Our Discoveries in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

Summary of a 3 weeks stay

In November 2022, my fiancé — Romain — and I decided to leave our home country to go on a brand-new adventure.

If you want to know a little more, you can find the details of our crazy decision in this article:

Because we would like our Asian adventure to last as long as possible, we have chosen to live with a small budget, which suits us very well.

We found out we didn’t need much to be happy: a good bed, a workplace, good food, and — above all — a good cup of coffee to start the day. If we could have our friends and family with us, it would be the ice on the cake!

That said, a small budget isn’t a problem for us so far.

In this article, I wanted to share with you the things that made my hair stand on end in Kuala Lumpur as well as those that delighted me.

Of course, everyone’s experience and memories will be different depending on whether you travel alone or with someone else, with a big or small budget, with physical restrictions or not, etc.

Therefore, you could consider some of my negative points as positive and vice versa.

So here we go and, after the first amazing month in Thailand, we flew to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) even though it was the monsoon season. We got a flight for $72. We decided to stay in the capital and not travel to Malaysia because we wanted to keep costs down.

From Thailand (Krabi), we took the plane to Malaysia. After 1h20 of flight (the end of which was particularly turbulent), we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. We then had to take a cab.

After an hour of driving, we arrived at our hotel. Our 3 weeks’ experience in Kuala Lumpur could start!

What made me grumpy?

• The search for cheap food

To contextualize, we started our adventure with Thailand in November 2022. We arrived in Bangkok and were pleasantly surprised. You don’t even have to search or have a long walk to find affordable food. It’s everywhere.

We didn’t have the same experience in Kuala Lumpur. We had to search through apps (Grab and Foodpanda) to find food that fits into our budget, considering we were in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

We finally found our good plans ($2 a meal) and stuck to them.

Good to know: We were also surprised to discover the prices of the big-name fast-food restaurants in Thailand and Malaysia, it’s really expensive compared to the restaurants/street food. It’s two or three times the price of an average dish!

• The little bones in the food

Romain and I find it important to eat local food as much as possible.

We observed Malaysians eat with their hands, and believe me, it’s impressive to see how they eat rice with their hands with such dexterity!

We quickly discovered that Malaysian food contains a lot of bones, which wouldn’t have been a problem for us if they were big (to easily remove them from the plate), but we often found small pieces of bones in our dishes. To be clear, you must eat with caution because there are a lot of small bones all over the dishes.

This is certainly not the worst problem on earth, but we didn’t find it practical, it wasn’t our thing.

• Nothing is made for pedestrians

We like to take long walks and get lost in the streets, to discover good culinary addresses, far from the center.

It turns out that it is quite complicated in Kuala Lumpur because all the infrastructures are designed for cars, nothing for pedestrians. In other words, if you don’t see one of the rare bridges to cross the road as a pedestrian, you’ll have to walk a long way before finding the next one.

And, in certain cases, it’s even impossible for a pedestrian to reach a place without a car. It was our case that while leaving a shopping mall, we were forced to take a cab to leave the zone so much it was dangerous to venture there on foot.

• Many shopping malls

With the humid weather and high temperatures, you might consider the impressive number of shopping malls a positive.

For me, this is not the case. The malls are huge, it’s a good attraction, and the cool air from the air conditioning is like a bubble of oxygen in this suffocating atmosphere.

But every item you find in a mall (food included) will be much more expensive.

That said, I tried to find the items I needed outside these large facilities, and… it was a failure.

What made me smile?

• The kindness of people

We were amazed by the kindness — on all levels — of people.

We were confronted with strangers who wanted to give to us even though they were in a precarious situation. I’m moved just thinking about it.

It may sound a bit cliché but, believe me when someone who doesn’t have enough money to pay for their food wants to pay for yours, that’s something.

I must admit, it’s a big change from what we experienced with strangers in Europe.

• Lack of judgment

As it wasn’t a good season to travel in Malaysia, we didn’t meet many European tourists in the area. In total, I think we saw about ten in three weeks.

Our second place was in a completely Muslim area, I was the only woman with long light hair, without a veil. When we went out for a walk, I made sure to wear long clothes. It was the least I could do.

Having experienced it in the past in Europe, I expected it to be at least stared at. Well, in Malaysia, not at all. People were just curious about where we were from and surprised to see European tourists in this area.

I’ve read that Malaysians are open to other cultures, and that is what I felt during those weeks: acceptance.

“Whatever you are, be a good one”.

• Easy to find a cheap cab

It’s also easy to find a cab, and it’s cheap, which was convenient when we wanted to visit places too far to walk.

When we were at Batu Caves (a tourist place where you must climb a big staircase to get to the temples in a cave), we wanted to try public transportation to compare the price with the cabs.

We were amazed when the guy asked us for more than the price of a cab for the same trip!

• Good coffee

As a coffee addict, I was afraid I would be condemned to drink instant coffee for three weeks.

I was pleasantly surprised. The coffee I drank in Malaysia was strong and flavorful, just the way I like it.

• The “Teh Tarik”

One of the Malaysian specialties is black tea prepared with condensed milk, known as “Teh Tarik”.

Perfect before a good workout!

• It’s difficult to find food after 8.30 pm

In a big city like Kuala Lumpur, we thought ordering food at any time of the day or night was possible. The fact is that it’s hard to order/find street food after 8:30 pm.

You’d think this would be a negative, but it forced us to eat earlier, and that was kind of a good thing.

• The huge diversity of food regarding the cultural diversity

Speaking of food, in Kuala Lumpur, you’ll have no trouble finding a huge variety of dishes.

Malaysian cuisine reflects the enormous ethnic diversity, with various influences, including Bangladeshi, Indian, Chinese, and Thai.

• Good infrastructure for badminton

Romain plays badminton, so he decided to book a practice.

While in Belgium badminton courts are often included in a sports hall, which means that there are a lot of markings on the floor because many sports are played in this hall, the badminton courts in Kuala Lumpur are exclusively dedicated to badminton, which is nice.

The floor material is made in such a way that it absorbs the hits well, which is comfortable for the knee.

Before arriving at the training, we thought that the price was high (about 35$ for two hours) and that it was probably justified by the impressive resume of the trainer.

Besides his resume, it turned out to be two hours of private coaching, including drinks and a T-shirt, so it was worth it.

The trainer was so nice that he offered us to go to the market and eat durian (a famous stinky fruit in Asia, which he called the “premium fruit”) with him.

• The price of the rooms in the city center

We had no trouble finding an affordable room in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

But this comes with a caveat: It appeared that establishments in the center offer two categories of rooms, those with windows and those without.

This is the first time we’ve seen this feature when booking a room. It’s not a problem to stay one or two nights in a room without a window, but it was unthinkable for a three-week stay.

Naturally, rooms with windows were beyond our budget, so we decided to move to a 20-minute walk from the city center. This allowed us to explore other neighborhoods, which is a good thing. For this room, we paid $9 per night per person.

• 90-day visa

Finally, the duration of the visa is a big positive point.

90 days of free visa. This means you can stay in Malaysia for three months, without having to worry about flights out of the country.

It’s time to share your experiences!

Have you ever been to Kuala Lumpur? How was your experience? Would you recommend it?

You can offer me a coffee by clicking right here if you want to support me.

You will make the coffee addict that I am extraordinarily happy!