mel in the milkyway: Day 5 and 6 of Asia - A grain of rice

currently: chilling under the air conditioning

So Day 5 was pretty uneventful as we did some family stuff, visited people, and physically recovered from all the walking and eating we did the day before. I'm still struggling to not fall asleep during the middle of the day, as I napped twice yesterday. I think I'm slowly getting better at it. That or I'm just eating way more sugar to compensate.

Anyway, we headed into the central city today for a little bit of touristy action. I found that above photo kinda funny - it's like Kuala Lumpur has a #sorrynotsorry attitude to all the construction that goes on. And trust me, it's a lot of construction. I don't think I'll ever complain about New Zealand's roadworks again.

If you love an indoor market, you'll love Central Market. It has the benefits of Petaling Street, but all indoors and air conditioned so you don't suffer in the 30+ degrees Celsius heat. Filled with little stalls of knick knacks, to souvenirs, to traditional clothing, everything there feels authentic Malaysia. Well most of it if you excuse the Chinese/Indonesian imported stuff.

(as posed here by my little sister)

While I didn't buy a great deal of stuff (many of the products there include wood or leather which is too difficult to bring back into New Zealand), I have to point out the one stall which I spent most of my money at today, (the purchase of the day).

In the centre of Central Market are many stalls where the sell different stuff from watches, to sarongs, to cookies, and wooden name engrave badges. This one stall in particular sold the latter, as well as did rice grain pendants. They actually WRITE on tiny grains of rice, and then put them inside the pendant!

It's ridiculous, but I had to get one done. I've never heard of it being done in New Zealand, and what is more Asian than having your name written on a rice grain?

So what you do is select yourself a pendant from a range of different styles - from ones with cartoon faces, to crystals, to little pendant canisters you could fill with flowers - and then you ask to get your name written on a grain of rice.

 

Once written on the grain of rice with this super fine pen, the pendant is filled with this liquid, then sealed at the top with either a phone charm link, or a keychain link. I went with the keychain, because who has phone loops on smart phones?

 

Once done, it looks like this!:

 

The only problem I have is that my grain of rice appears to be stuck to the top. It must have been accidentally fused to the super glue when I put it into my bag upside down, so now the rice is stuck like that and doesn't float. But never mind, it still looks cool and I got all 7 letters of my first name written on it - cause having more letters on a grain of rice is just way more impressive.

Meal of the day (Day 5):

I still had a decent meal yesterday at Old Town - it's like the equivalent of Starbucks, but Malaysian style. I only wanted a snack so I got some classic kaya (coconut jam) and butter on toast, served with their iced "enriched chocolate". The butter was more like air-whipped butter and not New Zealand butter, and there wasn't a great deal of spread on it - but hey, when you're hungry, you'll eat.

Meal of the day (Day 6):

 

Meal of the day has to go to the Central Market food court meal I had - a Senta Special Kway Teow. It actually tasted like Kway Teow with Wat Tan Hor - but luckily I love the two, so it was just a happy fusion meal. Drink of the night however goes to the Milo Dinosaur. It's been years since I last had one, and I had that tonight at Pappa Rich. It's an ice milo, but just with a heck of a lot of milo on top. Spoonfuls and spoonfuls of milo. I don't care how unhealthy it is, it's super delicious and it's probably the reason why I'm still awake at this time. Gosh I love Milo.