Using Uber we ordered a (very) early pickup at our hotel to take us to the airport for our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. The drive was smooth and as we passed the bus terminal we saw that the stands and markets around it were absolutely hopping with people at 4 am in the morning. Apparently it is a good idea to stock up on supplies before riding a long distance bus out of town. The airport had three security checks before we even arrived (we handed our passports through the window to the armed soldiers) and then we had to go through the rest of normal security inside the airport. The airport itself was pretty quiet, although not well-organized – one security guy told me to go, at the same time another one told me to stop. Surrounded by salespeople sleeping in their shops, we had a breakfast of quiche Lorraine and some coffee to wake up. After a long wait for the final security check we finished boarding, and enjoyed another great meal on Sri Lankan airlines.
It seemed like a very short three hours and we arrived back at the same Kuala Lumpur terminal that we had left a couple of days ago. We still had great memories of those salted egg custard buns from Din Tai Fung and so we made a special trip back up to the departures area to have some more.
We chose a bowl of spicy noodles with wonton from the menu, and then two orders (8 buns!) of salted egg custard buns. The way the ordering system works in the restaurant is that you check off what you want from a paper list, and then the staff comes and gets the list and later returns with your food. We were really excited to eat more custard buns – really, really excited. The noodles arrived first and they were really good – served as dry noodles but with plenty of spice and heat to make it interesting. The staff arrived and stacked up two baskets full of buns, and when we took the cover off the basket a cloud of steam escaped, and there they were – eight little buns of joy. I happily took the first one and bit into it and- what the hell? I got a mouthful of yam paste.
Oh, no! It turns out we marked the wrong spot on the sheet, and now we had eight buns of sweet yam paste instead of what we really wanted to eat. Yam paste is not bad – but it isn’t something that will shake your soul like salted egg custard. So after the tears of laughter/shock/grief ended, we got to work eating eight yam paste buns. And then we ordered (correctly, this time) 8 salted egg custard buns and ate those too. Sometimes it takes a little extra work to get what you want, and we paid the price. What was supposed to be a snack became a big meal, and I think the staff understood what happened and were giggling to themselves as we dug deep to finish those yam paste buns.
After the meal we were able to catch a Grab to our hotel for that night. Grab is a useful application in Malaysia for ride hailing, and it seemed hugely popular. It was cheaper than taking the train, although you are paying a less obvious cost in CO2 impact and pollution. The prices were unbelievably cheap (unsustainably cheap, I thought), so it makes a good system for a tourist to get around. When Kuniko set up the application on our first day in Malaysia, she had to look into the camera of her smartphone and slowly nod her head so they could take a clear picture for the driver to identify her for pickup. So it was an odd situation to be standing in the hotel lobby nodding sagely at your smartphone in the hopes of catching a ride.
We stayed at a different hotel on our return – just for one night – with a comfortable (king-size?) bed and a great location right next to the street food market area of Bukit Bintang. In the early evening we walked over to the Jalan Alor area, a place that we had visited before in the morning. Last time we visited things were closed up but in the evening it was a completely different feeling. All the food stands were opened up, with plenty of tables available for diners to sit on the street and enjoy the atmosphere. We started with 10 satay skewers – a mixture of lamb, chicken and beef skewers with the critical peanut sauce on the side. Beer here was very expensive – almost the same price as in Japan, but I guess that is to be expected in a street food market in a Muslim country. We were lucky to get alcohol at all.
The satay stimulated our appetite so we went down the street trying other things – gyoza, dried glazed salami, roast pork, and at one restaurant we had two big plates of vegetable stir fries to get a little green into us. Our seat at the last restaurant was out on the edge of the street, so it was perfect for people-watching. There were a lot of foreigners like us, a grievously burned man begging for change, an armless man was singing songs from a microphone he had set up on the street, and a tiny lady in a wheelchair had a karaoke speaker mounted and she crooned as she slowly rolled down the busy lane. Next to us a group of three teenagers grabbed a table and proceeded to bask in the attention they were getting by smoking and drinking mysterious beverages in clear plastic cups. The staff of our restaurant clearly didn’t like them being there, but the teenagers didn’t mind – they stayed glued to their smartphones trying to look cool.
On our way back from the bustling market we stopped in at the basement of the Lot10 shopping mall. The food court was huge – all focused on Malaysian and other Asian dishes. We decided right then that we’d definitely come back once we had space in our stomachs. Kuniko bought some melting peanut candy from a Chinese shop on the way out, and with that we called it a day and headed back to our hotel.
