My honest thoughts review on Kumoten

Dear diary,

Importance of exercise, never underestimate it, it has been a few days since I stopped running, I feel like crap, and all the negative thoughts and things I would like to refer as "demons" are back. I also feel sad the semester break is going to be over, 3 weeks just passes by so fast, didn't really do much, I mean I did do significantly more and I felt more satisfied happy throughout, but still, I don't want it to be over. The plan where I went ahead and travel around my hometown didn't go through after all... Oh well I suppose.

Anyways, let's talk about KL, honestly, I feel really lazy to type it out at this point, but I'm forgetful, and I don't want to forget about it.

KL TRIP: DAY 1
So four days ago, we went to KL by train, it took 4 hours whereas by plane it takes 1 hour, for only 20 bucks extra for two person, but we went by train solely because mom never experienced it before. Anyways, here's the window, makes me wonder what happened for it to crack. There are other trains in that had nearly completely shattered windows but they're still intact.

This is how the train looks like, KTM is the name of the company for the trains.

Transportation of products, in this case sugar is also responsible by KTM as well

Scenery on the way
 

Palm oil plantation can be seen in abundance throughout the journey, it is after all Malaysia's main export. The tiny river is a system to keep the trees hydrated. Couldn't take a better picture though

Big source of water beside more palm trees

Mom told me how trains used to be during her times, interstate trains used to not have designated seats, they will just stuff as many people as they can in one train until it is not possible anymore, therefore there are a lot of people standing to the point where the toilet is always occupied and eventually became somewhere people just stand, because there was simply no space and it was so cramped. She was quite horrified after the first experience that there was never a second, up till now, when the system is much improved with proper toilet, air conditioning and designated seats.

After four long hours, we reach KL Sentral, confusingly, there are two train station which is relatively close to each other, one named KL another one KL Sentral, not only I'm confused the first time I went there, good thing this is the second time.

KL Sentral

KL Sentral is attached to a shopping mall called Nu Sentral. I carried the really big heavy bag around the mall and it hurts my arm, we went to find food since mom is really hungry, we ended up in a food court and mom ordered some Japanese Bento whereas I ordered Petai Beef Rice, similar to what happened last year, when SO and me came to KL the first thing we did was to eat at the food court of Nu Sentral.

Petai Beef Rice, it's nice although it's really spicy

And then I noticed this ice cream shop, I'm suppose to just buy 2 ice cream, but then the workers there didn't even mention there's a buy one free one promotion, so after I got my ice cream, only did I notice the promotion, and one of my order is eligible for it, so in the end I got three ice cream.

To be honest, I was actually a little bit pissed that they didn't even mention about the promotion, but I was conflicted, because on the other hand, I got to eat 3 ice cream

This is the Matcha flavour
taste really mild

Original flavour, this is the one eligible for the promotion,
the cone's a fish!

This one's ma favorite, Hojicha, stronger tea taste

There's popcorn inside, just so you know.

Moving on, we took grab car to our home-stay that we booked from AirBnB, not bad at all, RM100 per night, right in the middle of KLCC, convenient walk to the Petronas Twin Towers. It's called Vortex Suites and we live on the 50th floor, which has an amazing view. Vortex Suites is shaped like a doughnut, with the hole as the elevator shaft and the rest of the doughnut its room. It's like 50++ layers of doughnut. So you can start walking from your unit to one side of the hallway and keep walking, you'll end up back at your own unit. If I'm not mistaken, in the underground of Vortex Suites is another hotel named The Bed, it is a capsule hotel, it's interesting to note that capsule hotels exists in KL Malaysia already. However, it is RM50 per bed per person per night with shared toilets and all, so, no thanks, AirBnb is the way to go.

One side of the Petronas Twin Tower can be seen here, really nice city view here.

Night View

Self Check in, we took our keys from one of these mailboxes

There's no buttons on the elevator whatsoever,
we gotta flash card on the white pad thingy

Shared living room, there's room left and right, there's another stranger living on the left while ours is on the right

Not bad toilet

Our room on the 50th floor, there's a kitchen too but I don't have the picture, kitchen is completed with utensils, washing machine and detergent, which obviously we didn't use.

After resting and procrastinating, we finally called on a grab car to find my mom's nephew, who's studying in Sg Long. Not cheap at all, apparantly Taxi and Grab joined forces so it's like Taxi can pick up Grab customers as well, if you allow it, but I usually use Grab Car to ensure my driver is not a Taxi driver because I dunno, don't prefer them... personal preference, nothing personal.

We ate at a newly opened shop near the nephew's hostel. Damn Sg Long is hella crowded and the atmosphere is shit... I wonder if he can tolerate it there since he comes from a really Kampung place from Sarawak, my mom was stuffing his closet with my sibling's old but never worn clothes, which the nephew's subtle disagreement was not heard by my mom as she insisted on giving it away to him, since she thought he was just being courteous, which I doubt.

It's a new shop, despite dinner time we were the only customer there

Our meal, mom not only stuffed his closet, mom stuffed him too, poor kid.

Then we went home, took a walk and went to see the Petronas Twin Tower, and that's about it, the street is really well lit with decorations and such.

The amount of tourist is suffocating

KL TRIP: DAY 2

Went out to find food for breakfast, couldn't find any, found a bus stop, we were pointing at a bus map at the side of the bus stop, some foreign worker saw our confusion, and blabbered some instruction as an attempt to help us, in the end he beckoned us to follow a local free shuttle bus, we went inside in haste, everything was fast and in haste, one thing followed another, we ended up in Pavilion.

Nothing much here, just a bunch of mega malls gathered together(just noticed the failed panorama).

We continued walking and found this

So we traversed downstairs with an ecalator to find a huge ass underground food place

The place is decorated with local antiques such as utensils used during olden times

When I say huge I meant it, it's like a tiny little underground city

Decorations are olden chinese themed

However the food is overpriced as heck, three of the yellow balls,
siew mai, costs 9 bucks, which is 6 bucks overpriced. So that's our breakfast.

After this expensive breakfast we set off on a journey to find Masjid Negara, a mother daughter pair with horrible navigation skills. 

On the way we saw Chinatown, which is also one of my destination, so we just went inside to take a peak. It's huge and very congested.

Some of the graffiti that can be found outside of Chinatown

Old school bus street art

Entrance to Chinatown, this is where my aunt used to live, and this is basically where life happens during the olden times, where all the Chinese gathered to trade, live, eat, entertain, work. It's very old and very crowded/congested.

The building in the background is actually a really old
and used to be really prestigious
Chinese High School, it's huge.

Who did this to the Obike

An old Muachi seller, she was still enthusiastic and carried out her job with energy, despite her age, and smiles at everyone, she do seem like she love the attention, although I didn't get a good shot and in this picture she just looks old and grumpy. I'm not the only one who was taking pictures of her, she is one of the most iconic and memorable persona in Chinatown. After googling a bit, she was actually quite popular, her most well known line is that she will never ever retire from selling Muachi. I believe you popo.

Her Muachi is pretty special too, there's 3 different color with one of them tasting like jellybean,
fun and delicious.

There was an interesting hippy guy showcasing some impressive yoga stunts in the middle of Chinatown, wanted to take time and take some pictures of him but mom is being a little fuss because she doesn't like crowded places. So off we go. Funny thing, although the infrastructure and the nature of Chinatown doesn't really revolve around the luxurious side of life, there are a number of really expensive cars parked in it, such as Mercedes and BMWs. After exiting Chinatown, we continued our journey to find Masjid Negara, I got a bit annoyed at mom because of some reason, anyways, moving on.

The journey was better than expected, there is already an elevated pedestrian walkway all the way to the mosque, we still have a road to cross before reaching the mosque but there was an underpass. If it wasn't for the good people we met who gave us directions, we wouldn't know about the underpass, but this nice lady saw me going all the way down and told my mom that the underpass was the other way.

Destination arrived, took us a while to find the tourist entrance though, before entering we had to wear an attire covering ourselves, it is provided for free.

There's some Arabic written on the walls saying stuff like love thy neighbor or something, some children are in there studying. We spent some time talking to a prophet, I don't like how he view their religion as superior,I had some questions which could probably be offensive so it's a bit difficult to ask some of my doubts and I do disagree to some of his statements, have to be careful not to offend him though, but all in all, he's still pretty knowledgeable and in the end he did say, don't believe in everything I say, you need to read. He's a guy who values knowledge, and that proves he's not a religious nut.

Really clean hallways

And that's Masjid Negara, we were suppose to go Dataran Merdeka and Colossieum but the bus took us God knows where.

Free shuttle bus GoKL

Ended up back in Pavilion and ate some ramen, delicious.

Avocado banana, worth the RM13, since both my mom and I couldn't really finish it. Someone threw a lithium cell battery in their tip box which is kind of funny.

Then we went to MidValley megamall, there's a pet event going on, but we need tickets to enter, so no thanks.

Their chocolate, diary products selection is so much more I can find compared to my place! Oh, their plastic is biodegradable too, it felt biodegradable, which I think is something noteworthy. I like environmental friendly stuff, buying food in polystyrene boxes always make me feel a little bit guilty.

Bought this new bracelet, I quite like it, only RM9,the eyeball thing is of Turkish origin called the evil eye stone if I'm not mistaken, it protects you from the eyes of jealousy of other people. But most importantly I love the design.

Walking around the mall we saw a clock shop, and in there sold some huge grandfather's clock, which made me and my mom reminisce about her parents, which is my grandparent's place. I still remember, during my childhood visiting my mom's side grandparent's house, which is in Borneo Sarawak, they have this really huge grandfather's clock which goes bong every single hour. In the living room there's a cuckoo clock which would come out and yell cuckoo! every now and then as well. My grandpa loved mechanical things such as clocks and he used to own a shop dealing those kind of things, he sold radios and he was passionate about it, he would take them apart and would know how to reassemble them. It was a pity that he died way before my mom had any grandchildren. Now that I think about it, these clocks are actually pretty rare to come across, and the memory of those clocks made me feel a tinge of nostalgia.

Found a self teeth whitening shop as well, which was pretty interesting, just sit in a chair and won't take long at all. I felt that the concept was quite fresh indeed, just wonder how many customers do they even get since these kinds of places is usually empty.

After we're done at the mall, we went to the Petronas Twin Towers again.

Found a band playing in the subway, there were very few spectators...

Tadaa, Malaysia's most iconic landmark, the Petronas Twin Towers.

Symphony lake, we watched the water fountain musical show, mom wasn't very impressed by it, understandable, the Singapore one was undeniably much more impressive

 After a tiring day, we went back to our place to take a well deserved rest, my feet hurts, but all in all it's a really satisfying day, we actually went to more places than expected, so there's that. Quite a comparatively fulfilling trip. KL is still a developing state you can tell, there are still a lot of construction going on in the already densely packed city.

The next day is dedicated to packing up and getting ready to leave. So there's that, phew, that concludes the KL trip diary, took some effort to write it.