We first arrived in Thailand in November of 2022, and I’ve already posted about some things I’ve done in Bangkok. (e.g. the Karen Long Necked Women). Thailand served as our base so that we could visit other places in Asia, like Vietnam, Philippines, aaaaaand…. Malaysia!

We flew on Malaysia Airlines. It was a good flight, and they gave us a meal, like a full meal, and our flight was only two hours long. We stayed at the Element Hotel by Marriott which is 900 feet up high in Ilham Tower. The reception is on the 40th floor, and the rooms go up from there until the 50th floor. The location of the tower was perfect because it was so close to the Suria KLCC Mall and Petronas Tower. We walked pretty much everywhere, malls, shops, banks, boba shops… The airport is always far though, it’s an hour drive from the hotel, just like in Vietnam and Bangkok. We like to use Grab, which is like Uber but better. Uber tried to be in Asia, but it was outshone by Grab, which is now the primary rideshare service in Asia. We like it better than taxis because some taxi drivers don’t use the meter and they charge more than what they suppose to. Grab has a set price for when you book on the app, and then once you’re there, you just pay your driver in either cash or credit card. It’s very handy. Even some taxi drivers drive for Grab! I would recommend Grab for when you need to order food, or if you need a drive! Malaysians also speak better English than Thai people so it is easier to communicate.

One of Malaysia’s most famous landmarks is the Petronas Twin Towers. They are the tallest twin towers in the world— even taller than the ones in NYC would’ve been. Their construction started in 1993, and the towers were opened to the public in 1999.

The last time we were in Malaysia was when I was 5 years old, almost 10 years ago. We were in Johor for Hello Kitty Land. I loved Hello Kitty Land, and I was super happy as a 5 year old to finally go. I was wearing a pink Hello Kitty dress, and it was great. You can see it on my Instagram Story Highlights if you want to see pictures. Hehehe.

The first place we visited was Batu Caves. It was a very interesting place to visit. You might’ve seen pictures of this place with the gigantic golden Murugan statue of a Hindu Deity, and the super colourful stairs that lead all the way up the into a cave, and it looks very pretty in the Instagram pictures. Be prepared to climb 272 steps in 30C+ (86F+) temps with 75% humidity. I’m gonna tell you something though, it’s a temple that doubles as a garbage dump. As you climb said multicoloured stairs, you’re also stepping over garbage. Littered plastic bags, plastic bottles, leftover food, cans, styrofoam, banana peels, and just other garbage that’s absolutely disgusting. And the smell is enough to kill any of the wild animals that live there, like monkeys, bats, and chickens. Literal piles of garbage are bagged and thrown into corners—purposefully. Someone bagged that stuff, and tossed it into a corner on purpose, and put it in plain sight.

And this place… there is a Hindu shrine inside the cave. This is suppose to be a place of worship to their gods. See, if their gods like garbage piled everywhere, and their temples to be extremely run down and turned into a tourist attraction, then they should be happy because that’s what they’re getting. The people that are there to worship are actually walking around barefoot—and—like that’s supposed to be respectful and I get it, but I find that even worse? HOW can you stand to walk around this garbage dump barefoot. Even though my beliefs are different, I will still respect your temples and your gods, but when everything looks like this? Uhm… it’s a little hard for me to do that. I’m just saying, you don’t see any Catholic church that looks like this—

We didn’t really explore the “cave” part of Batu Caves. It just smelled so bad in there, and we’d already seen enough. I don’t think it was worth exploring inside because if you search up “Batu Cave” in Google you only ever see pictures of the entrance. By the way, Malaysia is a Muslim country. Sixty-three point five percent (63.5%) of the population are Sunni Muslim.

MOVING ON. We took a Grab ride from the cave to the mall. By the way, my parents said the fare was inexpensive. It’s very reasonable.

Next we went to Suria KLCC. This is the mall beside the Petronas Towers. The mall is pretty massive, and it’s even got a Science Center and KLCC Aquarium too. It’s perfect for shopping, although we didn’t do much shopping. Our suitcases are already extremely full from shopping in Thailand.

The park outside the mall is great, it’s got a running track, a water fountain, and a wading pool. I can lifeguard one of those by the way 😌 There is also fountain show every night. So people just hang out at the park and watch the show!

The next day I had a ✨photo shoot✨ at the 50 acre park. Did I direct my mother to go exactly where I wanted her to go so I could have the ✨perfect✨ Instagram picture? Yes. You gotta do it for the gram, y’know? Kidding. We go on trips for us, and I share it to you guys for travel inspiration.

One night we went to the Martini’s on 57 restaurant to celebrate my dad’s birthday. It took us a while to find, because it was in “Tower 3” out of two towers. A tiny bit confusing. But we found it in the end, and it was great. There was a lovely view of the skyline, and we got there early so we could see the sunset. As the name says, it’s on the 57th floor, so it’s pretty high up, but the Petronas Towers has 88 floors, so you can get a really good view of the Petronas Towers from there! To get into the tower there is some pretty tight security. You have to put all of your bags inside the scanners, and go through the detectors as well. But we got to the restaurant, (finally) and my dad had a wagyu steak for dinner which looked super delicious.

Look at those pretty towers 🤩

At night is probably the best time to take a picture of the towers. There are many people out in front with cameras and lights for photos. The guys there with lights and cameras will take pictures for you for $10 CAD each. If you have an iPhone they’ll just airdrop it to you. It does make a big difference when there’s a light shining on you so you don’t look like some kind of ghost. The picture on the right was taken by my mom without extra light. See the difference?

One more thing that we did in the city was to go for an afternoon tea. My mum looooves tea, so we like to take her for afternoon tea. My dad booked it at the Grand Hyatt Hotel because it has the most amazing view. We didn’t get to see the sunset this time because it was in the middle of the afternoon. I liked the tea and all the other treats they served. However, it wasn’t an English afternoon tea I can tell you that. There were only a few selections for tea, and they were just your standard ones like English Breakfast, Earl Gray, green tea, and they had coffee. Why did they have coffee? At a tea party? Usually they have a whole arrangement of teas that you can chose from, and little sweet treats.

Don’t get me wrong though, I appreciate getting the chance to try this Malaysian spin on afternoon tea. Very unique because the last treat was a sherbet. There was a mix of sweet and savoury, some of the savoury were also a bit spicy too! I think my favourite out of the savoury ones were the little steamed buns. I love those.

The treats:

When you visit a city. You can’t go wrong on Hop-On, Hop-Off to see the whole city. So that’s what we did. The Hop-On Hop-Off tour took us around the city, and it was nice. The city is very clean and modern with many fun skyscrapers. It’s really the perfect modern city. There were many stops on the tour, however, after a while it got really boring. Mainly because there was nothing really worth seeing to me, and the most interesting thing that I kind of wanted to see was Chinatown to see the market. The tall building there that looked like Toronto’s CN Tower had some sort of attractions underneath it too, like an upside down house. I actually have two photos from the entire tour. I don’t think I would exactly recommend a city tour. Maybe look up the places that you would like to visit in Kuala Lumpur, and then just take a Grab to get there.

And if you see a mobile coffee wagon, give it a try if you love iced coffee. That’s all that we did in Kuala Lumpur for one week beside walking around the malls, but that’s not all that we did in Malaysia…

Stay tuned for my next post about another city in Malaysia!

Bye bye!

P.S. GUESS WHO FIGURED OUT HOW TO CHANGE THE TEXT COLOR ON THIS

P.P.S. Does anyone know how to change fonts T-T