Chinatown

So one of the many great things about moving to Malaysia is the number of different cultures and customs we'll get to learn about in a real-life setting.  We have now turned off the Discovery Channel we were so comfortable watching from our humble home back in Houston and have tuned into the real life Discovery Channel playing out before our eyes here in KL. Just last week I took a tour of Chinatown and learned about the history of the Early Chinese and the famous Kapitan Yap Ah Loy, the founder of Kuala Lumpur.  We stopped in an old shop selling expensive herbal and dried food items including shark fin, bird nest and ginseng (just don't ask me what any of them are used for other than as good material for including in a blog).  I also got to visit the “See Ya” Temple, the oldest temple in KL, and watch as many local Chinese men and women made offerings to the various gods, spirits and ancestors with incense sticks. The tour concluded with a non-halal lunch served in an old Chinese restaurant where the food was still cooked in old iron cast pots. Menu items included sweet and spicy everything, from pork to chicken to fish to beef....and I'm sure hoping that's all...and for those of you who know me well, you know that this kind of lunch has to rank towards the top of my all-time biggest adventure list. :) I've come a long way since my plain ol' peanut butter sandwich days and eating salads without dressing, but no matter how far I travel or what kind of meal I try next, my heart will always beat (and my stomach always growl) for a nice jar of extra crunchy Jif. 

 

Sunlight shining through the windows of See Ya Temple in Chinatown