Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I went with a group of 14 to Kualua Lumpur (KL) this weekend over Chinese New Year!  We left because Singapore is mostly Chinese and everything closes down so we would’ve probably starved.  We still experienced some of the celebration of CNY in KL.

I thought this was funny.  Prosperity Pizza.

Who knew Ronald McDonald spoke Chinese?  It means “Congratulations and be prosperous”, but is used as “Happy New Year”

At first, we all thought KL was just a much dirtier version of Singapore (so basically just a regular city, we’re kind of spoiled with the cleanliness) with extremely gross squatters for toilets.  It was so hard to find a normal toilet and even harder to find a clean one.  We soon found out that it had a lot to offer and we had such an amazing time.  I found it much easier to get by using English in KL than in Singapore.  For the main language of communication being English in Singapore, a lot of people speak it very poorly or not at all.  It seems hardly anyone understands me in Singapore and if they do, they have such a strong accent it’s hard for me to undertand them.  On campus you never really hear anyone speak English, it’s mostly Mandarin.  Back to the main point, it was fairly easy to communicate with the locals.

On our way to KL

Flooded Malaysia.

Our room

Food street.

Night time.

One of the Petronas Towers (second tallest building in the world).

Batu Caves

We visited the Batu Caves which holds a Hindu temple.  We climbed 272 steps to reach the top, but it was well worth it.  The caves were beautiful and it was really interesting to observe a different religion.  I got a fresh coconut there and then about 10 more throughout the trip.  They are so good.

In the caves there were a ton of monkeys that we played with!  They were so close it was unreal.  I was able to feed them.  They are really smart.  Some of them were throwing coconuts at people.  It was kind of scary because they were so high up.

These little guys were everywhere.

Elephant Observatory

The highlight of the trip was riding elephants!!!  I have wanted to ride an elephant since I was a child and now my dreams are finally coming true.  We went to an elephant observatory about 2.5 hours away from KL.  First we took the metro, then a bus, then a private car.  I’m really glad we went out there because we were able to see more of what Malaysia was really like instead of just KL, which is pretty touristy.

We bought some Malaysian food called Lemang from here.  It’s rice and coconut milk wrapped in leaves and cooked in bamboo over a fire.  It was quite good.

The lemang grilling.

Lemang.

Wandering Malaysia.

Seeing elephants was SO cool!!!  Their skin is so leathery.  It felt so weird to actually be riding it.  Alex and I rode the elephant together and then later I rode an elephant in the water with Vanessa, Julie, Emma, and Lily.  We got on the elephant while it was in the water and then it flipped over on its side!  I thought it was going to crush me.  It was like a ride.  After we got flipped into the water by this massive elephant, we swam down the river and played/bathed the baby elephants :)

ELEPHANTS!!! Apparently my Asian comes out when I get excited.  I was ridiculed for reppin my wisco t-shirt.  I think I look pretty cool.

Me and Alex just riding an elephant.  Nbd.

There is kind of a tree branch in the way, but I’m bathing a baby elephant :)

Playing in the river.

Durian

On the down side, I tried one of the grossest things I’ve ever tasted… durian.  Durian is a “fruit” that smells like sweaty gym socks.  I don’t know who in their right mind would ever try such a thing that smells so foully.  Well I guess I did, but I’m talking about the first person that ever tried it and thought, “hey, people should eat this!”  The smell is so offensive that it is banned in many places including the MRT stations and trains in Singapore (but pretty much everything is banned there).  

We had to pull the durian out of the shell to eat it and it was really mushy.  I personally think it tasted like extremely strong onion and garlic, only worse.  I think the texture only made it worse and the taste just lingers in your mouth.  You’re breathe also smells disgusting, which is pretty attractive.  Supposedly there are ones that are sweet depending on how ripe it is, but I don’t think that anything that could taste so bad could ever taste remotely good; no matter how ripe it is.

The durian was so pokey and it hurt to hold up!  This was before we tried it.

Chinatown

Shops in Chinatown.

Thean Hou Buddhist Temple

While visiting the Buddhist Temple, I learned the valuable lesson that getting lost is just part of being a tourist.  It took us forever to get there, but we eventually did :)

Unexpected hike trying to find the temple.

Found it!  Kira, Me, Cass, and Emma outside the temple.

My Chinese Zodiac.  I’m a horse.

Year of the Rabbit.  Cass, Me, Emma, Kira

Professional Mole Remover?  He was removing moles on the spot. Gross.

Sunway Pyramid

The Sunway Pyramid is a HUGE mall, but it’s kind of far away from the city.  From inside, it seemed bigger than the Mall of America, but I guess it’s not.  It had a theme park and and ice skating rink!  The mall was divided into different sections including asian avenue, fashion central, marrakesh, and digital centre.  On our way here I learned that Malaysia’s public transportation is pretty inefficient.

We also visited some other places throughout the city.  We went to Little India and checked out the night life as well.  I hope you like all the pics, Mom.  I tried to put up a lot for you.  Overall the trip was super fun.  I was able to do and see so much, while experiencing it with awesome people.  I can’t wait for my next adventure to Bintan, Indonesia scheduled for February 18th!

What year were you born?

• Kira: What year were you born?
• Me: I'm a Virgo.
• Kira: No, no. What YEAR were you born?
• Me: September
• 
  
• Haha. I'd never heard of the Chinese Zodiac, but this weekend in Kuala Lumpur at a Buddhist temple I eventually found out from Kira that I was a horse. Bless her for her patience. My Chinese Zodiac says I'm supposed to be intelligent?
• I'm supposedly cheerful, popular, quick-witted, changeable, earthy, perceptive, talkative, agile, magnetic, intelligent, astute, flexible, and open-minded. Can be fickle, arrogant, childish, anxious, rude, gullible, stubborn. (says Wikipedia)

Nǐ hǎo!

25.  There are squatter toilets everywhere!  It’s definitely different.  I used my first one this weekend.

26.  A lot of people here really like fair skin.  They think it’s pretty and even have lotions to whiten their skin, but I just want to be tan.

27.  Whenever you buy a drink such as bubble tea (Which I buy almost ever single day.  I love it.), soy milk, smoothies, etc, they either put a handle on the drink or put it in a very small bag.  I think it has something to do with not being able to have food or drinks on the MRT or you will get fined $500.

28.  There are bakeries here at every corner, but it’s hard to find ‘normal’ bread like sandwich bread.  All of the bread here is usually very sweet.

29.  Singapore phone numbers are 8 numbers.  Mine is 94290188.  It’s  programmed in my phone because I don’t know it.  Speaking of my phone, it’s definitely no blackberry.  I miss my qwerty keypad.

30.  People often ask me what America is like and so I ask them what they think it is like.  Every single answer I’ve got is “what we see in the movies”.  A lot of people wonder about our crazy college parties with kegs, red plastic cups, and beer pong.

31.  I think the term “pre-game” is only used in America.  Whenever other people refer to drinking before going out or to an event they use the term “pre-drink”, which does seem to make more sense.

32.  Sense of humor seems to be very different here or maybe it’s just me.

Example-

Professor: Who is a 4th year student?

Everyone but me raises their hand.

Professor: Who is a 3rd year student?

I raise my hand.

Professor: Only you!

Whole class except for me breaks out in laughter.

I just don’t get why that’s funny.

On the other hand (this story might take longer to write than it’s actually worth, but I thought it was hilarious), in my materials science class the professor was teaching us to put a bar over a number if we wanted to show that it was negative.  The slide is below.

You might be wondering like I was, “why is there a sheep on the slide?”  Then I realized when he said “bar,” it sounded like “bah” with his accent.  Sheeps go “bah”, now you get the connection.  Haha.  Well I thought it was funny, but I guess that’s just because of the pronunciation of the word, which is kind of mean.

33.  They really love Hello Kitty in Asia.  You can find it on most anything.  I’ve noticed elephants are quite popular too.

34.  They speak Singlish.  It has a wikipedia page! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish_vocabulary But what doesn’t these days?

A word I’ve heard quite often is “chope”- to reserve a seat.  Also, they put “lah” after so many phrases. “I have so much to do, lah.”  ”Want to get some food, lah?”  ”No, lah.”  It doesn’t mean anything.  I don’t get it.

Just a general update:

- I really want Chipotle and/or Panera.  I used to eat one or the other pretty much everyday.

- I am a professional chopstick user and use them for every single meal.

- I shower every day (Thought you’d like to know Mom and Dad)

- The title of this post was inspired by my first class of Chinese today!  It was so much fun!  The title just means “hello”.

More photos. Request from Mom. Kind of random.

Terry, Me, Cass, Alex

MRT

The Ion Shopping Center

Chinatown

Me, Kira, Emma, Cass clubbing.

Clark Quay

Raffles Hotel

City Skyline

Chinese New Year decorations

Hawker Centers, A-R-A-B Street, and Holland Village

23.  Most of the population here lives in public housing.  There are so many people here and such little space so they live in flats that are very tall.  They are EVERYWHERE.

24.  Singaporeans don’t walk a lot.  Anything more than a 5 minute walk they say, “too far”.  We’ve been told to take a bus when the walk only took 10 minutes.

Being here in Singapore has been very similar to being a freshman again.  I’m constantly getting to know new people, getting acclimated to new places, exploring, living in a dorm again, and sometimes I experience being homesick.  I usually cure being homesick with shopping at one of the 200+ malls in Singapore :)  I haven’t got into any sort of routine yet and I’ve been exploring different parts of the city every night.

On Friday night, my friends and I went to a well-known hawker center, Lau Pa Sat.  A hawker center is basically just a food court and they have them all over the place.  The one we went to was huge and had live music.  It had a really nice atmosphere.  It’s all very cheap and most of it is really good.  They all have cleanliness letter grades that they have to display (A, B, and C).  A’s and B’s are safe, but you have to watch out for the C’s, especially since they usually try to hide the fact that they have a bad grade.  We sat outside by the ‘Satay Club’, which is a street they shut down at night then street vendors set up and satay everything kind of meat.  The food here is amazing.

I got a coconut and a plate of satay that I split with two other girls for my meal!  I also got this interesting dessert called ice kachang.  It’s very popular in Singapore.  It used to consist of shaved ice and red beans, but it’s evolved to have a variety of flavors.  It is a mound of shaved ice with some kind of syrup, condensed milk, and whatever toppings you want (fruit, beans, jelly… really anything).  I got a fruit one to be safe.

The entrance to the hawker center.

gross.

TONS of satay.

My meal.  That white, round thing is a block of rice.  Weird, I know.

My drink. I love coconuts.

Inside the hawker center.

It was so smoky from all the grilling!

The remains.

Someone else’s ice kachang

Me and my ice kachang.

Also at the hawker center were these hilarious signs promoting good english!

haha.

After dinner at the hawker center we decided to go check out Arab Street.  One of the American boys I was with tried to ask for directions from some locals.  He talks pretty loud.  I don’t think they could understand him when he was asking so he said (more like very loudly said), “ARAB STREET.  A-R-A-B.”  Typical American.  All of us watching thought it was hilarious.  It might of been a “you had to be there” moment, but it was so funny.

A bunch of little cafe’s near Arab Street.

The next day, my friends (Emma and Kira) and I went to Holland Village.  I thought it was called Holland Village because it had some kind of Dutch influence, but after being there I don’t think that’s the case.  On the way there, we ran into more dragon dancing for the celebration of Chinese New Year.  Everything here is decorated red and gold for it.

Some Chinese New Year decorations.

More dragon dancing at the MRT station.

In the mall they had at Holland Village, most of the shops had handmade clothing.  Everything was pretty expensive, but it was really cool!  They had a shop there that had handmade rugs, table mats, wall hangings, pillow cases, quilts, etc.  I plan on getting some cool stuff and decorating my room with them!  They are so beautiful.

We ate lunch in Holland Village and I got something called prata.  It is Indian cuisine and similar to a pancake.  They have both sweet and savory.  I got a cheese one, but they also have ones with meat or sweet stuff.  It’s generally eaten with curry sauce.

The only thing Dutch about Holland Village.