Cabin fever began to set in, and everyone was doing it. Okay not some obscure act, but travelling, isn’t that classic study abroad activities? Did you even study abroad if you don’t travel or own those elephant themed baggy trousers? So we packed our bags and went to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the weekend. 48hrs+ felt like the best amount of time for a city break.
Not knowing what to expect we filled our itinerary with suggestions from Trip Advisor and friends we know from the area and set off, four hours later we arrived! Initially, we were shocked at how lovely random people were to us, smiling and waving instead of being faced with steely-eyed hostility was a really nice change. People always told me South East Asian countries were relatively cheap, but I didn’t take this on board until we booked a five-star hotel for £30 / 300HKD a night.
From the get-go, we realised this trip would consist of two things, food, and fooooooood. On our first evening, we explored touristy spots in KL like the Twin Towers, Pavilion Mall, Bukit Bintang and Jalon Alor. Walking around KL in the evening was so refreshing, drink milk tea and smoothies, we wandered from the high-end areas to the Arab quarter then to the Thai food stalls which spread out far beyond our eyes, sensory overload was very real. Fresh fruit, chicken, fried sweet potato crisps, ice cream and mochi basically everything you could imagine, applying self-constraint was incredibly difficult here. We settled on a Thai restaurant, honestly, our eyes were far bigger than our stomachs, we just couldn’t stop eating.
Day 2 – Our original plan was to wake up at 7 am and begin our day, but having travelled and slept at 2 am the fact we thought we’d achieve this was a joke. We managed to lug ourselves out of bed around 9 and set off to see the Batu caves, which was such a sight. We weirdly got to practice our limited understanding of Korean which is a story for another day.
From there we made our way to Kanching forest to swim and look at the waterfalls, although we never actually got round to swimming the hike was welcomed to burn off the thousands of calories we were consuming, this in itself was an experience as the place was crawling with monkeys. Monkeys that snatch and scratch, but luckily we escaped unscathed by sticking to local families. Luckily, one of my friends who lives in KL reached out and took us around, we ate at a local northern Indian cuisine, the food was so good and on top of that super cheap. The rest of our trip included going to the central market, eating nasi lemak and despairing over the tests and assignments we had waiting for us in Hong Kong.