VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
If you look carefully at the thumbnail for this video, you will see a scattering of names, all associated with food. And that should give you some idea of some of the things that happen in this video. Meals come my way in various ways and at various places: fast food; classic Malaysian breakfast; and even Burmese.
And in the middle of all this feasting comes yet another hotel change. I seem to be a human billiard ball of late, bouncing back and forth between two hotels in Kuala Lumpur, and my life developed in such a way that I did it again.
VIDEO TRANSRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug and the start of what could be another Planet Doug Kuala Lumpur vignettes video. Just little snippets of my life here, because this is the same day that I had brunch with Daryl and Jamie, and I told the story about my credit card drama and getting my brand new Touch ‘n Go Visa card. That’s all done for the day, and I finished that episode, that part of the day. But then I got a message from a supporter and Planet Doug subscriber all the way from India, and he sent me a meal from Burger King. So, it’s being sent here to my hotel. There’s the Crossroads Hotel up above me, as always, or as has become common lately, and it’s being brought here by a Grab driver. And through some sort of miracle of technology that I don’t understand, he sent me a link. I click on the link, it opens up Grab here, and it shows me the driver is out for delivery.
So, this hotel is a little bit difficult to get into. There’s no lobby on the ground floor, so you can’t see the check-in desk. You can’t see any staff. But it’s even hard to find the front door. Like, everybody thinks the front door is over here because that makes sense. And they look over here. Like, you don’t see the front door anywhere. It’s kind of hidden. It’s like a secret. And even if you do find the door, you can’t get in because there’s nobody there. And you have to figure out, am I at the right door? And there’s a doorbell. You got to push the doorbell. And anyway, it’s hit or miss with a delivery to this hotel, I think. So, I decided to come down to the street and just scan the perimeter. Scanning, scanning. My head on a swivel looking for a Grab driver with a delivery from Burger King. It’s very exciting. And I can actually track the guy on this Grab app, which is kind of cool. So, assuming this is more or less up to date, I can see where the guy is and when he’s going to get here. Takes a lot of the stress out of these deliveries. So, you can actually see where they are, and then you can come down to the street and be waiting for them instead of just waiting in your room for the phone to ring, and then you have to leap into action like Batman responding to the bat signal. I like things to be more relaxed than that. A little bit more under control. So, I’m out here on the street waiting for him.
Burger King.
Oh, is that? That’s great. Thank you. Ah, yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. So, there we are. GF787 from Burger King. There’s my driver. Thank you.
They’re really busy today though. I think the order was placed, I don’t know, definitely over 2 hours ago, 2 and 1/2 hours ago maybe, something like that. And so it took a long time to get here, but I was just busy in my room anyway. So, I didn’t mind waiting. And like what I talked about, this hotel being hard to find. Like I said, you think the front door is at the front, but this is actually the front door right here. And it has no sign at all. Like, there’s no signage, nothing. So, you really have no idea. It looks like it’s part of the bank, the BSN bank, but this is the entrance to the hotel. And then you have to push that button there to contact the front desk. But even the button does not have the name of the hotel on it. So, it’s very, very poor signage. Put it that way. So, now I need my card. What the heck?
I’m missing a card. How was that possible? Ah, I really would be very disappointed in myself if I lost a hotel card. That would be very unlike me. So, I normally put my hotel cards here. But I put it in a different location. So, that’s why I couldn’t find it. Always put your cards back in the same place. Anyway, I need this to get back into my room.
So, oh, you have a drink. I’m really looking forward to that. I was just thinking an ice-cold Coke would go down very well right now. And I think this is like an ice cream sort of thing.
That’s me in the mirror with my hotel card.
Mirrors everywhere on all sides. Yeah, I’m back in the best room, room 307, which is way down here at the end of the hall. And I have a window. And I do have a connecting door to the room next door, but somehow being in the other room. So, this is my room here, 307, and there’s a wall here with a door connecting them to 308. But at least in this case, somehow being in this room feels better. And my neighbor is not a smoker this time.
There is my meal as it emerged. I like the fries from Burger King. They’re the bigger, thicker, more authentic French fries as opposed to the tiny slivers. I like the McDonald’s fries as well. I can go either way, but these are distinct from McDonald’s fries. Got an ice cream sundae here, which is starting to melt. So, I have a fridge down here with a freezer compartment. So, that’s going directly into the freezer. And something here. I’m not sure what burger this is. Looks like a chicken burger. Nice. We’ve got a chicken burger with some chili sauce and a large iced Coke that I’m very excited about. So, I don’t think I need to take a lot of film of somebody eating a Burger King feast. You’ve all had Burger King. You’ve seen people enjoy them. Just imagine me enjoying it. So, I’m going to dive in now. Yeah. Thank you very much to my mystery benefactor from India. A meal like this is much appreciated, especially at the end of the day when I’m running out of energy, and I just don’t have the energy to go outside unless I take a 2-hour nap first, and I’m not in the mood to take a 2-hour nap. So, this is an amazing way to end the afternoon, start the evening.
So, good morning. Welcome back to Planet Doug once again. And I’m continuing with a pattern of shooting little vignettes here in Kuala Lumpur. I’m not heading out to do any kind of a big adventure feature, one place. I’m basically recording little snippets of everything that I’m doing. And because this is Planet Doug, once I take all those snippets and string them together on a timeline in DaVinci Resolve, it ends up being an hour and a half long. Anyway, so short vignettes adding up to a long video. And it’s a Thursday morning, maybe 11:00. Really hot and sunny day here in KL. I can show you the world around me. Look at that clear blue skies in all directions. Barely a cloud anywhere. Sun is just beating down. And I’m trying a different way of getting out of my Chow Kit neighborhood. I normally hop on the Monorail and go from there. But there’s also the Ampang line, the LRT line over here. I believe there’s a stop, PWTC. I’ve been there before, of course. I feel like I’ve been to every LRT stop in the city at one time or another, but I’ve never walked to PWTC from this direction before. So, this is all kind of a brand new experience. And the reason I’m heading in this direction is because I’m meeting a Planet Doug subscriber for lunch. Jamie is his name. And yeah, I don’t know whether he’ll show up on video or not. Maybe he’ll just show up briefly. But I wanted to record a little bit of this because we’re meeting at a restaurant, a Burmese restaurant here in Kuala Lumpur. Never been there before myself. Never heard of the place, but it seems like quite a special location. So, I wanted to get a little video vignette of the place. It’s called, I think, Zay Yar. And I’ve been to Myanmar a couple of times, and you’d think I would know all about Burmese food, but I don’t really. I know they’re famous for tea leaf salad, but then as soon as you get into all the dishes themselves, I only know them by local names. Like, if you go to Zay Yar and look on their menu, or you go on the internet and look for typical Burmese dishes, you get all these names in the Burmese language, and they just don’t stick in memory. I have no idea what they are. I don’t know how to pronounce them. All the time I was in Myanmar, I was reduced to body language. When it came to ordering food, if English wasn’t available, I just point at things and hope for the best. So, I’m no expert in Burmese food, even though I’ve been to Myanmar a couple of times.
I appear to be on the right track. I just saw an LRT train go by up there. I can see the elevated tracks. So, PWTC is up here somewhere.
This Planet Doug subscriber, I think I said his name is Jamie, and we’re, I got an email from him, planetdoug.life email address, and then we just started communicating back and forth. And apparently, he’s here in Malaysia for a holiday of some kind with his family, and he just reached out. Jamie was joking, yeah, I’m going to have lunch with a famous YouTuber. And I’m like, who? Where is there a famous YouTuber? If I meet one, I’ll bring him to the lunch. But he said, nah, no, no, just one is enough. Just you. So, apparently, yeah, I’m a famous YouTuber this morning anyway, as far as this lunch is concerned. Obviously, I’m still in Kuala Lumpur, even though I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve noticed. Oh, there. Look at that. Sunway Putra Hotel. Yeah, the Sunway Putra Mall is here at PWTC. I can’t remember what PWTC stands for. Maybe we’ll find out when I get there. But yeah, there’s this odd thing where I came back from the one-week Malaysia mystery car tour, and then I had all the video I shot during the tour. So, I settled in at KL just for a few days to get editing and to edit the video from the car tour, from the mystery tour. But then, while I’m editing, of course, I’m doing other things. I’m going out. I’m going places. I’m meeting people. And I thought, oh, why don’t I just record a little bit of the vignettes of my life here in KL. And then, so while I’m editing the video from the mystery tour, I’m now amassing more video that I start editing. And then I need more days to edit the vignettes video. And then I figured, well, since I’m here, I might as well do a real Planet Doug video. And I go out to do a five-snack challenge at a local night market. And now I have that video, which requires a couple of days to edit. And then you end up in this never-ending loop where you settle down to edit video. But while you’re editing video, you shoot more video, which leads to more editing. And if you don’t break free of that cycle, you’ll never get out. You’ll never escape. So, I’ll be in KL for the rest of my life. But I’m trying very hard to escape the gravitational pull of KL. So, yeah, here it is. PWTC. And there’s the mall. Yeah, like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever been on the streets outside of this station. I’ve come here to go into the mall, but this looks like a brand new perspective to me. So, now I’ve got to cross the street. Here comes my train.
There it goes. Of course, just crossing the street is never an easy task. I nearly got killed at that last intersection. And there’s often no pedestrian crosswalks or anything like that. As you can see, the only way to get across here is to, yeah, run across. So, anyway, let’s dive into PWTC. And if you’re curious, this is what’s going on. Here’s PWTC. And quite often what I would do is just get on the Monorail at Chow Kit and I get on this line at Titiwangsa and then I go down. But I could also just walk directly to PWTC. And I’m going to either Masjid Jamek or Plaza Rakyat. The Zay Yar restaurant is right here in between these two LRT stops. I don’t think I’m in a rush. I think I have enough time to get there, but I don’t want to dawdle because it’s a brand new place. I may have trouble finding it.
The power of Touch ‘n Go.
And I think I’m heading towards Putra Heights Ampang.
Perfect timing. The train just arrived.
That’s where we’re going next. And then one of those two. I’ll probably go to Masjid Jamek. I’m most familiar with that neighborhood.
There you are. A beautiful day out there. There’s the Twin Towers.
Almost a completely empty train today. Just looking out there into the city. Bandaraya station. I always like that pedestrian bridge over there, which you can’t see because the train just arrived opposite, but it’s over there.
Look at that. We just crept past the end of this train, but there’s the pedestrian bridge. It gets you across the highway and the train tracks over to the museum dedicated to the Tunku. I was out there for the Independence Day celebrations, just brushing up on the history of Malaysia.
Next station, Masjid Jamek interchange station total.
I’ve arrived at Masjid Jamek station. There’s the train. Of course, I always like to just stop for a minute, take in my surroundings. Look up, of course. And when you look up here, you’re always looking at Merdeka 118 building. I heard that Maybank, like the headquarters for Maybank, they were going to move into Merdeka 118. And way up there at the top, you can see the sign. That’s new. I’ve never seen that before. You can see the word Maybank up there at the top. So, that’s where they’re going to be from now on. I’m kind of sad about that because I use the Maybank here all the time. And I like the branch that they have now. It’s like a tower on a hill. And if I ever have to go to an ATM, it’s their ATMs that I use, and it’s very easy to get to and very familiar. So, I don’t know about this new location at 118, whether it will be as friendly and accessible a place.
I got all jammed up at this intersection, too. You’ve got a lot of buses and cars and trucks turning left here. So, I couldn’t get across. And then, right when the light turned. Okay, now we got a walk, a pedestrian, you can walk sign. But, of course, all the cars have filled the intersection. So, you have to kind of wait for them to get by. But now I’m going to miss my walk signal. And now all the buses and whatnot are going to be turning left again. Anyway, I made it across, and I’m still alive. What more can you ask for? But I have to get across to the other side of the road. So, going to wait for a break in the traffic right here. You can see all these cars turning left, trucks, buses. It’s a tough intersection to get through as a pedestrian.
I seem to be a little bit frantic this morning. Not quite in control of my environment. I just tried to go across that intersection. I got nearly hit by a car again. Not entirely my fault. I thought the car was going straight. There was no turn signal, but when he got to the corner, he suddenly hooked left. So, nearly got wiped out again. Passing all kinds of interesting things. I keep seeing this coffee shop up ahead, Kopi Saigon, like a Vietnamese coffee shop. And I passed one already that advertised a salt coffee. It also looked to be Vietnamese, but in the past, they never had this seating outside, so that’s new. I might have to try a Vietnamese coffee if they have seating and they have a Touch ‘n Go. They’re calling out to me. And I mentioned the Maybank headquarters moving. This is where this is their original place. That’s the Maybank Tower. I don’t know how many years they’ve been there, but I’m pretty sure a lot of years. And they probably built the tower specifically for Maybank, but now they’re finally leaving. Which makes me wonder what’s going to happen to this tower. If most of it is filled with Maybank, and they’re all moving, what’s left? There’s a little eatery, Tokoh Cafe.
Couple of small places. Outdoor seating. That’s very casual. So, we’re getting in the neighborhood where I have to start keeping an eye open for this Burmese restaurant.
This is another crazy intersection because there’s a bus terminal right here, and got roads going in various directions. Looking up at the Maybank Tower and the LRT line, and it looks like the restaurant is right here. Zay Yar Mart and Zay Yar Biryani. Yeah. The front sign is much more colorful than I was expecting. From the Google Maps listing, it seemed like an older, classic kind of place. Probably is on the inside, but they’ve updated the sign on the outside.
Have a nice little park here just outside this building.
Just walking around to get the lay of the land. See where I am. Oh, yeah, Jamie mentioned it’s right across the road from the Ansa. And there’s the Ansa Hotel. So, I’m definitely in the right place. Sometimes you run the risk of a restaurant having two locations or three, and you go to the wrong one, but with the Ansa right there and the Zay Yar right over here, it has to be the right one. Yeah, it’s at the base of this building here. Another huge tower of Kuala Lumpur. Not sure what building that is.
So, it is definitely an older kind of establishment. Don’t let the sign outside fool you. Here is the interior of this building. And there’s the Zay Yar Mart. So, I’m assuming the Zay Yar restaurant must be this over there. Oh, yeah. Right here. Look at that. Not a very cool look to it. So, Jamie said, when you come here and you walk inside, you feel like you’re in Myanmar all of a sudden with the decor and the atmosphere, and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by the Burmese script. It’s easily my favorite script in the world. It just looks so cool the way it’s written. I remember doing a deep dive into its history when I was in Myanmar at all the museums. Of course, I wish I remembered everything that I learned.
But, yeah, here’s the restaurant.
So, you can sit outside or inside.
What is there?
I think Jamie said that it’s one of his favorite places. He comes here all the time. He’ll know the ordering system, how it all works. But they have a buffet here.
Oh, no taking pictures. They have a sign there.
Little market, Burmese market, the Zay Yar Mart.
Almost time for my lunchtime meet-up. Just a few minutes till 12:00. Took a seat here in the park just to relax and get a little bit less sweaty. I wore my orange shirt because it’s a special occasion, and yeah, it’s a pretty hot shirt though, so I get pretty sweaty as I’m walking around. I was just thinking about audio. I was writing about that this morning. I was writing a little Patreon post that I’ll put all across my social media. Just random thoughts about the difficulties of recording audio. Something I think about all the time because I went to a night market recently with a friend, also named Jamie, coincidentally. And because there were going to be two of us, and I was doing a five-snack challenge, I took one of my Rode Wireless Go microphones, and I put it on him, and then I put one on me, and then you think, “Oh, it’s perfect. We get his voice very clear, my voice very clear.” But the audio issues start to multiply until they almost get out of control. For one thing, one of my Rode microphones is broken. The actual mic doesn’t work anymore. So, I plug in a lavalier mic. So, I put the microphone in my pocket, clip the lavalier here, and then the other one I put on Jamie, clip it to his shirt like normal. But what I didn’t realize is that the two systems now record completely different audio. The Rode on its own tends to record a lot of ambient sound, but the lavalier mic records only my voice. So, when on my audio track, when I’m selecting my audio, it’s very clean with just my voice and nothing else. But then when I cut in Jamie’s voice, we suddenly get this blast of background noise because now we’re recording with his Rode Wireless Go directly, and it records an entirely different type of audio. So, that’s a problem. And then, even if I’m, well, now I’ve got a mic on him, a mic on me, and I’m trying to deal with a different audio quality, but now we’re at a market stall, and we’re talking to the owner or the cook or the employee, but that person is too far away for their voice to be recorded. So, like, how, my question is, how do you have one microphone that you just record everything around you normally and naturally? And I feel like I’ve experimented with every type of microphone system available except for one, and none of them work. Like, they are all complicated and have issues. And I’m looking for a one-microphone solution. I’ve never found one. And I don’t know what other people do. You can use the built-in mic on your camera, but those are generally pretty awful. I tried what everybody did back in the beginning when I started YouTube years ago. Everybody was using a high-quality shotgun mic, but the shotgun mic only works for deliberate setups because the shotgun mic will be pointing at me, recording my voice. But as soon as I turn the GoPro around and point it at somewhere else, now my voice isn’t being recorded anymore, and it’s recording something from out in that direction. So, the shotgun mic was a bust. I just go on and on and on. I’ve tried so many different types of microphones, and I haven’t been able to find one that works. Anyway, that’s what’s on my brain right now. And it’s almost noon. I’m going to go stand in front of the building because that’s where we agreed to meet up in case he’s here looking for me. I mentioned that Zay Yar has this outdoor seating, but actually, I don’t think so. I think this seating out here is connected to this place, Nasi Kandar Al-Safina Maju, and you have to go inside to get to Zay Yar. I think that’s the name.
Just for fun and thinking of audio, I just unplugged my Rode Wireless Go because, like, when I got this GoPro Hero 12 Black, one of the big advantages to the Hero 12 over the Hero 9 was that with the Hero 12, you can use both the front-facing media mod mic and the rear. You can use both at the same time, which on the 9 you couldn’t do. On the 9, you had to choose either front or rear. So, every time you turn the camera around, you had to stop recording, change the mic settings, and start recording again, which is a real pain. But with the 12, like right now, I’m recording with the front. And now, if I turn the GoPro around, now I’m speaking from behind the camera, but you can still hear my voice. And you might even be able to hear it better because I’m holding the GoPro closer to my mouth naturally. So, it’s closer to the rear microphone. So, this is the audio from the media mod.
And if I turn it around, now it’s recording me from the front-facing microphone of the media mod. But I played around with it quite a bit, I think, in the past, and I usually concluded that the audio quality wasn’t good enough because I’m holding the GoPro 2 and 1/2 feet away from my face. So, my voice is too far away. If I held it here, probably it sounds a lot better because I’m closer to the mic. But nobody wants that. So, you hold it out here, and now it’s too far away, I think. Anyway, the built-in mic was one possibility. I don’t know how it handles a lot of traffic noise here. Mostly just for testing, as always. It’s been years and years as a YouTuber. I’m still testing microphones and cameras. Never found the perfect solution. Things are happening. Jamie has shown up. There’s Jamie. He says he doesn’t mind being on camera a little bit. He told me I could recognize him instantly because of his height, 6’5. So, it’s kind of cool to be around someone taller than me. And I just asked if we could just get a cold drink to start just to calm down, relax before we get any food. And I ended up grabbing one of these lassi. It looks to be from Myanmar. It’s got the Burmese writing on it. So, I’m getting a banana lassi, and he’s getting a water. And so, we’re just going to have that for now and then come back. As Jamie said, this place is full-on. There’s a lot going on here. And the first visit almost has to be a reconnaissance mission just to figure out what do they have? How do you order? Do you order first, then sit down? Like, what do you do? So, yeah, this is the place. So, Jamie and I were sitting over there over our drinks, talking for a long time. The banana lassi was really, really good, by the way. I just didn’t record it on video. But now we’re just getting a simple meal. I’m just getting the chicken biryani. And then we’re getting a couple of plates of this, like, sort of a bread and chickpeas, something like that.
Well, I heard good things about their chicken biryani, and right out of the gate, you get a lot. That’s a very generous portion for one person and comes with a little bit of salad there. And yeah, I don’t know that I’ll have anything so exciting to, I’m sure it’ll be good. People talk about it like it’s a very good chicken biryani.
I noticed on the Google Maps reviews, people who know about food will say that when they come here, it’s like the true taste of home. The way food is spiced and prepared is just like back home in Myanmar. So, but I don’t have such a sophisticated palate, of course. It’s good. And there’s, you kept calling this, and I kept, Nanbya. Yeah. I think that’s like the Burmese name for the bread. Okay. And it’s super delicious. Yeah. Put this back. So, we got two of the Nanbya. I have to see everything written down, or yeah, I just have no idea what words are until I write them down. Hearing someone say a word, it never gets through to my brain for some reason. Oh, yeah, there’s definitely something special going on in here. There’s, like, a raisins kind of a, oh, and there’s a big piece of chicken in there. Oh, that was hiding under all the rice.
So, let me put you on video just for a minute. No problem. So, this is Jamie. Hi, how are you? And yeah, from Australia. From Australia. An avid supporter of Planet Doug. Planet Doug. We’d like to hear that. With the internet star himself, and I just thought, why not have a little bit of Burmese, right? And so, this building seems strange. From the outside, it looks like it’s almost abandoned. But when you come inside, it’s just alive with Burmese money changers, doctor’s surgery, and food. And so, I thought I’d get a little bit of this pea, they call it pea platter. It’s like a chickpea dish. So delicious. Do you think this neighborhood is called, like, Little Burma or something? Is it known for that? Or is it just this building? There’s a lot of Burmese in this downtown area. If you go to Petaling Street, and you’ll see all the people working there, so many Burmese. Okay. But on the outskirts, a little bit further out, there’s a big Burmese community where Burmese often live. But this area downtown is where a lot of Burmese are working, mostly without documentation. So, we are going to enjoy our lunch, and yeah, looks really good. All right, lunch is over. Jamie’s gone back to his real life. I’m heading back into what passes for my real life. The house was a great lunch, really good food, great restaurant to know about. If you’re living in Kuala Lumpur, and you just like to know about what all your options are for a good meal, it’s nice to know about a good Burmese cuisine restaurant like that, kind of an arrow in your quiver of good places to eat. Really nice. Yeah, recommended highly. So, on my way out the door, I got another banana lassi.
I don’t remember this particular drink from my time in Myanmar or my two visits there, but it has the Burmese script all over it. So, it is a typically Burmese drink from Myanmar. So, yeah, it’s really good. This is not very important, so I hardly need to take any video of it. But a big event for me today is just changing hotel rooms. So, I’m, this is my room at the Crossroads Hotel, a Queen Deluxe. And I’m all packed up and moving out. There’s my knapsack. And I’m moving back to the Hotel Raja Bot. And that’s pretty much it. I’m just heading downstairs with my bags, and I’m going to hand in my key card, check out, and I just walk two or three blocks to the Hotel Raja Bot. And I’ll pick up the story once I’m outside out on the street. Like I said, two or three blocks to get to the Raja Bot. I’m not going to talk all the way there. I’m, I guess I’m leaving this hotel for a couple of reasons. One is, on the weekend, they really raised their prices. So, this upcoming weekend, the prices of the room I was in pretty much doubled, and it’s not worth that much. And I checked, and they had a cheaper room for this weekend at the Raja Bot. So, I snagged that. I couldn’t get, like, a really good room at the Raja Bot, but oddly enough, I was leaving from the Monorail the other day, and I just happened to run into the front desk clerk, the evening clerk at the Raja Bot, and then I told him, “Yeah, I’m coming back for a few days.” He’s like, “Oh, welcome back.” And then he said he was going to look at the booking schedule, and there’s, like, one room in my room class that has a little bit of a window, he said. And if he can, he’ll try and reserve that room for me. So, we’ll see what happens. I, to be honest, I don’t really care whether there’s a window or not, but who knows? Maybe a room with the window comes with other advantages. We’ll find out. But, yeah, so cheaper price for the weekend. And the other reason is the other one I keep talking about, smokers. My neighbors in that room were also heavy smokers. So, you can probably hear it in my voice. My throat is all raw. I’m exhausted because I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’m a wimp. I talked about this before where, like, I don’t want to make smokers out there nervous. Like, if I meet you in real life, and you smoke, and we’re in a bar, or we’re outside, we’re in a coffee shop, and you’re smoking at the table, it just doesn’t bother me at all. It’s like, yeah, smoke away. But somehow, small amounts of smoke, like diluted smoke that seeps into a hotel room, just triggers, like, practically an allergic reaction in my whole body. My body just goes nuts. My eyes burn. Throat. My throat gets sore. My nose starts running. I’m sneezing. Can’t sleep. I don’t know. It reminds me of something I learned about a long time ago. It was, like, decades ago, and I don’t hear much about it anymore, but there was a practice in medicine called homeopathy. And I guess it was developed in the 18th century, this idea that if you take a medicinal ingredient, and you dilute it, like, you just, I think they call it, they have a special name for this chemical process where you reduce it, like, you lower its strength as low as you can possibly get until the active ingredient is practically non-existent, and then, when you apply that as a medicine, it’s more effective. So, it’s like diluting the medicine makes it more powerful in terms of its impact on the body, which I always thought was a bunch of hooey, of course, but a lot of people believed in it, homeopathic medicine, and in this case, the diluted cigarette smoke just triggers my body in a way that, like, somebody smoking at the table beside me, it doesn’t have that effect. But anyway, some people moved in next door. The room that’s connected with a connecting door, and they just lit up as soon as they, there’s, like, a big group of guys. I could hear them laughing and joking, and then they all just lit up, and the smoke just kept pouring in, pouring in. Luckily, I had a window, so I did open the window, and it cleared out a lot of it. So, that was a little bit better than my other room. But anyway, I didn’t want to stay there any longer. I did mention it to the hotel clerk. I talked to him before about the previous room and all the smoke, and I mentioned to him this time, yeah, one of the reasons I’m checking out, going to another hotel, is again because of the smoking problem. People smoke inside the rooms. And he acted, he seemed surprised. He’s like, really? I talked to them. I talked to them and told them there’s no smoking. But anyway, yeah. On to the Raja Bot Hotel. And here we are at my new empire. This is 212. Last time I was here, I was in room 211 next door. That is the Queen Deluxe room. I guess it has a big window and a little bit nicer, a little bit brighter, a little bit bigger, I guess. And this is a standard double, I guess, something like that. But, yeah, the, I mentioned that, yeah, this, the hotel clerk that I met, he says, “Yeah, I’ll try to work a deal so that you get the standard.” Like, this is the room I booked, this type of room. But I guess one of them has a little small window. So, he did reserve this room for me. So, here it is. Little, looking over in the same direction as my other room, just a smaller window. But the amazing thing and the wonderful thing is that it’s pretty much 10 after 12, and check-in isn’t until 2, technically, but since the room is ready, and I’m here, they just let me, just gave me the room. I love that, if you can show up early, and if the room is ready, they just let you stay in the room. Comes with a kettle, a little bit of furniture over here to hang your clothes, which is always nice, and a basic bathroom. And the best thing about this room, of course, is there’s no connecting door to the next room. So, even if they are smoking over there, it won’t come into this room very much. It might go out into the hallway a little bit, but, yeah, no connecting door. That’s great. And at the Crossroads, it’s a small thing, but small things end up being quite annoying after a while. The air conditioner in that room was, like, making a loud, like, roaring, buzzing sound. I couldn’t get it to stop. So, you just live with that noise day and night. And this one is perfectly quiet. So, yeah, I’m going to head downstairs and fill up my water bottle. They have a water dispenser outside, one of these coin-operated ones. I don’t really know whether it filters the water effectively or not, but it always feels like it’s a little bit better than drinking directly from the faucet. Right. So, I’ll go fill up my water bottle and get some water. I’m so happy. I’m very happy to be out of the Crossroads. If my life goes according to plan, I will never have a room at the Crossroads Hotel ever again. It’s, like, it’s just playing Russian roulette over there in terms of what room you’re going to get, what service you’re going to get, how much garbage you’re going to stumble over in the stairwell. Yeah, you don’t want to go there. And in terms of a day where you’re changing hotels, like, moving from one to another, today could not possibly have gone better because checkout was smooth, easy. I got my 50 ringgit deposit back without any issues. I still had my two room key cards to hand in, so I could get my deposit back. And then I walked here, and I was here, as I said, at, like, 10 after 12, and they were expecting me because I know the hotel clerk, and he prepared this room for me in advance, and they knew I was coming, and, yeah, by 12:15, I was all settled in in this brand new room, and actually, the last time he saw me, I was taking my water bottle to go outside because there’s a water filter machine out in the parking lot, and ever since I’ve stayed in this hotel, that’s where I’ve gotten all my water, right? And then everyone in the hotel knows that because I would go by the hotel clerk all the time. Yeah. Going outside to get water. And then they actually, one of them, the guy that I know that I speak to more often, he said, “Oh, you got to be careful with that because it could be, it’s not clean.” So, he gave me Kleenex to make sure you scrub the, clean the nozzle so that the water is more pure, and so they’re aware I’m going out there all the time to get my water. But then, this time, I’m in the elevator to go down, and I show that, it turns out, the new, this other hotel clerk, the one that was there who checked me in today. He was in the elevator coming down, stopped at my floor. I got in. I showed him my water bottle because I have to tell everybody what I’m doing all the time. And I show him, oh, yeah, I’m just going outside to get some water. Next thing I know, he hits the M button for mezzanine. For some reason, this hotel has a mezzanine floor. It’s got ground, mezzanine, then 1, 2, and 3. But anyway, the elevator stopped on the mezzanine floor, and he held the door open and said, “There you go, sir.” I’m like, “Oh, this isn’t ground. I need to go down to ground.” He said, “No, no, water filter.” And I go around the corner, and there’s a water filter in the hotel on the mezzanine floor. And it’s one of these modern machines. It filters the water. It purifies it, and it dispenses boiling hot water and ice-cold water. I never knew it was there. Like, maybe it was broken before, and that’s why they never told me about it. But anyway, now I’m thinking back through all, every time I went traipsing through the hotel lobby, going outside to get water, getting some water. Oh, I hope it doesn’t kill me because of the dirty nozzle and all that stuff. And meanwhile, there was a nice water filter dispenser right on the mezzanine floor this whole time, and nobody told me. Yeah, this room is so much better. Oh, everything about it is better. I mean, it’s a low-budget hotel. You’re not going to come stay at the Raja Bot if you’re looking for five-star or four-star or even three-star luxury. It’s an older hotel. It’s a low-budget hotel, but, man, it’s paradise for me. And it has a lot of facilities, a lot more. It actually has, in a way, almost more than the Crossroads room, which was a lot more expensive because it comes with a kettle, which the Crossroads did, but it also comes with a hairdryer in the bathroom, nicer towels, nicer bedding, more outlets. Now, there’s one right there beside the bed, and I can plug in my power bank. So, I’m all ready to go here. And everything here is just cleaner. At the Crossroads, like, anytime you moved a piece of furniture, under the furniture, like, under the bed, for example, there’s, like, years of dirt and dust and garbage accumulated under there. Look in any corner, on any shelf, on any surface, it was covered in dust and dirt. But this room is pristine. No matter where you look, everything is clean. The floor is perfectly clean, the bathroom is perfectly clean, yeah, everything in here is really nice. The air conditioner doesn’t make any noise, and best of all, no connecting door. Oh, I feel so much better about that. It’s not just the risk of cigarette smoke coming in through the connecting door, but I like having this wall separating me from the other room, so I can just relax here. I can play podcasts over my Bluetooth speaker. I can play audio over my laptop. I don’t have to tiptoe around, and I don’t have to listen to my neighbors, everything they’re doing, every time they’re on the phone, anything they’re doing in their room. I don’t hear anything here. It’s perfectly quiet. So, anyway, I’m very, very happy to have made the move, and I’ve already boiled some water that I got from the filter, and I’m enjoying my first cup of coffee at the Raja Bot.
All right, I’ll catch up with you later on. Good morning. It’s a Friday morning here in Chow Kit, and this is the day after I moved from the Crossroads Hotel to the Raja Bot, and I have plans this morning to meet up with a Planet Doug subscriber, someone that I’ve never met before, a gentleman, Malaysian gentleman named Ahmad. And we’re meeting up for brunch. But, of course, on Planet Doug, nothing can be completely organized and simple because we originally arranged to have brunch yesterday, Thursday morning, but then I suddenly needed to change hotels. So, I had to contact Ahmad and say, “Oh, I’m sorry. Can we change it to Friday?” And he was fine with that. But, of course, we had to send emails back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, making the new arrangements. And then the original plans, of course, he was picking me up at the Crossroads. And then I did say in one of my emails, oh, I’m not there anymore. So, for our new scheduled time on Friday morning, I’m going to be at a different hotel. But somehow that information got lost in translation. So, in our final emails establishing the final details, he was talking, okay, I’ll pick you up in front of the Crossroads, exactly here, here, here at this time. And then, of course, I’m not at the Crossroads anymore. But I just let that go because it’s only a block away from my new hotel. So, he thinks I’m still staying at the Crossroads, but, in fact, I’m staying at a new hotel, but I’m just walking to the Crossroads, pretending that I’m still staying there, and he’s going to pop by in a few minutes and pick me up. Heading out for brunch.
The weather has been pretty hot lately this morning. Not that bad. Got some overcast skies. Feels like rain is in the air. Rain is on its way, but I always have my umbrella with me, and Ahmad is coming in a car. So, even if it rains, we’re going to be okay. So, yeah, we’re going to drive to, I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know if he knows either. We may stay in Chow Kit, or he may have picked a place where he wants the two of us to go. One interesting thing about him and his family is that they own and operate a durian orchard. And in our emails back and forth, he was mentioning the possibility of my visiting the orchard, the durian orchard, getting a close look at the place, trying out some of the durian, seeing how it’s grown, and they even have a homestay of some kind at the plantation. So, that’s a little plan that’s bubbling in the background, whether I would go there out of KL, or, in fact, if and when I ever manage to get on my bicycle out of Port Dickson, I will be riding my bicycle right past the durian orchard at some point along the coast. So, I could pop in there, like, on my way by on the bicycle, but I don’t know if this timing works for him or it fits into the durian growth cycle, like, whether in a few weeks from now is that a good time for durian, or is it better now? I don’t know. But maybe we’ll talk about that over brunch. I’m not sure if I have the pronunciation of his name correct with, like, Ahmad or Ahmed. I’m not really sure. Maybe Ahmad might be better based on the spelling. But either way, Ahmad is a man after my own heart in terms of the precision of his emails and the communication. So, I know that he’s coming here to the Crossroads. And not only that, I know he’s approaching the Crossroads from this street here. And because it’s sort of a divided road, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be coming from that direction, so I know exactly where to wait, and I know he’s going to drive up here. And then I can, there’s a convenient place for him to stop, and he sent emails, like, final. Oh, I think that might, oh, no.
I thought maybe that might be him because he sent me, even sent me a photograph of his car so that I know what it looks like. I know the color, and it’s an older model, I think, a certain kind of green. And I just saw an older green car go by. I, oh, that might be him. But, no, I don’t think so. But, yeah, like I said, a man after my own heart, even sending directions, what road he’s going to take to get here, what his car looks like, things like that. I appreciate a man who’s organized. I think I see the car. It’s actually more of a blue in the photo. Like, it was, like, aquamarine blue-green, but I see a car has a boxy kind of shape of an older car, and it’s blue. And I looked at the photos, and, yeah, it’s more of a blue than a green. So, I got that information wrong. But I think he’s almost here, right on time. Like, 2 minutes early. Man after my own heart. Ahmad has picked me up, and, as I said, blue car, and I found out that it’s actually a Toyota. I thought it was a, like, a Proton or Perodua, one of the Malaysian brands, but it’s actually a Toyota stick shift, which is kind of fun. I haven’t been in a standard for a while. So, we’re out driving, looking for a restaurant that he wants to bring me to. And we’ve gone by some interesting neighborhoods. Right now, we’re just going by the National Art Gallery and the big performance center. And this is where we are right now in Titiwangsa.
Something I always notice, though, is that when I drive with someone in Kuala Lumpur, when you’re driving, it’s, like, you have to go much farther. Like, if I walked straight here, it’d be much closer to where I was staying. But when you drive, you go in these big, long loops, one-way streets and things. But, yeah, it looks like an interesting area. A lot of places here to eat. So, where we are is right beside the Istana Budaya. It’s, like, the National Performing Arts Center. Very distinctive rooftop you can see. And right beside it over here is the National Art Gallery. So, it’s a very interesting neighborhood. And on the way here, we passed a building I’d never seen before. And Ahmad told me it was the National Library. And library here, the name for library is so hard for me to say. Something like, you have to have a pustaka in there. Perpustakaan, something like that, means library. But that looked like a very old, interesting building. Oh, here’s a more open view of the performing arts center right up there. Yeah, really interesting building. The architecture probably costs a lot of money to maintain it. So, here is the restaurant. Yeah, I’ve never been here before. Looks quite interesting. I could not begin to pronounce the name, Restaurant Dapur Delima, something like that. I don’t know if that’s a Malay word or some sort of a play on an English word.
And, so, I, they actually have a burger menu, which is interesting. Dapur Delima meals. I’ve never heard of this before. And it looks like they have, yeah, Nasi Lemak Baso Torato.
Oh, maybe he’s thinking of a different, okay, so there’s that restaurant, but he’s probably thinking of this place here. Okay, so there’s a whole bunch of different restaurants connected here. Roti Canai. Okay. So, this makes more sense. He didn’t bring me to that, like, the fast food place. It’s more here. Yeah.
And, what is the, I don’t know the name of this place. Adam Corner, maybe. It’s too small for me to read it, but they have a nasi lemak. I’m getting a kuey teow. I think he’s getting me curry, and then a breakfast menu, roti canai.
So, yeah, that’s basically where we are right now. And I guess we’re going to grab a seat out here somewhere.
Some food has arrived. Got my, like, kuey teow soup, which I don’t know if I’ve ever had it before because I always get the kuey teow, like, fried kuey teow. Is that char kuey teow is fried? Maybe that’s how that works. So, this is the kuey teow soup with chicken, and iced coffee, of course. And we ordered roti canai. So, we got a couple roti canai coming. And Ahmad has a very interesting meal over there. That is a curry. Much, much, lot more going on over there. Mine is a simple meal by comparison, but, yeah, that’s how I like my meals. So, I’m going to dive into this. So, yeah, I’ve been diving into this kuey teow soup. Really good. The noodles are very, very tender, very well done, and comes with a very spicy sauce, and I almost dumped the whole thing in because I thought it was, like, a soy sauce or something like that, but then I did a very careful taste testing of it.
That’s powerful stuff. So, I think if I poured all of this in, for me, it would ruin the soup. It’s, like, too much flavor for poor Doug. But what I’ve been doing is, I get some noodles and chicken, and then I get a little bit of sauce to go along with it from time to time.
I can handle that. And roti canai. So, comes with a sauce here. And the, yeah, roti there. Very nice. So, one of these for you? No. Okay.
It’s really hot.
Yeah.
Fresh off the griddle.
Good breakfast. Very good breakfast.
I’ll have to put this place on my Google Maps, too, so I can remember where it is. Brunch is over. Just heading back to the car. And I noticed they’re working on the roof of the Istana Budaya. Check that out. If you look really carefully, you can see these men way up there on the roof. And this crane is lifting, like, new roof tiles up there. Looks like they’re redoing the whole roof. And, man, what a dangerous job that is to be way up there. That is crazy. I saw this crane over here earlier, but I had no idea what it was doing. But look at that. How high up they’re lifting those roof tiles, man. Oh, yeah. They have a netting down at the bottom in case somebody or something slides down that glass roof. At least the net is going to catch them. I hope it’s something else.
And since we were so close to the park, we’re driving the car around or through Lake Titiwangsa. That’s there on my left. I remember somebody talking about this fence that you used to be able to just go into the park from anywhere. True. But then, for some reason, they put up this huge fence all the way around. Yes. And now you can only get in through the gate. And don’t know if that was a good idea or a bad idea.
Not anymore. Yeah. I remember coming out here a couple of times when I first came to Kuala Lumpur. We’re on the other side of Lake Titiwangsa Park. You can see some of the skyline over there across the lake. Yeah, it’s a beautiful park.
Yeah. Petronas Towers, KL Tower, 118 building.
Back in my neighborhood now. Ahmad just dropped me off at the Crossroads Hotel. Same place where he picked me up. And from there, just walking back to the Raja Bot. Yeah, I was curious about the pronunciation of his name, and he kind of made it clear to me. It’s, like, Muhammad, but the last part, Ahmad. So, that’s how you pronounce it. Ahmad. Muhammad. Ahmad. So, that gives me a clear idea of how to pronounce it. Yeah, the sun came out. I thought it was going to rain all day today, but, yeah, the sun is beating down now. So, nice day today. Nice weather. It’s always fascinating to spend some time with someone like Ahmad where, just, like, not through any deliberate touring around or anything like that, but just spending time with him, listening to his stories. I was asking him all kinds of questions about his life, his childhood growing up in a kampung here in Malaysia, and then going on to university, getting a master’s degree, and then his career, family. You learn so many things about the country of Malaysia, the society, the culture, the people that you didn’t know. And then, just little things as you drive around because I’m in his car, and he’s taking streets because he knows the streets very well, and he’s taking me down streets and into neighborhoods that I’ve never seen before, and seeing all kinds of new buildings, and not far away from here. He had to do kind of a U-turn to get back into this neighborhood. And then, during the U-turn, we passed by this area filled with what looked like interesting, low-budget hotels, just, like, hotel, hotel, hotel, hotel. A whole series of them all in a row. Had no idea they were there. Just around the corner. They’re the types of hotels that aren’t on Agoda. They aren’t listed anywhere. But, yeah, you just see so many interesting things hanging out with someone who knows the city well, who grew up here in Malaysia, lives in Kuala Lumpur, and they take a lot of the things around us for granted. But me, with my foreigner’s eyes, of course, I see them fresh. It’s, like, oh, wow, look at that. What’s that? And little things that jump out at me, and I have a question about, he knows all the answers. So, yeah, very enjoyable brunch. Yeah, really enjoyed that. And speaking of noticing interesting things, I’m just about back at my hotel. There it is right there. And I’ve gone up and down this street a couple dozen times, but I never noticed this place until just now. Look at this. It’s, like, a little village house. I’m sure this house has been here forever. Look at that, like a typical kampung house, and then connected with this house beside it. I’m sure these have been here ever since this whole area was more like a village, like a farming district, and then the city of KL just grew up all around these two little houses here. Very cool. Yeah. Little village right here.