Kuala Lumpur

My soon to be series of international travel began last weekend, with an altogether too short trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My friend Rick, who I’ve known since college, is an expat there this year so I wanted to visit to not only see him, but the awesome city and a cross a new country off my list.

Luckily for me, there are readily available direct flights between Clark and Kuala Lumpur, so I took a weekend to visit. I arrived on Friday night and left Sunday morning. As I mentioned, way too short. Maybe later this year I’ll be able to take more time, but as it was, I think I got a very good initial impression of the city.

Malaysia is great for many reasons, and the food is one reason to visit that I had been hearing about for a long time. My cuisine highlights included roti, curry, naan (lots of naan…nom nom), tandoori chicken, nasi lemak, nasi goring, and the delicious teh tarik (the national drink of Malaysia, as it were haha). For only having a weekend, I tried to sample as much as possible.

We visited Batu Caves, which is a limestone formation just outside the main part of the city, which has a couple Hindu temples inside and some bat habitats. There were monkeys all around – some pretty aggressive ones as well. There was one instance where I witnessed a monkey boldly smacking a plastic bag out of the hands of a tourist and eating his lunch. Also witnessed a monkey drinking from a soda can, which was equally as hilarious. I managed to snap a selfie with one – but it was honestly a little terrifying getting close to them. I tried not to one in the eye for too long – I think I would have lost any confrontation with one of these monkeys.

We also stopped by Chinatown to peruse the stands and have lunch, followed by a trip to the Central Market. I took in the sights of the Petronas Towers and KL Tower since they are so close to where Rick stays. Saturday night, we went out to the bars in Bukit Bintang, where we met a ton of expats from all over the world – which made for a very colorful evening, resulting in us tagging along with our new British friend to watch the UK-New Zealand rugby match at a bar.

All in all, I had a great time. Kuala Lumpur was very different from anything I’ve witnessed so far in the Philippines. For an obvious one, they drive on the left side of the road there, which lead to some near death experiences when crossing the streets (kidding – kind of). Kuala Lumpur is also, of course, a large metro area with good public transportation and really nice, new, glamorous buildings, which I haven’t seen much in Clark, haha. Perhaps when visiting Manila next weekend, I will have a more apples to apples comparison of Malaysia to the Philippines, since in Malaysia I didn’t visit anywhere but the big city, and in the Philippines, I’ve yet to visit the big city.

Check out the pictures…I had another issue with my camera battery like when we went to Laoag, so these aren’t the best quality, but they certainly get the job done 🙂

At the base of Batu Caves

Monkey drinking from a can!

Monkey who fought for his lunch

Batu Caves

The view of KL from Batu Caves

Monkey selfie! This was as close to them as I was willing to get…

Chinatown!

Teh tarik

Nasi Lemak

Naan and curry – nom nom

Outside of central market! Nearby I bought these sweet purple pants with elephants on them.

Petronas Towers

KL Tower

Nasi goring

slightly inebriated naan consumption – nom nom

Baguio City, round 1

Hello all, it’s been a while! I took a little hiatus from traveling until this past weekend, when I made a last second decision to go to Baguio City. It’s actually amazing that I’ve been in Pampanga for two months, yet hadn’t made it up to Baguio yet, considering all I’ve heard about it from people at work. But, now I’ve made it, and I really did enjoy.

First impression of Baguio was that the temperature was amazing. People in the Philippines always lead with that, so I was expecting pleasant weather, but living in Clark where it is constantly hot and humid, it was such a welcome break. So I guess there’s a reason people always lead with talking about the weather.

A friend who is an expat working in Baguio was my tour guide for the weekend. We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the city. I finally rode my first jeepney – I know, late, but it’s really not that convenient in Clark – and we walked around the market, the downtown area, and ate lunch at a really cute spot, Cafe by the Ruins. Got some delicious, real brewed coffee (no Nescafe? I’ll take it…) before we decided to check out the Philippine Military Academy. We walked around there for a while, saw the war memorials and the grounds of the academy. As I mentioned before, the weather was perfect for walking. Only rained while we were riding the jeep, and after that, pleasant and cool.

After regrouping at home from our day of exploring, we headed down to the night market where you can get shoes, clothing, and knicknacks for cheap.  There were also a good amount of street food vendors. We met up with some coworkers as well, and I was successfully peer pressured into trying balut. It was really rough for me to get down at first, because I was too scared of it to eat it quickly. The key is definitely to take it like a shot of liquor and to not look at it. When I succeeded in that, it was not bad. I’m pretty sure I won’t be eating balut like candy any time soon, but I’m glad I tried it.

Sunday, we visited Camp John Hay, which is the US leisure camp they built after establishing bases in the Philippines, for a mountain retreat away from all the heat and humidity. There was an old house there, a little path through the woods, and I especially enjoyed the Cemetery of Negativism, designed by one of the camp commanders to symbolize the death of negativity. It was outdated, strange humor which I enjoyed. I included a picture of one of the headstones to kind of give you a better idea of what it’s all about.

I also visited Mines View, a barangay with a nice lookout over the mountains. It was a clear blue sky day, so I was definitely glad for it. Top that all off with real espresso, I was a happy camper this weekend.

Pretty “Land Before Time” around Baguio

Selfie with some tanks at the PMA

My face as I’m being instructed on “how to” eat balut

First you have to puncture the membrane, then suck out the juice

For a forced smile I think this looks pretty natural.

o hay from Camp John Hay

One of the headstones at the Cemetery of Negativism – all of them were like this, half understandable strange jokes.

Looking out from Mines View

🙂

My trip first trip to Baguio definitely gave me a good taste for this awesome city. Can’t wait to visit again and explore more. It would be awesome to do Mt. Pulag before my expat year is up…and of course to try more coffee shops around Baguio and the craft brewery. Also, I’ve heard about the flower festival all through February, so yeah, I’ll be visiting Baguio again.