05/01/2024
Hi blog!! After nearly 2 whole days of travel I made it from London (via Beijing, China) to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia! I arrived at my hostel super late last night but I got to see the amazinggg view I have all lit up! When I'm lying in bed I can see the Merdeka 118 which is the second tallest building in the world (I learnt that on my walking tour today) and also the Petronas Twin Towers are in sight too (if I lean my head out of my pod lol!) Overall I couldn't have had a better first impression.
Cut to this morning and I was feeling very alone. 😬 I signed up for a free guided walking tour of the city and then made a list of everything else I wanted to see (it's already got longer) and found that one of them was practically across the road from me. I walked to Berjaya Times Square Shopping Mall to see the largest indoor theme park in Malaysia which is located inside on the fifth floor; rollercoasters inside a mall is CRAZY to me! It was very quiet in the mall though, almost eery, so being solo was hitting hard! My cure for this: go and find food! I walked a little way to Jalan Alor Food Street (another tick off my list) and had an amazing early lunch at a small street restaurant. I had pineapple fried rice and vegetable cheung fun (rice noodle roll) filled with veg and drowned in soy sauce and crispy onion and chillis! Perfection 😍. The vegetarian options were limited but it was so good it didn't matter! Plus it was very cheap - both of these came to RM23 which is about £3.90 (there are cheaper places but this is the main food street so prices can be a lil higher.)
After eating I got a Grab Taxi (20mins RM11/£1.85) to Perdana Botanical Gardens because if there's one thing I love - it's a botanical garden 🪷 - and this was also kind of the side of the city I needed to be for the tour afterwards. This was a much bigger botanical garden than I'd been to before so I did get lost a couple of times (oops) but once I found where I was going it was sooo nice!! I saw the pinkest dragonflies I've ever seen in my life!! The trees and flowers had strong competition! There's also a bird park in the middle of the gardens which has a huge free-flight aviary; one of the largest in the world apparently. With another sight seen and feeling a lot better about being solo on the other side of the world (eek), I headed to the meeting point for the walking tour. The tour started at the end of the Masjid Jamek Pedestrian Bridge near the Sultan Abdul Samad Building and the sights we saw during the tour included Dataran Merdeka, Merdeka 118, KL Tower, River of Life, Central Market, Chinatown, Petaling Street, KLCC Park, the Petronas Twin Towers and of course we tried Durian. Yes. It was gross. We saw lots of other cool stuff that I didn't list else it would be a veryyy long list but it was a really fun time and we learnt lots of Malaysian history as well as seeing the more modern things. Our guide (Hakim on GuruWalk) was super friendly and informative and for my first proper walking tour it really set the standard HIGH! Everyone on the tour was super nice as well and I met 2 girls who were also veggie so we bonded over that and went for dinner together LOL!
We went to the food court in the mall (Suria KLCC) at the foot of the Twin Towers and I had a stunning teriyaki tofu rice bowl! I will say it was very hard to find this veggie option but again, like this morning, it was worth it. For RM22.50 (£3.85) I got a large bowl and a lemon ice tea and it was worth every penny, or ringgit! We walked alllll the way back to the River of Life (which looked great at night lit up,) for a night time tour of Kuala Lumpur with the same guide, and almost all the same people from the afternoon, but this didn't work out :( So we're going to try it tomorrow night instead! I'm now back at my hostel in my lil pod looking out at my sick view of the Kuala Lumpur skyline 😎 Bye blog see ya tomorrow xx
Looks amazing! I’ve learnt so much already, can’t wait to see more ❤️🌍
Oh wow you did a weeks worth in a day - brilliant to have your vlog - guess you will be loving KL as much as we did !