Malaysia, Day 2

We rolled out early and went for a walk in a park. I didn't take many good pictures in the park, but here's one:

One of those no-kissing kind of parks. Next we went to breakfast at this beautiful country club. My friend's mom's friend is the manger of this gigantor mall in Kuala Lumpur. So she was always coming back to the apartment with oodles of free mall crap - shoes, foodie gift sets, fruit, tea, on and on. She was also a member at the country club and took us there, where I ate this:

Flat bread made with chickpeas, served with curry and delicious sauce 1 and 2

I should've been taking notes on all the things I ate over there. Everything was so delicious I thought "Oh I'll remember this," but now I'm home and while I remember the tastes, I can't remember the name or ingredients in most of my pictures.
Anyways, that was breakfast, eaten on the veranda with lush views of this big green golf course. Unconscionable and unjust as colonialism was ... sitting on that veranda I thought, yup, I would've been pretty good at that: Naps, complaining about the prickly heat, making trouble with the natives. Trouble is I would've had to have been a boy...
After breakfast we went to the bird park. The hornbill was the highlight:

Hornbill

Pictures with the peacock

From malaysia

Feetsies

mo' birds

And after that we went to see some butterflies:

From malaysia

Then we went in and had lunch at the central market.

From malaysia

Delicious

old train station

By 2 p.m. we were pretty well exhausted (welcome to southeast asia, in August). So we headed back for naps and pool time. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant where the food was served on palm leaves - rice with curries, no fork necessary: You just had pick up some rice and curry with your fingers and pop it in your mouth.

At one point I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and couldn't find any paper towels. One of the servers brought me napkins from the front, I didn't even have to ask. Amazing. Such things just don't happen in China.

Yum

Dessert was another one of the highlights of my trip. Malaysia is known for durians (the stinky, spiky fruit you find at Asian grocery stores sometimes). But they love it so much, they don't even export it, the amount they grow only meets domestic demand. So if you buy durian outside Malaysia, what you're eating is Thai durian.

But Malaysian durian is better, Yan said. Then, I must try it, I said.

So after dinner we drove to a durian stand (they're in season). Check out this sign:

From malaysia

Malaysians are serious about durian. And turns out there's more than one kind - they're categorized by the firmness and sweetness of the fruit.

From malaysia

We picked out a good one and sat down to dig in, and - oh my goodness - it's delicious. I've had a couple tastes before, but I always found the durian I've had in Shanghai to have a nauseating after-taste. Not this durian.

The texture is like custard, and the taste is fragrant and sweet. It's really an incredible fruit. I ate four big hunks.

Day 3 photos tomorrow!