We had an easy trip from Ipoh into Sentral Kuala Lumpur Station via the KTM ET inter-city electric train.  We enjoyed watching the beautiful Malaysian countryside pass by our window and also the take away order of Popiah we had bought the night before.  Our only real (albeit very petty)complaint was the nature documentary playing on the TV in the front of the carriage repeated about 3 times in the roughly 3-hour ride.

We were impressed with the very efficient and orderly process for catching a cab for the 12-15 minute ride from the station to the Capri by Fraser, our hotel in KL.

We had arranged a food walking tour with Ramesh (mobile: +60162483008), a guide we found on the withlocals.com web site.  On the web page this tour is listed as “Discover the Best Local Food Tour by Night in Kuala Lumpur”.  The original plan was to use public transportation but since it was a rainy evening we chose to customize our tour going with a hotel pickup and private car transportation. Ramesh was an excellent host and guide and an interesting person to spend the evening with.

Ramesh wanted to give us a taste of several of the different cuisines available in the city and started us off at the Indian banana leaf style restaurant Sunway Kanna Curry House.  The restaurant has several locations around the city as well in other Malaysian cities but this place did not have the feel of a chain restaurant.

I won’t go into a full description of everything we had but it all was good; particularly the Dosa and the Roti.  We wouldn’t have remembered all of this on our own but Ramesh provided us with this list of dishes at Kanna Curry House: Dosa (Indian pancake), Curry Puff, Vada (savory doughnut), Roti Ca, Nasi Lemak (rice with coconut milk) and (Pulled) Milk Tea.

Our next stop was PJ Old Town, a Malay style restaurant.  This was a quick stop where the only dish we tried was Duck rice with chicken broth, which was very good.

Ramesh didn’t want us to fill up at PJ Old Town as we were ending our evening at his favorite Chinese restaurant, Petaling Jaya Min and there were several things he wanted us to try: Bak Ku Te (pork rib soup), Steam Pork Bun and Sticky rice with chicken. Again, everything was good with the Steam Pork Bun probably being our favorite dish.

The evening proved to be a very good introduction to the KL food scene on our night tour with Ramesh that we would recommend to others.

The next morning we met Paul Wong C (also found contacted via withlocal.com) at the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station for his “Best of Kuala Lumpur: Highlights & Hidden Gems” tour.

This still operational station was the main train station for Kuala Lumpur from 1910 until the new Sentral station was opened in 2001.  From the outside we were struck by the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station’s grand Moorish style architecture but in the underbelly of the building we found an iron and glass railway station that could easily have been seen in an early 20^th century English city.

From the train station we walked to Masjid Negara, National Mosque of Malaysia. Both men and women are required to adhere to very strict dress codes to enter the complex but the Mosque provides long head to foot robes to any visitors that require them.  But this is a very impressive complex and worth the effort to see.

From the Mosque, we started walking towards our next stop, Merdeka Square but on the way, we passed by the National Textiles Museum and given our interest in all things textiles we asked and Paul agreed to adjust our itinerary to include a walk through there.

With that addition to our schedule we made a very quick stop at the square and saw Queen Victoria  Fountain, which was constructed in England and transported to Kuala Lumpur.

We next were on the edge of Chinatown and made a quick visit to the very colorful Sri Mahamariamman (Hindu) Temple. (Wraps are provided for those not properly attired.) It was one of the first but certainly not the last Hindu temple we would see on this trip.  In the same area we visited Sze Ya Temple, Kuala Lumpur’s oldest Chinese Buddhist temple.

As we walked through Chinatown the juxtaposition of older buildings mixed in among more modern structures provided some interesting views and prompted thoughts of the benefits and detriments of progress.

After a Lunch Break at a very local Chinese restaurant we traveled to the KL Forest Eco Park and took a walk in the tree tops on a bridge system Canopy walk that is 200 feet high in places.

While we didn’t climb to the top, we ended our tour at the base of the Menara KL Tower, which offers an observation deck at 900 feet or 300 feet higher than the Skybridge between the Petronas Twin Towers.  The Tower shares a parking lot with the Eco Park and we watch both local and international tourist go to great pains to try and take a photo the included themselves and the full height of the tower while we waited for our Grab taxi to take us back to our hotel.