fountains all over the place. The people welcoming us were some of the nicest, most hospitable people we have met so far. They were always eager to help, especially the women! We found ourselves at home right away due to their charming ways.

Street Food
The first week we stayed in the central and popular Bukit Bintang neighborhood, right next door to Jalan Alor, a street dedicated to nothing but food stalls. You quickly realize that there is so much food to try that surely you can’t try everything. We tried anyways. We ate so much food, and most of it we had no idea what it was. There is a lot of pointing at things you want, but no real understanding of what you’re actually eating. We had noodles made in large pans from an alleyway, YUM! Seriously, there was a random old Chinese man who beckoned us to sit down and he made us some noodle dish. It was amazing, and it was in an alley, a really dirty alley. Alley noodles are the best noodles. We had Indian food that looked like small disgusting piles of who knows what but tasted incredible, we ate off banana leaves, we ate out of coconuts, we ate out of trash bags, we ate and we ate and we grew and we grew.

We were happy and we were fat. Happy fat is the best kind of fat. Normally, Michele is supposed to be the responsible food person. Trent’s inner fat kid is constantly running rampant in search of pizza and custard as well as any local eats that could be found. Michele likes to sample the local cuisine, and then likes to eat healthy with salads and other boring options. Here, Michele’s inner fat kid was finally unleashed upon the world. Shoving children and elderly people out of the way in search of Char Kway Teow, it was a sight to behold and it was glorious. The food here will be hard to beat indeed.

Mall Madness
Similar to tweens’ social lives in middle America, the social scene in Kuala Lumpur revolved largely around malls.Yes, malls. And we aren’t talking about your everyday typical malls. It’s not just Hot Topics, Claire’s, and arcades like the ones Trent used to use to preserve his virginity for as long as he could. We are talking mega malls that are attached to several other malls via underground and skyhigh walkways. Malls that have insanely intricate and massive displays in the main areas for people to take selfies. Malls with a minimum of 6 floors, 300 stores, casinos, elaborate water features, live bands, over the top decor, large grocery stores, dragon dances, good restaurants, and much more. For reference, there is well over 200 malls in KL alone, and this is a city with a population roughly the size of NYC. Denver has 1 mall and so now we hate Denver. That’s a lie, we could never hate Denver. We’ve just tasted the sweet nectar of mall charm in the midnight hour, and now we want more, more, more.

The most important feature of the malls is the air conditioning. Because, as you walk around on the surface of the sun sometimes it’s refreshing to pop in for a quick blast of cooling goodness. From what we could tell, the locals visit malls to stay out of the sun. You can literally walk from neighborhood to neighborhood and spend 70% of the time, walking through connected malls. We did this a lot. Need to dry out, head into a mall. Need to use the bathroom, head into a mall. We often found ourselves completely mesmerized by the amount of malls and stores contained within one area.  The place to be seen at night was at the malls, which stay open really late. They ramp up security, blast music and the locals begin their unspoken competition on who can take the most selfies. The people watching is sublime and entertaining!

Aside from Bukit Bintang, we also stayed in the Bangsar neighborhood, a smaller, slightly less commercial area, but with a heavy beer drinkers vibe. Along these lines we had a bartender give us a bunch of free alcohol and then offer to “show us around” the next day. Probably just a nice gesture, but hangovers and spidey sense tingling kept it from happening. No waking up without kidneys in bathtub for these savvy travelers!

We spent a lot of time laughing at the number of malls in this neighborhood, exploring Little India and Chinatown, and running through Perdana Botanical Gardens, a large and impressive public park smack dab in the middle of the city.

Chinese New Year – Year of the Dog! Wang wang! (woof woof)
One of the reasons we accelerated our trip to get to Asia sooner was the fact that we could be there during their Lunar New Years celebrations. NYE has nothing on the Chinese New Year. 2+ weeks of fireworks, lanterns, dragon / lion dances, parades, floats, food, mall visits (remember so much of the action happens here), special meals, temple visits, gambling and drinking.

There’s no single day of celebration really, but a semi-constant barrage of things going on over the entire time.  And of course, being the year of the dog, we were excited to be a part of it all.

Penang
After KL, we flew to Penang. Is it possible to be hotter than KL? Yes. Is it possible that the food is better. Yup. Is it possible to have a population of under 1 million and still have websites suggesting the Top 10 malls? You betcha.

In Penang, we toured the many hawker stalls (large food filled centers), admired the street art, visited more Buddhist temples, explored the jetty markets, and hiked through a rainforest, which is similar to say, doing burpees in a sauna.

We also witnessed some epic Malaysian karaoke. The singing was accompanied by wind machines and bending toe touches, to a setlist including numbers by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. So many people forget about the MSM, that is a big mistake. The karaoke was one of the best things we’ve ever stumbled upon. We love you, Malaysia. Here is a sneak peak.

Quotes:

That dog is holding a sign that says ‘wang.’ Can you look up what wang means in Chinese? Ugh, I don’t really want to search for ‘Chinese Wang.’

Click Below for Photo Gallery