One of our friends from Auckland (actually our daughter’s uni friend!) who grew up in KL is here visiting her family. We met up this week. It was such a  pleasure to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to live in both Malaysia and New Zealand. We chatted for almost two hours.  I probably talked too much, not that she gave any indication of being bored! We chose a restaurant that served local fare – she wanted some Malaysian food and I chose nasi lemak, which could be considered the national dish here. Though there are many variations, nasi lemak consists of fragrant rice and a hot spicy sauce with side dishes of sliced cucumber, roasted peanuts, boiled eggs and small fried fish. However, the food was almost incidental to our very enjoyable afternoon.

On the days I spend in KL, I usually treat myself to lunch, ordering something like smoked salmon salad or vegetable quiche – things that are not on the menu in any restaurant in Ipoh. But almost more important than the food, is the place itself. I choose a restaurant that has white tablecloths and serves the food on china plates. Most Ipoh eateries eschew tablecloths and you often get your (very tasty) food on a plastic plate. Yesterday I was at one of KL’s stupendous shopping centres where I found a restaurant that ticked all the boxes, plus there was wine on the menu! It is rare for me to be able to order a glass of wine so I thought why not? There I was at my beautiful table with my delicious meal on a white china plate, my glass of wine and my book. In came a woman and her daughter, both with their hair veiled and dressed in voluminous garments. The mother gave me a very disapproving look, the corners of her mouth turned down. They sat at a table a good distance away from me. The photograph above was taken at Wither Hills in Marlborough on a splendid summer’s day. Now that was a glass of wine to remember!

I spent several hours in the 1 Utama shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur this week. Utama is the Malay word for ‘main’. This is the largest shopping centre in KL and the fourth largest shopping centre in the world apparently. I went there because it is a convenient taxi ride away from Jim’s KL office and because there are some stores there that I wanted to go to. But it is overwhelming and exhausting finding one’s way around and one trudges for miles to get to a particular store. What struck me most was that the only people you see in those glitzy designer stores are the shop assistants. How do stores like Gucci, Armani and Tiffany survive when they never seem to have any customers? However, there is an café in 1 Utama that makes a coffee like one I would enjoy in New Zealand and I know exactly where it is. I headed there first. Then I went to the large bookstore but came away with only one book. The selection of books in English is very limited and most of the books displayed I’ve either read or I don’t want to read. I also went to the upmarket grocery store where they import food from all over the world, including New Zealand and Australia. This is indulgent because there is plenty of good food in our three local supermarkets in Ipoh. I bought kiwifruit, new potatoes, Marmite, hummus and, best of all, a beautiful salmon fillet which they packed on ice for me. I had it for dinner last night and it was delicious, especially as I also opened the bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc that I had lugged the length of 1 Utama!