Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (commonly known as “KL”) is an enormous city with a rare blend of the ultra-modern (i.e., soaring skyscrapers, monorails, and fancy, enormous indoor shopping malls ) mixed with the traditional and simple (i.e., street markets, food hawkers, ancient temples, quaint shophouses). In lieu of our typical blog entry, I’ll let some of our pictures fill you in instead on our two days in KL…

First off, the twin Petronas Towers (formerly the tallest buildings in the world) are among the most striking, super-cool skyscrapers I’ve ever seen---and are completely mesmerizing when lit up at night.

In utter contrast to their fancy, modern shopping malls, we also shopped the bustling, outdoor markets of Petaling Market (in Chinatown), where we could haggle on knock-off goods and taste unique dishes.

As we also did in the Night Bazaar (in the neighborhood of Little India).

On various occasions, we ordered food with only the slightest notion of what we would be served. (Either the menu was unintelligible or there wasn’t a menu at all.) Fortunately, we loved the food overall and had several ridiculously-good meals. Here’s a food pavilion in Little India.

The most traditional method for eating is to use your spoon (with the fork only as a guide to get food onto your spoon; and never a knife.) But many Malays---as you can see in the photo below--- don’t use any silverware at all regardless of the dish. Often, there will be a sink with soap in the middle of the restaurant to clean off your hands afterward. (Also, check out the fake Burberry bag on the guy next to him. Everyone has knock-off items!)

Just a few miles outside of the city center are the Batu Caves, which are huge limestone caves that contain sacred Hindu temples. Plus, monkeys everywhere!

KL is known for having some of the cheapest five-star hotels in the world. We splurged a bit and stayed at a fancy hotel with modern rooms and a gorgeous infiniti pool overlooking the Petronas Towers… for only $75 per night (including a full breakfast for two). Here's the pool:

While we understand their fascination with snowmen, that still doesn’t fully explain the exhibit we stumbled on: Winter World.

After our short stay in KL, we are flying to Vientianne, Laos and plan to spend roughly a week or so in Laos (mostly in Vientianne and Luang Prabang). I’ve heard fantastic things about the country, so I’m excited to get there.... but we have pretty much no idea what to expect.

FYI, you can check out our Kuala Lumpur pictures at Flickr.com. You can also see all of our New Zealand pictures here.