Eat, Pray, Love KL

I apologize in advance, this post is a long one. My last full day in KL, I took a tour called Eat, Pray, Love, put on by the Malaysian Heritage Center. The idea was to show us the history of Malaysia in KL both before and after it became a country through food and religion, hopefully prompting us to love and appreciate their city. Malaysia has only been a country since 1957, so it is really young. Of course, people lived there before that, as my trip to Malacca shows, so the history before it became a country is actually more interesting. 

We started off the morning at a food stall near the Central Market. This man is making roti, or batter made really thin by twirling it like a pizza. He then fills it with different stuff; one had banana with butter, while another was filled with kaya jam made from coconut. They were essentially sweet breakfast crepes. 

Accompanied by the roti is ginger tea, which essentially tasted like chai tea with ginger. My new favorite drink. It is technically called teh tarik, or pulled tea, as they dump the tea from one container to another from several feet up. The process mixes the ingredients of black tea, condensed milk, and evaporated milk, it creates a frothy top, and cools it enough to drink. It was fun to watch. Barely spilled a drop!

They also add these savory sauces to counteract the sweetness of both the roti and the teh tarik, which is something I think Western food needs to get better at. Waffles with fruit and whipped cream? Let's throw some syrup on there....

This is another roti covered with condensed milk. Malaysians like their sweets, therefore I like them. Needless to say, this was not the healthiest way to start the day, but man was it delicious!

Next, our guide took us to a Chinese temple. Now, at this point I have been to probably a handful of Chinese temples, but our guide was actually Chinese and was able to explain what exactly was going on. First of all, the temple was built, by a guy who founded the city, as a tribute to his master and good friend who died in the conquest. The guy had the statues made, and then took them to be blessed by the emperor in Beijing during the last dynasty (Ching I think), thereby making them deities. So, these "gods" were really just people who during their lifetime were particularly good at something, business and sound reasoning, for these two men. And the Chinese aren't worshipping them, as us Christians worship God or Jesus, they are paying them respect, asking them for assistance and guidance. So, this is the praying process. You bring them an offering, normally fruit or flowers, because the Chinese are all about reciprocity, even in business today. If I want help from the gods, I have to give them something first. Next you light three joss sticks, or incense, one to go to the heavens, one for the human realm, and one for hell. Your thoughts are conveyed through the smoke to the deity wherever they might be. When praying, you have to be very specific, stating exactly who you are, where you are from, and what you are doing. You can ask them a very specific question, like, should Drew and I visit North Korea in a few months? Then, you take out the fortune telling sticks, shake them around in a specific way until one meaningfully separates itself from the others. Then, just to be sure you pulled the right fortune, you take two wooden blocks and throw them on the ground. If one comes up ying and the other yang, then that stick is correctly yours. If not, you repeat the whole stick process, up to a max of three times. If you still haven't chosen the right stick after three tries, you have to come back and ask another day, as your intentions are not clear enough. If you succeed, you match the number on the stick to a pre-written message. These messages are slightly general and you have to interpret them to fit your question. Hopefully our message would have said something like "some things are better understood, but not seen." :) At the end of this whole process, you burn a piece of paper covered with stamped chants. Essentially, this is the Chinese being lazy. Instead of chanting out loud and burning more incense to communicate those words to the deity, you can simply burn the paper with the words written on it, and the result is the same; the deity gets the message. Pretty awesome huh?  

Whenever you make a donation to the temple you ring the bell and bang the drum while essentially yelling out your name. All of this is done so that the gods know that you, specifically, are making a donation. Reciprocity again, but it only works if the gods know who you are and that it happened. 

Back on the streets of KL, we went to a food cart where an old man was making sugar cane juice using an old fashioned press. Wonder how long he has been doing this!

Street drinks are traditionally served in a plastic baggy like this. Not sure why.

A bit farther down the street was a dried goods shop. Again, I wonder how many years this man has been shopping here? These kind of stores are nice because everything is bought by weight. You can take as much or as little of a substance as you want. But they did have everything, from sardines, to seaweed, to mushrooms, to onions etc.

Same street again was a fruit stand. We tried all tree of the bottom fruits, which I had never seen before. The one on the far left is a purple mangosteen, which has a white fruit in the middle with sections like an orange but the texture of a concord grape. The middle is a langsat, like a smaller, milder mangosteen. The far right is the rambutan, which has a white middle similar to a grape.

Next stop was a Hindu temple. Outside of the temple were several booths making flower garlands that are placed around the gods. 

We got to wear a jasmine bracelet!

Every morning, afternoon at 12:30, and evening they bathe the gods. After all, the gods are just like us, and need to be kept clean! The priests, literally dump different liquids over the statue and then rinse it away with water. There was several rounds if this: Saffron water, water, milk, water, fresh juices (like he squeezed an orange and dumped just cut coconuts over the statue), water, purified water from bottles, done. It was more complicated than that, but you get the idea. It was really cool to watch. To get an idea, the statue below is black and is being bathed in I think saffron mixed with water below, making it look orange. 

Being bathed in milk. 

The best part was the music being played the whole time. It was loud and dancy. There was a reed instrument and a drummer. The reed instrument is called a nadaswaram, and it sounded like a mix between an oboe and a trumpet. It actually used a double reed and was surprisingly loud. He was going to town, and it was awesome.  

This is also the same temple that the pilgrimage to Batu Caves starts from every year. The followers walk from this temple to Batu Caves, and it's not a short distance. Can't remember what the ceremony is for. 

Next, we went to a Chinese food market. This is a man shaving ice for drinks. Notice the old fashioned clamp holding the ice in place. It worked incredibly fast, meaning the blade was super sharp and probably not very safe. 

The resulting drink! Shaved ice, coconut milk, some caramel something, and green rice strings. Again, delicious and sweet, but not exactly healthily. 

At the Chinese market, we also tried asam laska, which was a hot sweet and sour soup with seafood and veggies. Super good. There is another spicier version of this that uses a coconut milk broth instead of this one's clear broth that we tried in Singapore. Also tried fried noodles with ground pork (purple bowl). 

After a few more stops, we went to a southern Indian place. Similar to what we tried in Singapore, this is eaten with your hands, off of a banana leaf. Meat and seafood was in the bowls, while rice and veggies are on the leaf. Hot! but very good. 

The last stop was a mosque right in the middle of the city. We couldn't tour it (not sure if this is was a prayer time or if they were renovating it) but it is beautiful!