Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia): Lori & Jana on the loose part 1

We only met for two weeks in February while working together at Elephant Hills (link), but we got along so well back then, that we decided to meet up again during our further travelling. Lori and I never discussed exactly, where and when to meet until the moment sometime at beginning of May, when Lori messaged me and asked me, where I would be in June. Well… I didn’t have an idea yet, but knew that I would probably be somewhere on my way back up north from Indonesia to Vietnam (as I was meeting my dear friend Sarah on July 28th in Ho Chi Minh City) and suggested that we could meet in Kuala Lumpur. And while planning (or rather not planning it at all), I already realized: Travelling with Lori is really relaxed! We decided to meet up in Kuala Lumpur to travel through Malaysia for 2 weeks and then go to Thailand for 2 weeks (and without realizing it, we planned a trip of 4 weeks together!).

I’ve travelled Malaysia 3 years ago with my brother and my aunt and therefore was not too keen on seeing the same places again, but was happy to explore new places as well. I had heard from some people how great Borneo must be and when I mentioned it to Lori, she was all in as well. We started planning our trip a bit then and decided on spending a few days in Kuala Lumpur, then fly to Borneo for a bit more than a week and then travel to the Cameron Highlands before flying from Kuala Lumpur to Thailand.

Kuala Lumpur

I found a good flight and arrived two days before Lori and used the time to finally spend a whole day doing NOTHING (well except for sitting in a café around the corner, drinking coffee and uploading photos from my trip). This doesn’t sound like an exciting day, but this one day made me so happy, because I was able to take a rest for a day and recharge for the days to come. Chris, one of my best friends, has taught me this important advice before I started travelling: “Always give yourself one or a few days in between travelling to acknowledge all the great things that you’ve seen so far and to “make space” for new experiences”. I’ve taken this advice really seriously during my whole trip and would like to think that this enabled me to enjoy this whole adventure even more. After spending a day by myself (& recharging), I met a German girl (funny enough also from my hometown Hamburg) at the hostel I was staying at (link to Paper Plane Hostel) and we went on a walking discovery tour of the city.

On the day of Lori’s arrival (she didn’t arrive until late afternoon), I fulfilled myself another travel wish: I did a cooking class! J I had booked the cooking class at link to cooking school by recommendation from the hostel that I was staying at and have to admit: This has been the best cooking class that I’ve done so far!

Cooking Class (price & address):

We met at the restaurant of the cooking class at 8 am in the morning and started with a small tour through the front yard garden, where Christina showed us all the great herbs that she was growing there herself. After that we went upstairs to the cooking class room and each of us got their very own cooking station. It was so great that we were only 5 students and each of us got their own place to cook!

We were going to cook 5 different dishes (list of dishes here) and each of us would cook the whole recipe by themselves after the two chefs showed us how to cook each one of them. It was so much fun to first watch the two lovely Malay & Indonesian women cook the recipe and then go back to our own cooking station to do each step by ourselves. Nothing was pre-cut or pre-cooked and we were able to adjust all recipes according to our own taste, which meant instead of having 5 times the identical 5 dishes, we ended up with 25 different dishes at the end!

I’d like to show you a step by step guide for my two new recipes: Chicken Rendang and Dutch Eggs:

Chicken Rendang

Recipe of Chicken Rendang will follow as soon as I have found my recipe book again….

 

Dutch Eggs

Recipe for Dutch Eggs will also follow as soon as I have found my recipe book again….

We finished this amazing cooking class around 3 pm with a late lunch and tried the dishes from the other ones. We all, of course, loved our own creation the most, but had to admit that all food was really good and that we all were pretty proud of ourselves. And the best part for me: I was ready in time to go and pick up Lori from the train station and serve her my home made dishes (all recipes were for 2-4 persons) for dinner and she was also amazed that I cooked all of this by myself (I still can’t believe it myself 😉 )

Lori and I spend a few days in Kuala Lumpur, exploring a bit more of the city, eating fantastic food in China Town and also did something, that I missed out on doing last time I was here (Last time I was in KL, it was raining for 2 days straight and we left earlier than planned): We went up to the Petronas Towers! (And thanks to all those great Tripadvisor reviews that I read on my day off, we booked a ticket EXACTLY for sunset at 7:15 pm ;))  I’m normally not a big fan of these touristy places, but the view from the Petronas towers for sunset was just amazing. If any of you ever make it to KL, make sure to go up there for sunset!

 

The next post will be about our second stop, Borneo, so stay tuned for more pics & info from our great adventure!

 

 

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