We walk down Petaling looking for a place to grab an ok breakfast. An outdoor Asian food court is the only place really up and running. We circle around twice before deciding on a stall... I picked it because I heard someone talking to the stall person in Mandarin. K and I share a Kway Teow... stir fried somewhat-wide noodles with egg, bean sprouts, and to my happy surprise, an unskimpy-amount of baby clams.
Petaling is still clear-ish when we leave. I think sometime near noon is when the street "opens up" and it shuts down around 11pm. All the vendors pack up their stalls and the street is cleared. Cleaning happens sometime between then and the next morning, when the vendors come back and set up their stalls anew, fully restocked. The transformation is pretty cool... shots taken from above the night before vs in the morning, and street-level in the morning vs afternoon...
Loaded with a happy stomach and ready to go, we grab a taxi out to the national mosque, which is in the same area as the butterfly and bird parks. I've brought a long sleeve button-down for the occasion (skin fully covered). We're required to take off our shoes and I'm also required to cover my head with a headscarf (provided prior to entering).
The mosque is very quiet and cool, with sparkling-clean floors (someone constantly sweeping up dirt from the floors while we're there)...
K picks up some Islamic information/propaganda pamphlets from the rack that has 20+ multi-language pamphlets about different aspects of the religion... our future reading leisure...
After returning the headscarf and getting back our shoes, we walk over to the bird park. We're short approximately 20 RM of the admission fee. A fellow tourist who we originally met back at the mosque and who we saw again along the path up to the park agrees to exchange money for us; we give him $6 and he gives us 20 RM.
The bird park... lots of cool new birds I'd never seen in person before. The entire park is covered in netting and the park is divided into zones, so the birds per zone are confined to that zone and many of the birds are just left free-flying within their zones. Like the butterfly park, lots of greenery. Hornbill that looks like a statue, but it's real...
I caught a hornbill in flight later...
All the trashcans in the park were pelicans...
On the way out, we passed a cute group of kindergarten-age school kids on a class trip...
We then walked to the national museum (not to be confused with the national history museum from yesterday), also within the same huge park compound. The museum is usually two floors but the top floor is closed for renovation. One side of the first floor focuses on influences on Malaysia (other countries, Islamic history, etc) and the other side exhibits standard customs, etc... with more than a couple of exhibits discussing circumcision (??).
Leaving the national museum, a random taxi dude tries to get us to use his unmetered taxi, charging us an overpriced fare. We opt to walk in the general direction of our next destination (Chow Kit market) and encounter a good metered taxi.
Chow kit market is crazier and more claustrophobic than Petaling. Whereas Petaling has many tourists walking the streets, Chow kit caters to locals... lots of fruits, veges, meats, fish, standard 'everyday' foods as well as household wares...
Our original plan was to eat lunch at Chow kit, but we're not brave enough to eat at the few food stands (too spicy for me or unknown foods for K again) though I do buy this interesting pancake (folded in half with crushed peanuts and corn in the center).
No taxis in sight, so we walk back towards Petaling until we find a taxi. Along the way, we encounter a few 'restorans' and we finally decide to stop at one that actually has English on their menu item signs, indicating a greater chance of an English-speaking person in there. They gave us a plate of food with a fork and spoon. Most of the people around us are just eating with their hand... the right hand because the left is considered dirty, I later found out. Then at the end, the people get a napkin to clean up (no napkins are given until the end, unless you specifically ask for one). We got a chicken dish, which was bearably spicy, thank goodness, with a side of egg.
On the rest of the way back to Petaling, we managed to hit a taxi that someone just got out off. He refused to use his meter (claiming traffic issues) and offered 8 RM... K asked for 3 RM... we negotiated to 5 RM. We were right on schedule. 2:30pm. We quickly walked through one floor of an indoor shopping area across the street from Petaling (which we never noticed earlier). One store had lots of *really* cute items, but we were down to 8 RM or so left =(
K finally resolved to get one of those oh so popular drinks at one of the Petaling stands... it didn't say what it was nor how much it cost, so we watched another person pay the guy for a drink first (1.20 RM, ~36c). After drinking a third of the yummy cup, we bought a second one.
Back to the hotel... had a few minutes to tidy our things and then the taxi came (we previously asked the hotel to set something up). The taxi driver turned out to speak Cantonese (her parents were Chinese) so K conversed with her for a little bit. She listened to a Cantonese soap opera on the radio on our way to the airport.
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