Kuala Lumpur day 6

This morning we'd booked onto a walking tour of Chinatown, so got breakfast in a Chinese bakery then met for our tour in a tea room of a super fancy hotel.
Our tour guide was a very interesting lady called Jane Rai, who's been doing walking tours in KL for over 30 years, and has seen the city change so much. For our first stop, we didn't leave the hotel but made use of the panoramic view of the 7th floor as Jane pointed out the layout of Chinatown. During British colonisation, neighbours were structured in a similar way, with a police station then a jail next door, a post office and they also widened the roads. We then ventured outside and Jane led us through gorgeous tiny roads and alleys, telling us the historical facts of particular shops or areas. She obviously knew all the shop/ restaurant owners well, as she'd just waltz through a place leading a group of 15 of us into a store, just to look at the architecture 😅 The old post office is now a restaurant which we looked around, and there was still a fireproof safe in there that they couldn't open, but don't want to destroy. Our last stop was an traditional tea shop, which the owner sat down and told us about the place and the role of tea in Malaysian culture along with a cup of green oolong.
Although we didn't cover a huge area (which was welcome in the heat), Jane was super interesting and passionate, and I felt very well-versed in the history of the place afterwards.
For lunch we went to a highly regarded vegan restaurant in the area, and ordered a bit too much (a sharing platter for 3 people) but it was SO delicious!
We then walked off our food, and looked around botanical gardens. On the map it looks like this huge area is completely green, with a bird park, gardens etc... but in reality it was lots of roads with different "attractions". The gardens were nice, but a little underwhelming, plus it was veeery warm so got a taxi back to the hostel.
In the evening we went to helipad which has been converted into a rooftop bar. We got there just in time, managing to snag a table at the back and got to see the sunset and then a 360 view of the city coming to life with lights at night. They'll probably be the most expensive drinks of the holiday, but was definitely worth it!
For dinner, we walked to a nearby mall in the hopes of a Chinese vegetarian restaurant which we couldn't actually find, so settled on various forms of potato (waffles fries and tater tots) from a stall haha. As this is a majority Muslim country, most people don't drink alcohol, therefore the malls are packed with people in the evenings, going out for food, shopping or just socialising under aircon aha.Leggi altro