New Year In... Malaysia (Again!?!) - New Year's Day

After the previous night's trek and the rather underwhelming manner in which the New Year was welcomed.... We were wondering what to do on New Year's Day. We were both pretty familiar with KL so we figured that a jaunt to one of the neighbouring cities may be in order.

So Klang it was, after may friend intimated that she would rather like to sample its famous Bak Kuk Teh...

Before that, however, we went over to the Royale Chulan, a five star hotel near Bukit Bintang where we had earlier decided on staying, city-centre hotel rates being understandably cheaper on New Year's Day than on the Eve. Just some last shots of the lake that gives Flamingo Hotel its name though...




We arrived before check-in time so we could only deposit our bags and come back later. But, apart from the fact that the hotel was situated away from the main shopping belt and quite a distance away from the nearest monorail station, the early signs were promising....





On to Klang then. To go there, we headed for KL Sentral Station, where we took the KTM Kommuter, a line which cuts through most of KL satellite towns and cities. I think that from the pictures, you can see that it is pretty well-used.




Klang being until fairly recently the capital of Selangor, I was hoping that it was full of historical sites and monuments. If it was, we must have missed it, the same way we missed savouring the Bak Kut Teh at the well-known stalls which made Klang famous for Bak Kut Teh. It turns out that at least one of them was just down the street from the train station but that they open only in the morning...Argh...

So what we stepped out from the Klang train station into was a somewhat sleepy and quiet street full of Indian shops, which makes me conclude we were in Klang's Little India.






There's nothing the taxi drivers sitting outside the train station do not know, however, and they happily volunteered to take us to a 'Taman' (I cannot remember the name exactly) where the Bak Kut Teh stalls open all day. We had no choice but to agree - at 15 Ringgit a trip, which I feel is really on the steep side. A check on Wikitravel later revealed that to be the normal rate however, which leads me to think that taxis in Klang exist mainly to transport toursists 'outsiders'. Certainly, one cannot see a meter anywhere inside the taxi.

The 'Taman' that we were brought to did have quite a few Bak Kut Teh stalls, most of them close to full. We settled on this one however, for it looked a bit more upmarket and was less crowded (which probably suggested higher prices, though naturally I can't be sure)...



The Bak Kut Teh was of course good, with lots of ingredients, among them the essential pork ribs, pigs intestines and mushrooms. I'm not really a connoisseur so I can't really say much more apart from the fact that the Bak Kut Teh tasted really good, the slightly bitter soup hinting that it was brewed a long time with a lot of herbs) and was at a price (which unfortunately I cannot remember) that made it a steal compared to those sold in Singapore. My friend, however, who consumes much more of this stuff than me, would vouch for its quality.



Our hunger satisfied, I was really keen on moving down to Port Klang where we would take a speedboat to Pulau Ketam, or Crab Island. But as we headed back to the train station, the sky turned ominously dark, and with the memory of the Mersing capsize tragedy still fresh, we decided not to chance a trip out to sea. Not on New Year's Day anyway. And so we took the train back in the direction of KL....And stopped at Shah Alam, which is the present capital of Selangor.

I had read somewhere that there was an agricultural park where one could rent bicycles and do a bit of horse riding and thought that would be a good way to pass time until dinner. But as we exited the train, the heavens opened - big time. We thus had no choice but to run to the nearest cab and ask the driver to bring us to the city centre.

That he did, dropping us at a mall called Plaza Alam Sentral.



It was much like any other, except that most of the shops on the lower levels, especially those selling clothes and handicrafts, catered more to Malay customers, which I suppose was in keeping with the predominant composition of the residents of that city. The top few floors sold electronics and IT stuff.



Shah Alam is also home to possible the largest mosque in Malaysia, which we had opportunity to behold once the rain stopped...




We would have liked to see more of Shah Alam, but made a decision to leave before dark, for we wanted to see some parts of KL. To be more precise, my friend, who has a fascination with street markets, wanted to go to Petaling Street, KL's Chinatown...

Although I have no particular love for crowded, balmy and hot bazaars, I couldn't find an excuse to not go and so acquiesced. However, I did insist that we alight from our Kommuter at the historically significant old KL train station which for more than a century was one of the main transport for all of the Malayan Peninsula.



Just before we reached there however, I chanced upon the old Central Market and decided to take a look...



Notice how the exterior facade is very much similar to Benh Thanh Market in Vietnam, which I blogged about a few posts back? I suppose they were built around the same time and 30 years ago, they probably looked the same inside as well. Nowadays, a similar facade is all they have in common, for the Malaysian version is now air-conditioned, having been turned into some sort of an upmarket tourist handicraft centre...



Having run out of excuses, I finally had to bring my friend to Chinatown. I was surprised, however. I had been there many times before but never in the night, when clearly, the colours and character of the place is most vivid, varied and vibrant.







We then headed back to the hotel. We were glad to get some rest after a long day out and were delighted with our room. While the main area of the room was spacious and luxurious, it was the bath and toilet area which gave one a very 'upper class' kind of feel.





After a short rest, it was next to the pub stretch at Bukit Bintang for Western seafood at The Magnificient Fish & Chips place (I think that's the name of the outlet), which is becoming something of a tradition. There, I also watched Manchester United somehow manage to beat West Brom and so was quite pleased. We shared a Butterfish, which is the cheapest and in my opinion the most value for money there, as well as a seafood platter, which is markedly more expensive but very well flavoured. Anyhow, as long as you compare the prices with the Singapore equivalent at a similar outlet, you'll always feel you got a good deal.




And that was just about it for New Year's Day, for we retreated exhausted to our hotel after that.