Malaysia trip: Day 2 (24 Mar)

Hey there friends, I know that yesterday’s entry wasn’t all that exciting, so if you are still reading along, I promise that today had much better traditional tourism activities to get you excited about visiting Kuala Lumpur.

We went ahead and headed out of the house at 9:30 AM here in Mont Kiara. Just a cross the road. There’s a rather fancy restaurant called Kanteen, but then to be fair, almost everything in Mont Kiara seems to be a bit fancy. The ambiance was nice, and our breakfast for two had a cost of 66 RM ($14.06 USD).

We finished up at 10:12 AM, and I used Grab to ask for a car to take us to The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. The very pleasant sedan arrived at 10:22 AM, and for the modest sum of 11 RM ($2.32 USD) for a 9 km trip, we were pulling up in front of the museum at 10:37 AM. Having come in from India just the night before I was really impressed with how nice the roads were and how it seemed that everyone on the road was being very respectful; in general there didn’t seem to be a lot of cars, but that might just be because it was so orderly.

The cost per adult to enter was 20 RM ($4.22 USD). As the building is very elegant, I had very high hopes. We started out our visit with a temporary exhibit which highlighted more recent creations.

I was intrigued by a lot of this, because much of it was a bit different than what I had come to expect from Islamic art. I think though that this is positive, because it shows that like everything else, it is evolving over time. Around 11:05 PM we headed up a floor to the second special exhibit hall and then on to the permanent collections.

I was rather surprised to see the section dedicated to Chinese Muslim art, since I had no idea how developed this was.

There was quite a lot to see, and I probably did not really do justice to the museum. While I appreciate art galleries and museums, even under the best of circumstances, I tend to find it hard to stay focused for too long. Ideally, I feel like most of these places should be visited with a good guide, several times, with each visit taking no longer than 90 minutes. However that’s not to say it wasn’t impressive.

These weird light blue ones in the background are evidently tear catchers; who knew that was even a thing?

At 1:14 PM we decided to depart for our next destination, which was about 1 km away on foot. The heat and humidity was terrible, but by staying in the shade as much as possible, we managed alright.

There was almost no traffic on the road.

While it had not been our original intent to eat again so soon, upon arriving at the Hornbill Cafe at 1:38 PM, we thought it would be best to have something else to eat asking with a cool drink before tackling the KL Bird Park. This was clearly a bit of a tourist trap, but the food was admittedly very nice, as was the general atmosphere of the place despite being an open air restaurant/cafe. For two people the bill was 126.9 RM ($26.79 USD).

Connected to the Cafe is a gift shop where one can pay and directly enter the park. The cost per adult was 85 RM ($17.94 USD). We paid and entered at 2:32 PM.

No these aren’t birds, but they were still cool to look at.

Guests receive a surprisingly useful brochure which basically just repeats the information on this map. We decided to just keep going left until we had completed the circuit.

While we were wandering we saw that there was a bird show at 3:30 PM which we decided to check out. Still pictures don’t really do it justice; it really was a nice addition to the visit.

We then finished up our visit over in zone 2 of the park.

As to be expected, there was another gift shop at the exit.

While we probably could have spent at least 30-60 more minutes at the park, we heard a lot of thunder in the distance, so decided to exit at 5:05 PM. The entire 2 hours and 45 minutes we were at the park was time greatly enjoyed.

I once again used the Grab app to hail a car, and by 5:31 PM we were back at Mont Kiara, having paid the same amount as before.

So in summary, while I personally found the museum a bit tiring, I would still recommend it. And as you have probably guessed, I think the Bird park is a must see destination in Kuala Lumpur.

As always, thanks for reading along, and please put any questions or comments in the space indicated below. Of course, If you are interested in what I got up to on day three, then you will just have to keep following along.

See you then!