FIRST DAY IN KL

Ok, finally in KL (Kuala Lumpur). A few more words about our flight with Air Asia. I actually thought it wasn’t too bad – it is pretty tiring to fly long distance with any airlines, unless you are in business class of course. In this case you get what you paid for. The only upsetting thing – there is no water available unless you buy it.

When we got to KL airport, all the passengers had to fill out a Health Form due to the swine flu epidemic. After that we all proceeded to the special screen, where heat detectors show your temperature image on the big screen. Peter’s image was bright red and he walked to the right. Mine had a green face, which was obviously bad as I was immediately sent to the left for a temperature check. After that I was given a note that “this person presenting this Health Alert Card may have been exposed to Influenza A” and then was released.

In KL we are staying with Peter’s aunt. It is a lovely old house, very similar to “town houses” in Australia. The temperature is VERY hot and humid; I guess it will take a couple of days to adjust. Peter’s aunt took us to a local Chinese Hong Kong style restaurant, where we had a sumptuous lunch followed by fruit, tea and barley water (hot drink, made of water, sugar and barley (“perlovka” in Russian)). This kind of food we were dreaming of since our last visit to Malaysia in 2004.

To be continued…

FOOD

Now I know why some say that Asian people “live to eat”. The choice is huge and life is simply too short to try it all. Apart from traditional Malay cuisine there are also different styles of Chinese, Indian, Japanese and other Asian specialties. On our first day we had traditional Malay dishes for dinner, including Carry Capitan (fragrant coconut and lemon grass chicken curry), Assam Laksa (hot and spicy noodle soup with tamarind and pineapple) and Bohpiah, which was my favorite (sweet and spicy steamed rice paper spring rolls filled with vegetables and nuts). The flavors and quality of the dishes were simply amazing – I’ve never tried anything even close to that in Australia.

Durian is a tropical fruit with hard spiky skin and very smelly but sweet flesh. According to Chinese believes all foods are either “heating” or “cooling”. For nutritional balance you need to have both in your diet. So after eating durian, which is “heating” Peter’s aunt gave us some mangustins (another tropical fruit, with dark brown thick skin and milky white refreshing flash) to balance it. So the entire day was a total gastronomical eye opener for me.