After Vietnam we went to Kuala Lumpur. We had booked a room at Komune Living & Wellness for seven weeks. Mjau our plan was to just use this as a base and then make several day trips. We liked the resort so much that we have not ventured outside of the premises that much. We usually relax in the common lounge, have dinner at the food court where we get a 15% discount as resort guests and then go for a walk around Permaisuri Lake Garden that is attached to the resort. It gets quite hot during the day so it is not pleasant to walk around outside in the city. Fortunately the resort offers a free shuttle to nearby LRT and MRT stations so we do not have to suffer in the heat on our way to the city. They do not offer a return service, however we usually only return in the evening so the heat is not too bad.
On our first trip to the city we first walked around the Merdeka Square, Central Market and River of Life. Not the most lively river. At least it was cleaner than Saigon. We then headed over to The National Museum of Malaysia to learn about the history of Malaysia. It was very interesting to learn about the road to independence. Our butler got hungry in the middle of our museum visit so we had to go to a nearby cafe. We got an iced americano and a salted caramel macademia nut cheesecake. We then walked around the museum grounds to look at the locomotives on display before returning to the museum.
After the museum we walked to NU Sentral shopping mall. They had some nice Lunar New Year decorations. We walked around a bit to take advantage of the air conditioning before heading over to Little India in Brickfields. Mjau, that is probably the closest we will ever get to going to India. We then went back to Central Market and Chinatown. Very colourful buildings and nice graffiti. Graffiti that is actually art and does not degrade the buildings as in Venice. We saw a long line to a cookie place so we decided to join the line. The shop was called Cookiecrumbs Bake Shop. We got the triple chocolate sea salt, crunchy hazelnut and tiramisu cookies. They were quite large! We then walked back to Central Market to have lunch. We got the Roti Canai. It was delicious and the dipping sauces were not too spicy. We also bought some chocolate that we had been eyeing earlier but did not want to buy then as we were worried it would melt while walking around the city. It was a vegan chocolate with pandan taste. Very nice and not too sweet. The cookies were scrumptious. The tiramisu and hazelnut cookie had filling in them. The tiramisu cookie had a mascarpone tiramisu filling we believe. The hazelnut cookie had a crunchy filling reminiscent of Fazer's Geisha chocolate. Delicious! The hazelnut cookie was definitely our favourite of the three cookies.
Our plan is to go to Australia this year so our butler applied for a Working Holiday Visa so that they can financially support us while we are there. Our butler has already done the first year Working Holiday Visa several years ago so we will not have to stay and work on a farm. Mjau, we did not go with our butler to Australia last time as we did not want to stay in hostels and some remote farm in the middle of nowhere. Instead we stayed with our dear sisters and their designated butler. We went to Disneyland Tokyo and Hong Kong Disneyland with them several times. It was the best decision to take a break from our butler. Our butler instead took Bu and our Grandpa with them to Australia. Before arriving in Australia they went to Hong Kong Disneyland without us! How dare they!
Anyhow, after applying for the second year visa our butler found out they needed to get a health examination for the visa. Mjau! We should have just applied for the New Zealand Working Holiday Visa and saved us some money for our Disney trips! At least the health examination is much cheaper in Malaysia than it would have been back in Finland. I guess this is the silver linings unfortunate people mention. Fortunately the free shuttle went to the Cheras Eko Mall that was within walking distance of the clinic so it was easy to get there. After the examination we headed to Bukit Bintang. We walked around some malls and looked at the Lunar Year Installations. We also got some free samples from the cafes at the Pavilion. We got to try some tea, egg tarts and croissants. On our way back home we got a Pandan Coconut Cookie Muffin. We would have liked the coconut pandan flavour to be stronger. Perhaps a pandan coconut cream inside the muffin would have been preferred. We also stopped by the Berjaya Times Square shopping mall as there was a Kpop shop we wanted to visit. We were too overwhelmed by all the people offering massages and pedicures so we did not stay for long. Mjau, no new plushies for us poor siamese!
Mjau, when we left for Kuala Lumpur our sisters stayed behind in Vietnam with their butler. Now they have arrived in Kuala Lumpur as well so we met up with them in Chinatown as that is where they are staying. Mjau, we had breakfast at Butter Kaya Kopitiam. We were lured in by the prawn and crab sandwich on the sign outside. When reading the menu inside the sandwich were nowhere to be found. We had a delicious Rojak Crispy Chicken Roti John instead. We then went to our sisters hotel room. Not as nice as ours! We then went to Nucre Patisserie for dessert. We got the cappuccino mousse and our sisters got a matcha parfait dessert. We then walked to LalaPort BBCC. Mjau! We were fortunate that they happened to have an acrobatic lion dance performance while we were there. So much fun to see them dance! Although the lion was a bit clumsy as they stumbled on the poles a couple of times. We then went to Chef Kecik and bought a crownie to go. A crownie is a brownie inside a croissant shaped almost like a crown. Mjau, quite expensive but also quite big. We also got two portions of chocolate sauce. It cost us almost 7 euros. We then walked to Berjaya Times Square shopping mall again. Now we had reinforcement so we decided to have another go at the Kpop shop. We are glad as we found some nice Skzoo plushies. They came with a costume perfect for us so it was quite a deal, 35.90 RM for one plushie, which is a little under 8 euros. We got the Leebit for Au and Han Quokka for Si. We suspect the Skzoo plushies are not the official ones. If not, at least they are well made. We mostly wanted the costumes for ourselves. Perhaps we will be benevolent and let our butler play with them. We immediately removed the costumes from the Skzoo and wore them ourselves instead. Perhaps our butler can buy some new clothes for them instead. We then headed back home as we did not want to walk back from the Salak Selatan LRT station after dark. The stray dogs worry us. Especially when we are carrying treats in our bag. We had a picnic in the lounge with our Leebit and Han Quokka! The crownie was delicious, although quite the sugar bomb. We only ate a little bit and saved the rest for later.
We made another short trip to Bukit Bintang while our sisters were still here. First we had a chicken bbq stew bun and chicken curry bun for breakfast from a bakery at the Pavilion. They were tasty. However we would have liked a little bit more filling in our buns. Later on we met up with our sisters to have lunch at the food court at Lot 10. There was a crab restaurant that caught our attention. Mjau, the portion was so big! We wonder if it was meant to be shared as it was quite expensive. It was a whole crab with a large portion of noodles, yam and cabbage. The taste was fine but not anything spectacular. We had better crab in Vietnam. Mjau, in hindsight we feel almost swindled by the crab. We will just have to remind ourself that even if the crab was expensive, it would have been at least twice as pricey in a restaurant in Finland. We then walked around the Suria shopping center and had dessert at the Godiva cafe. We had a delicious chocolate cake. The highlight of the cake was the crunchy roasted hazelnut filling. We wish there would have been more of it. We then had a stroll in the KLCC park. Mjau, finally somewhere to fill our waterbottles for free! We then had a quick look at the Jln Alor and Changkat Bukit Bintang streets. Mjau, we were a bit disappointed. There are better food stalls at any night market in Taiwan. We prefer walking down the street without people offering us massages and shoving menus in our faces! Our butler says we are just grumpy as we miss Disneyland and Japan. We need to focus on the positives. Like the Lunar New Year decorations at the shopping centers! They offer a wonderful backdrop for photos of us in our lovely kimonos.
We also went on a two night trip to Melaka. The bus from Kuala Lumpur cost around 15 RM and it took 2,5 hours to reach Melaka Sentral. We stayed at the Estadia Hostel. Mjau, we were pleasantly surprised by how nice the hotel was. The room was bigger than the pictures suggested. Breakfast was also included. Mjau, the breakfast was not anything extravagant but at least we got some fruits and vegetables and omelettes. There was a bread pudding on the first morning we were excited to try. The bread pudding was a disappointment. It was cold and not as moist as we would have liked. On the first day we walked up to A Famosa and along the river. The Dutch Square was really nice, although it could do without the cars and noisy bicycles. Most places would be so much nicer if you just removed the cars! We would much rather have a peoplemover or monorail!
Later we walked Jonker Street and found a nice cafe, The Daily Fix, to have dinner at. We got the crispy french toast. Delicious although we prefer traditional french toast. We then came across a Cookie Crumbs shop and got the crunchy hazelnut cookie as a dessert. Mjau! We are on vacation so we can eat all the sweets to our heart's content!
We found a nice cafe with delicious sounding cheesecakes on the menu. There was a rum raisin basque cheesecake we really wanted to try. Mjau, they did not have it at the cafe! So disappointing! Our butler warned us they might not have the cheesecake as the photo of the menu was from a couple of months ago and perhaps the cheesecake was a seasonal item. Fortunately they had a delicious looking blueberry crumble cheesecake so we had that instead. We also got their lavender latte with homemade lavender syrup. We expected the colour to be purple but it looked like a regular iced latte. It had a double shot of espresso which was nice as lattes can sometimes taste too diluted. Especially in Asia we find them to be more like milk with a hint of coffee. The latte was refreshing and did not taste too "soapy" as we had first worried. Instead it only had a hint of lavender and was more of a herb taste. The cheesecake was also creamy and not too sweet. At the cafe we received our acceptance email for our Australian Working Holiday Visa application. The cheesecake was the perfect celebration.
We had booked our return bus for Kuala Lumpur at 11:30 so we only had breakfast at the hotel before heading to the station.
After arriving to the TBS station we decided to take the lrt to LalaPort. We managed to catch another Lion Dance show. This time it was a white lion. We also went back to Chef Kecik to see if they had their pandan basque cheesecake available. Mjau, no pandan cheesecake! We have had such bad luck in regards to cheesecakes! We were deciding between a black forest cheesecake and a tiramisu cheesecake. As we could not see the inside of the black forest cheesecake we decided to go with the tiramisu basque cheesecake. We then headed back to our resort. On our walk from the lrt station it started pouring! Fortunately our butler had an umbrella to protect us and the cake, altough their shoes got drenched. As it was valentines day the cheesecake was a perfect celebration!
Our butler said we have to think about our budget for our next destinations, so we can not spend money freely. Humbug! Our butler can always make more money! Fortunately the lion dances at the malls are free so we went to see as many of them as we could. We saw one in front of the Pavilion where there was a orange and purple lion. We also went to Sunway Velocity Mall, where we get free shuttle from our hotel, an saw their lion dance. This one was not acrobatic but it was still fun to see and be able to pet the lions. After the lion dance we wanted to have lunch at IKEA so we walked to the MyTown shopping center. There we also saw a lion dance with two pink lions. Tge lines were really long at IKEA, we do not know if it is because of tge lunar new year and ramadan or if it is just a really popular lunch place. Our butler had to get the kids meal as they are so keen on saving money! It was less than 7 rm, under 1,50 euros, and you still got 5 meatballs so it was quite a steal. For dessert we went to Gula Petite and got the berry pavlova cake. We had our eyes on the chocolate pavlova but they did not have it in the cafe. The pavlova was really delicious and not too sweet.
We then headed over to the Suria Mall as we wanted to watch the acrobatic lion show over there. It was probably the most spectacular one we have seen so far. There were two pink lions as well as two yellow and green ones. They even threw free horse plushies into the crowd. Usually you only get mandarins. One of the lions did fall from the poles and it looked quite painful as they stayed lying on the ground for a bit, rubbing their lower backs and the back of their head. After a few moments they got up and went on with the show. Impressive! There was also a strange man that tried talking to our butler, saying things in russian. Mjau! We do not speak russian! Our butler glared at them and they got the hint. For a while. As we were walking to the park they hurried after us to ask if we are russian again. Our butler just shook their head and kept walking so the man finally gave up. Why so many creeps crawling around! We miss Japan where we are left alone!
There was also the Pesta Rona Gong Xi event during the lunar new year week at Central Market so we walked around the market for a bit. Afterwards we walked to the VCR cafe as we read about them online and their french toast sounded delicious. The french toast came with some mocha spread, orange and chocolate crumbles, raspberry compote and espresso no churn ice cream. Delicious! We love french toast! We also had a cold brew coffee that came in a flask.
At a later date we went back to VCR and had the softshell crab burder. Nice but we preferred the french toast. Other brunch and breakfast places we tried were the famous Yellow Brick Road in Chinatown and Grumpy Bagels. At the Yellow Brick Road we had the Ondeh-ondeh pancakes. They were pandan mochi pancakes with gula melaka syrup and whipped cream as well as coconut ice cream. A really pretty meal with edible flowers and berries. We liked the different components so that we could have a different flavour profile with each bite. There was a really long wait at Grumpy Bagels so we just got take away and ate them on the tables outside. There was a bagel french toast we were interested in trying, however it came with cream cheese instead of ice cream so that put us off. Instead we got the everything bagel with maple walnut cream cheese and the garlic cream cheese bagel. Mjau, we are a bit on the fence regarding the bagels. They did not have the same chewy bagel texture as the ones we are used to. However at least they were not overly sweet, which can be the case with bread in Asia. It was more like regular white bread rolls.
We also went to Butter Kaya Kopitiam. This time to their MyTown location. We had the satay lemak roti john. Delicious and not too spicy. The vegetable slaw was also really refreshing and helped with the spicyness.
We made several more visits to Chef Kecik. As we usually have to transfer at the LalaPort mrt/lrt station on our way home, it only makes sense that we make a quick stop at Chef Kecik. We had been trying to get the black forest basque cheesecake but they did not have it on display for several weeks! No matter, we got to try other cakes until they finally had the cheesecake back for sale during our last week here. In addition to the tiramisu basque cheesecake we tried their kuih bakar (pandan) burnt cheesecake and a gula melaka pandan sponge cake. The kuih bakar cheesecake was tasty with mellow flavour. It got a bit boring to eat after a couple of bites. Perhaps we would have preferred some toasted coconut flakes on top to give it more texture and make it more interesting to eat. The gula melaka pandan cake was delicious but extremely sweet. The gula melaka caramel on top and in between the layers were delicious and reminded us more of the kinuski in Finland than regular caramel. Our favourite cheesecake from Chef Kecik might be the black forest burnt cheesecake. Unfortunately it fell over in its box while our butler was walking home. It might look unappetizing in the pictures but it was really delicious. The chocolate in the cheesecke was not too overpowering and it had small bits of cherries in the cheesecake. On top was also a layer of cherry compote and a layer of cream with cocoa dusted on top. There was also chocolate shavings on top which gave the cake more texture. We really like crunchy food!
At the TRX Exchange shopping mall we visited Kenny Hills Bakers cafe. We got a tiramisu cake as take away as the interior of the cafe was quite busy. There was a baked apple cheesecake that sounded delicious, but on closer inspection we could see on top of it was whipped cream and walnuts (that did not look roasted). Mjau! Why! So upsetting as walnuts are our least favourite nut! We wish it would have been pecan nuts instead or just a regular pie crumble! The tiramisu cake suffered a similar fate as the black forest cheesecake as we bought them on the same day and they had to endure the walk back home in the sweltering heat. Fortunately the tiramisu cake only got slightly lopsided. The cake was really tasty and we liked the crushed almond brittle covering the cake. We really enjoyed the crunchy texture it gave the cake as the sponge was really soft and almost soggy from the tiramisu coffee soak. We would have liked an even stronger coffee flavour as we loke coffee! To our surprise the cake had cream cheese frosting, we would have preferred a mascarpone based frosting to fit better with the tiramisu flavour. On the same day we bought the cakes we also walked to the Pavilion and had the rendang chicken wrap from Rollti. We had wanted to try the rendang chicken but most places only serve it with a large portion of rice. We only wanted a taste. Unfortunately our butler did not take pictures of the roll. We have pictures of the free toy we got with it instead. The rendang sauce was delicious and coconutty but not too spicy. The size of the filling was a bit disappointing. Oh well, more room for cake! Always look for the silver linings.
Mjau! This has rurned into a food blog once again! To be fair we have not done much else in Kuala Lumpur than eat. We scrapped our original plan to take a daytrip to Ipoh. The train ride turned out to be quite long and more expensive than we assumed. Perhaps due to the lunar year and ramadhan. We would much rather use that budget for cakes! The weather is also either too hot or pouring rain to truly enjoy sightseeing.
It has been interesting to visit during the lunar new year celebrations. Our resort also had an acrobatic lion dance. Mjau, the acrobatic lion dance was outside and afterwards the lions had a dance at the reception and even went behind the front desk so the staff could take some pictures. Later they also walked around the community lounge area on our floor.
On our last day in Kuala Lumpur we left our luggage at the hotel and went to Chinatown for one last breakfast at Yellow Brick Road Cafe as we wanted to try their french toast. It was delicious! The french toast was just as moist as we prefer it. Although the accompaniments for the VCR were better. We were also planning on going to one of the mall food courts to try the char kuey teow. We were stuffed from the french toast so we decided to just head back to the hotel to grab our luggage and make our way to the airport. At the airport we got to try the char kuey teow.
We had booked our flight so that we had a layover in Seoul and were able to visit the city for a couple of hours. It was so cold! Mjau, we were surprised to see snow outside. We immediately rushed to Offer Bakery & Cafe for breakfast. We got the crunchy salt bread. It is so delicious! We also got a caramel latte. Mjau, we wanted to get their quiche as well as it was so delicious the previous time we were there but we could not find it. Fortunately we saw them bring the quiche out later so we got a slice and sat in the cafe for a while longer. We then just walked around different stores until it was time for another snack. We mostly wanted to sit somewhere warm to escape the cold. We got went to Butter & Shelter and had a lemon earl grey cookie and espresso. Mjau, we ordered the creme brule espresso. It turns out it is just a regular espresso with a creme brule cookie. We then took the train back to the airport.
Comments
Post a Comment