We recently found some super cheap tickets to Kuala Lumpur that we just couldn't pass up. Having never been to KL (what the locals call it), we were really excited about seeing a few of the city's iconic buildings but more importantly checking out the FOOD! KL is a very diverse city. There's obviously a huge Muslim population but there's also large Chinese and Indian communities. The food is just as diverse - so many interesting dishes. We tried a lot of different foods, none of which were Chinese! Our first day we took the hop on hop off bus which was a big let down! There were a lot more passengers than seats (um problem!) and the interesting commentary that we've come to expect was totally nonexistent though to be fair this KL hop on hop off bus was not part of the global franchise that we've used in other cities. We took the bus to Petaling Street for some shopping and lunch. For our first KL meal, we of course opted for Malaysian food. We had beef randang (a personal favorite of mine), fried squid and another Malaysian dish that we had never tried before but one of the restaurant's specialities, a shrimp pineapple curry - all were really good. 
After lunch, we walked around the shopping stalls for a bit and then headed back to the bus for the next stop. On our way back to the bus we passed some of KL's beautiful and colorful historic buildings.
The next day we went on a KL city tour. On our way to the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory, we stopped off for a photo of the Petronas Twin Towers. The towers were really impressive. The day before we had tried to take pictures at the towers; however, they are so tall, it's impossible to capture them in their entirety when close up so we were glad to stop here and to get pictures from a different vantage point.
We had seen some of Royal Selangor's beautiful pewter pieces on a previous trip to Malaysia (Penang) but didn't buy anything hoping that one day we would end up at Kuala Lumpur factory. Our tour guide explained that back in the day, tin was used as currency. Since tin is a soft metal, they would cast animals, like the elephant, crocodile, or turtle and break off a piece (leg or tail) when they needed to pay for something. This eventually evolved into the "money tree" (in the picture, to the right) - you just break off the leaves/coins to pay for things. When the tree was bare, they would melt it down and recast. Of course, we had to pick up one of those money trees in the gift shop.
On our way out, we stopped to take a photo with the largest beer mug in the world. On that note, we've noticed that a lot of cities in Asia hold very random world records.
Next stop was the Hindu Batu Caves. This place is so much like India they even had monkeys running around scaring all of the tourists.. especially Melissa! Once we climbed the 250 steps there was a huge cave then.. more stairs. With all the monkeys on the stairs, Melissa literally flew up all those stairs!
There was not much to see up at the top other than a temple and the rocks. So after heading back down all those stairs, we enjoyed some US$1 roti with condensed sweet milk while waiting for the rest of our tour group.
Our flight back to Hong Kong left around lunch time so we stopped by the hotel restaurant for some more Malaysian food before we headed off. We have had sate all over Asia but this is one was probably one of the most fancy - yes please!
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