Posts

Posted on

Sky Mirror

Prepare for the best picture of the trip so far.

The sky mirror in Malaysia. Yanmei found out about it while searching for things to do here. Apparently it was just discovered last year, it is a sand bar in the Straits of Malacca that when the tide is right has a very shallow layer of water that can act as a mirror. The tide is only correct for a couple of days around the full moon and new moon. Since Chinese New Year is on the new moon, the day before CNY was a perfect time to go.

You can tell this is a new attraction, they are not well organized, at all. They don’t have a website, all they have is a Facebook page, and you are supposed to book via Facebook messenger. I used Yanmei’s account for this. Last post I said we rested in the afternoon, well actually I spent over an hour trying to confirm this trip. It is not based in Kuala Lumpur, rather it is in Kuala Selangor, which is a coastal town northwest of KL. I couldn’t book a trip from KL, so I ended up just buying the tickets and arranging our own transportation. We ended up taking an Uber, which was only 95 Ringit ($24), not bad for an intercity trip.

The sky mirror isn’t in Kuala Selangor, rather you take a 30 minute boat ride out to the middle of the Straits of Malacca, which is the water between Malaysia and Sumatra. Somewhere in the middle, out of sight from land in every direction is a giant sandbar, that gives the mirror effect.

The guide took a lot of photos for us, but I felt we were slightly too late, since the tide was going out and the sand was starting to show through, so unfortunately we didn’t get the perfect mirror to the horizon effect.

Our whole boat group:

This is how he took those.

It was also interesting to look at the wildlife on the sand bar, there were lots of tiny crustaceans.

It became quite hot as the sun continued to rise and the tide went out. We took the boat back to the town and saw a dolphin along the way.

Once we got back we had a problem. We were in a small town with no Uber service and no taxis around, plus CNY eve is like Christmas Eve, everything starts to shut down early. How would we get back to KL? Yanmei found a Chinese tour group that had space in their bus, but they weren’t going back until the evening (there is also a firefly park nearby). A random guy offered to take us for 150 ringit. I actually thought that was very fair, but Yanmei didn’t want to take it. We ended up getting directions to the bus terminal, which was about a mile away. We found it pretty easily although we had to walk about half a mile along a highway with no sidewalk, which I really don’t like doing.

We finally made it and took a rest in the shade. Sweat was streaming down my face, probably 90 with 90% humidity. It was 11:40 and we found out the next KL bus was at 12, so that was lucky. Price was 7.30 ringit each. So we saved over 90% over the driver, but of course this wasn’t a luxury bus like we took from Singapore.

Luckily there was some level of air conditioning, it wasn’t cool, but it was better than nothing. It was a two hour adventure back to KL. When we got back we rested again.

That evening there were fireworks to celebrate CNY. We could see them from our balcony.

David

Posted on

Cooking in Kuala Lumpur

For Valentine’s Day we decided to take a Malay cooking class. We booked with Lazat Cooking. It started at 8am at a wet market. Wet markets sell fresh meat and produce. First we had breakfast consisting of roti canai and some curry sauces, with tea. Roti canai is a thin bread they make by spinning and tossing a little bit similar to pizza, then when it is very thin it is cooked quickly on a hot plate. After breakfast we had a tour of the market and learned about the history and uses of various fish and produce. Our group consisted of Mike (also from Toronto, but now lives in Portland), and a couple from the UK with their 10 year old daughter. It was a good group.

Our guide said the most important person in the market is the “paste lady”. The paste lady makes the fresh pastes for curries. During the cooking class we would find out why the paste lady is call a Malay woman’s best friend. The paste lady at this market was ranked #1 in Kuala Lumpur and actually runs a factory that makes popular pastes, but she keeps this market stall open because it has been in her family for so long. She is the silver haired woman in the middle of the photo below.

After the market we headed to the cooking class. The first thing we made was called Otak-otak, which is fish in a spice paste steamed in a banana leaf. We made the spice paste the traditional way, with a mortar and pestle. The spice paste was made of lemon grass, turmeric, ginger, garlic, galangal (similar to ginger), red chili, shallots and candle nuts, all fresh. These are pounded and ground together until they are a paste. It is quite an arduous task, which is why most people prefer to buy their spice and curry pastes from the paste lady.

Once it was finally a paste, we mixed it with an egg and a few other ingredients, then added the fish, and wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed.

It was quite good. Not that spicy even though it had a chili in it. They told us Malay food tends to be lest spicy than Thai and some other cuisines. Technically we are cooking Nyonya cuisine, which is a mix of Malay and Chinese created when Some Chinese immigrated to Malaysia about 500 years ago. They have seven flavors and every dish is supposed to have some element of each. They are sweet, sour, bitter, salty, savory, fragrant and creamy.

For our main course we made chicken curry and roti jala. Since the curry takes a while to cook and infuse the flavors throughout the dish, we made Onde Onde for desert while we waited. It is basically dough wrapped around palm sugar, then boiled and coated with shredded coconut.

After that the roti jala, or lace pancake.

Everything was delicious. Although Yanmei said if we make it at home, we’ll use a blender instead of mortar and pestle, and I agree!

By the time we got home it was only 2:30, but we were pretty exhausted. It also started raining in the afternoon, so we mostly rested for the rest of the day.

David

Posted on

Kuala Lumpur

Our first morning in KL (even the locals seem to call it that), we did some grocery shopping at a regular supermarket. In the afternoon we decided to head downtown to look at the city center. There are a lot of buses, but Google usually estimates 1.5 hours for them to go anywhere. Lots of stops and traffic is terrible here. So we tried the LRT, which is an above ground monorail. It is quite modern and clean. Pretty soon we got close to downtown.

We had dinner in the mall under the Petronas Twin Towers. I wasn’t really interested in going up the twin towers, but there is another tower nearby called the Kuala Lumpur Tower that has good views that I wanted to see. It was getting close to sunset so we hustled over there. It turns out the KL Tower, which is a communication tower is based on the top of a hill. A bit tiring rushing up hill in 90F high humidity weather. The KL Tower observation deck is at 335m, but due to the hill the perspective is above the Petronas Tower peak of 375m.

Made it just in time for sunset. Pretty cool view, there was a rain storm over part of the city and the red light made it seem, so ominous. These pics don’t do it justice.

After sunset we took an Uber home.

David