View of the tip of the Petronas Towers
Petronas Towers from our view at Traders Hotel
Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan’s, Pavilion shopping centre
View at the Hibiscus Garden
Seedy partying at one of the many nightclubs in KL
Stocking up on snacks and drinks at the local supermarket! The green peas snacks were delish!
Model of the Taj Mahal at the Islamic Arts Museum
One of the many stunning ceiling domes at the Islamic Arts Museum
Close up of the ceiling dome at the Islamic Arts Museum
Garden patio outside the Islamic Arts Museum
Chinatown in full force, busy busy!
My meal at Old Precious China, Central Market
Stop over during the Be Tourist city tour!
Pretty gowns are provided to enter a mosque during the Be Tourist tour
Visiting the Central Market during the Be Tourist tour
Remember that Malaysian trip I did back in August? I had some memorable adventures visiting Kota Kinabalu, Kapalai and Sandakan where some amazing cloud formations were captured on camera. The last leg of the trip was in Kuala Lumpur that quite literally consisted of: shopping, eating, shopping, walking tours, shopping and shopping!
Being a shopaholic, I can firmly admit that by the end of the second last day in KL (we spent around four days there) I was officially shopped out. This was a first for me and the only time I recall having ever felt like this. So if you’re a shopaholic yourself, have fun but beware and take it easy!
These photos are my favourite visual memories from Kuala Lumpur and here I’ve put together some travel notes highlighting our recommendations for anyone travelling to KL:
Sights
- Petronas Towers for the architectural landmark of the city. Make sure to see them at night too when lit up, so pretty! If you’re staying at one of the nice hotels near the Towers, you can choose to get a room with a view of the towers too which is what we did at Traders.
- Chinatown for finding cheap and diverse goods or for simply taking in the busy market life and seeing how it compares to that of your own city.
- Be Tourist city tours for a free or paid city tour by those who know their stuff! Definitely one of the highlights of what we did here (excluding the shopping). Highly recommended.
- Islamic Arts Museum for any art and culture lovers. Stop by here, you won’t regret it. Apart from housing a massive collection of stunning miniature models of mosques from around the world, there is also a broad range of textiles, battle equipment and even ancient chess sets to admire for hours.
- Hibiscus Garden for any floral lovers such as myself. Pretty flowers, what more could you ask for?
Accommodation
- Traders Hotel for a view to die for and close proximity to everything in the city centre. Definitely the best place we stayed at in Kuala Lumpur. It’s not the cheapest on offer in KL but the view and comfort were well worth it!
Leisure
- Shujin Therapy Zone for the cheapest and most epic massage ever! All the staff are blind and they have been running this clinic for years - I found out about it via the many rave reviews online. Can definitely attest to a damn good massage!
- Sungei Wang Plaza for the feeling that you’re in a mall with an endless collection of shops. Need shoes? Need makeup? Need nail art supplies? Go here, don’t go anywhere else!
- Central Market for exploring its cultural beginnings of the city and to explore more artistic and cultural goods on sale.
- Pavillion Mall for quality shopping, food and air conditioning. It’s perfect, definitely my favourite mall of all the malls. Highly recommended.
- Bukit Bintang area for shops galore! This is where Pavillion Mall is situated too, but the entire strip has many other smaller shopping complexes and stand alone shops that you should check out because you never know what gem you’ll find!
- Berjaya Times Square for shopping, shopping and shopping. This shopping centre is amazing and with the added bonus of an inside amusement park featuring a very wicked rollercoaster ride. Not joking!
Food
- Madam Kwan’s for excellent Malaysian food in a nice restaurant style setting. Clean and prompt service!
- Old Precious China for trying Nyonya cuisine - an old school blend of Chinese and Malaysian Indonesian cooking.
If you ever get the chance to visit Borneo, please bring your camera. Make sure it’s also the best camera that you own, no matter how heavy! Apart from having it handy to capture the golden moments, wildlife and food during your visit, you won’t regret the chance to save some breathtaking natural landscapes. That’s right, I’m talking about cloud formations!
Sure I just recently made myself into one for Halloween… but this is nothing in comparison. My handmade cloud was just white and boring compared to the views of the sky from the Kinabatangan River in Sandakan, Borneo! The selling point of stopping over in this area as a tourist is to go on these speed boat cruises during the day and night on this particular River. You never know when you’ll sight some pygmy elephants, crocodiles, monkeys or snakes on either side of the river bank. I even met a couple that carried an encyclopedia of a book with them that detailed every single species of animal that could be found in the area! Now that’s animal dedication.
Naturally I took many photos of such creatures too, but on the second day of boat rides in the afternoon, we travelled quite far out to try and catch some elephants. It was during this particular trip that I noticed the stunning cloud formations. They are seriously amazing, I had so much fun trying to capture them on my Canon. I hope you enjoy this collection of photos and that it inspires you to notice the beauty of such puffy things in the future!
PS. I haven’t forgotten my last two segments of our Malaysia Trip - they will definitely be posted by the end of the year so look out :)
Photo Diary: Kapalai
My favourite time in Malaysia is what this second part of the Malaysia/Borneo series is all about: time spent at the Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort! This post is going to be super photo heavy, but I promise that you won’t regret it!
We spent 3 nights here at Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort, which was breathtaking and so peaceful. Never had I been anywhere so visually stunning, that I felt like I was literally living it up in those paradise-like imagery you normally see in advertisements and on television. I can finally say aha, I’ve been to real paradise, so take that!
This manmade island resort is in the middle of nowhere - at least it certainly feels and looks like it. No matter where you are on the resort, you can’t see a thing when you look out, nada! Realistically, it is situated near the real islands of Sipadan and Mabul, which are apparently amazing for scuba diving. For the normal traveller like us, we reached this resort via a lengthy and choppy boat ride from the mainland.
Most of the time spent here was extreme rest and relaxation, apart from our first time scuba diving (we did a Discover Scuba experience), and my first time snorkelling! The remaining free time was spent eating delicious buffet meals, bathing in the perfect sunlight, lying around in the hammock reading and taking too many photos of this breathtaking scenery.
The entire island is made up of wooden bungalows on stilts on the reef. At any point when you’re not inside any building, and you look out down towards your feet area, you’ll notice the clear water, the starfish and the itty bitty schools of fish! Even on the third and fourth days, I still found it to be quite a sensational feeling. Sleeping was also very interesting, as one of the nights the water current was frighteningly strong. I woke up scared out of my wits because obviously, being only a few metres above the water, you can hear and feel everything!
As we had planned the scuba diving part of this trip, I was well prepared and had bought a small digital underwater camera a few months earlier from Photojojo. Granted it’s no masterpiece but it was perfect to bring along on holiday since it was so lightweight. Most of the photos I took didn’t turn out to be very clear at all since the fish were moving so fast, but I still managed to snap several amazing sights!
The highlight of the two discovery scuba dives was seeing a few humungous turtles in a pack, and being so close to them! That and of course just being in the vast ocean, utterly silent but with all this marine activity buzzing around you - it’s crazy but crazy fun! I completely understand the allure and addiction to scuba diving now, and am definitely keen on getting certified the next time around so that I can dive deeper and see some sharks :)
Photo Diary: Kota Kinabalu
Here it is! The first part of a series of posts about my recent trip to Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo! Let’s kick it off with Kota Kinabalu…
After landing originally in Kuala Lumpur with Air Asia, the following day we flew to Kota Kinabalu, a city in the Sabah region of Borneo. The highlight and sole reason that we decided to go there was to climb Mount Kinabalu, of epic 4,095m high proportions. Whilst Gareth had some initial scepticism about the difficulty of this climb when we originally booked it, I didn’t have a second thought about it… until the climb actually started. The altitude completely smashed me to pieces: I couldn’t breathe for two-thirds of the climb up, and consistently had pounding migraines. Did I also mention how freezing it gets? Despite these complaints, it was completely worth it!
The climb spanned across two days: on the first day we were picked up at our hotel and driven to the base point of the climb. Starting at around 10am, the beginning of the climb was quite bearable but it progressively became steeper and rugged. The increase in altitude certainly didn’t help as I found myself having to take huge breaths at a time. At around 4pm we arrived at our base for the night, Laban Rata, which is 3.2km above sea level. After some early dinner, bed was the most logical thing given we had to be up by 2am to make the trek up to the summit. Crazy!
The last leg was seriously the toughest mental and physical challenge I’d ever experienced to date. We used head torchlights since it was pitch dark, and the climb became even more rugged and steeper. There were sections that just consisted of large steep slabs of rock. Luckily, there was thick rope pegged to these rocks, so you could use it to help heave you up. Three and a half hours later, there we were at the top with the sun just about to rise! It was still damn cold, and yep I still felt like I was dying, but the scene looking down was simply amazing!
Eventually, we made the descent down which was much more comfortable, but pretty hard on the knees to begin with. At around 2pm, we finally made it back to where we had first started - and received certificates too, hurrah! The rest of the day consisted of just r&r: rest and relaxation! We had a feast of a meal at the Ocean Seafood Village restaurant, and then booked in a 60 minute massage and foot therapy :)
If you’re a lover of seafood, you have got to visit the Ocean Seafood Village restaurant. It’s one of those places that lets you choose what seafood you want to eat - live! Once you get allocated a table, they take you to the selection area, which basically ressembles an indoor fish market.. but all the fish and crustaceans are still live. You make your selection and then that’s it!
