Wes & Erica's vacation photo album// DFW, TX // August 2025

We took a quick trip to Texas in August to see Ghost on their Skeletour (for Wes) and to see the Return to Infinity: Yayoi Kusama exhibit (for me). I've been told, more than once 😖, that our vacations seem like an exhausting to-do list instead of a relaxing experience, so this time those two activities were literally all we did -- no extra stops, no last minute plans.😊 (I actually also wanted to go to Fuzz Lab, but their hours are weird & there wasn't a location near our hotel, which meant we'd have to stress to fit it in, so we skipped it.) We got to spend quality time lounging around in our nice hotel and I got a lot of crocheting done on our downtime.

Probably the largest sandwich I've see in my lifetime. I ate about 3/4 of it.

Wes has a couple of coworkers from the Dallas division of Paycom so we're always getting good restaurant recommendations. We had lunch at Weinberger's Deli in Grapevine, TX. (Downtown Grapevine is super cute, and I would have wanted to walk around their historic main street, which is railroad and dinosaur themed, if it wasn't 102℉ that afternoon.🌞) The deli was packed, even though it was around 2pm when we got there. Wes got Morgan's Turkey sandwich, which had both turkey & pepperoni, and I got the Vera Cuban. There are soooo many different sandwiches on the menu; it was hard to choose but I went with vera because it had cilantro on it. 🥪 We both liked our giant sandwiches, but also both wished we had gotten something else (Wes the muffuletta and me the lamb special). Wes saw a billboard for Grape Fest, advertised as the best wine festival in the region, annually in September in Grapevine on our drive out of town. 🍷 It's been added to the 2026 vacation itinerary! 

We went to Nando's (Dallas location -- about an hour away but so worth it) for dinner. 🐔 I learned from No Such Thing As A Fish that the Nando's franchise is the world's largest buyer of South African art because they decorate each of their restaurants with art made by indigenous artists... like they actively seek out native & emerging artists to feature in their various locations. So, of course the first thing I do when we walk in is look at all the art on the walls! 🎨 The menu even had art on it and a QR code that takes you to the artists from that location's social medias. That aspect of the restaurant is super neat, and the food was delicious, too! 😋 I rarely see livers on offer so I got them (even though I much prefer gizzards). OMG they were so tasty!! Wes isn't a huge fan of livers, either, and he agreed that they were very good. They had several sauce options to choose from; I got the Peri-paradise sauce over the livers and the Peri-ranch over the Brussels sprouts (Wes went with medium). We also sampled the lemon & herb sauce, which Wes really liked but I didn't. We got the Naughty Nata (Portuguese custard tart) for dessert, to-go because we were stuffed but couldn't turn down a sweet treat. LOL

I should have taken a picture of the fighter jet/airplane decor inside. It was definitely a theme restaurant. 

The next morning, we had breakfast at West Side Café, an airplane themed diner that is close enough to some sort of base or training facility that we could hear jets flying overhead while we ate. 🛫 Not sure if they built it there on purpose to really lean into the theme. LOL I wanted to try their bacon, cheddar & chive "tater kegs" but they're only served at lunch. (My newest foodie goal is to eat a tater keg -- a large tater tot stuffed with something yummy.) I ended up with Mama Sue's hashbrown casserole and French toast instead. The food was okay. I liked that their syrup is warmed up and Wes liked that his bacon was hickory smoked instead of Applewood smoked. 

We had no plans until dinner that evening, so we stopped in Café Azul on our way back to the hotel to get coffee to sip on the rest of the day. ☕ The little coffee shop looked so familiar but I don't think we've been before. I got the Mexican mocha and Wes got the churro latte. We stayed in Fort Worth's Cultural District, and right across the street from the Kimball art museum. I checked their website to see if they had any good special exhibits but nothing peaked our interest. Again, it would have been fun to walk around the area if it wasn't 100℉. Man, I HATE summer. 😠 Ugh.

I've never been a fan of bologna but the slices we got on the meat & cheese plate were really good. Wes was not impressed.

Our next meal (late lunch... early dinner... whatever meal you eat at 3:30pm) was at Taste of Europe, another restaurant recommended by one of Wes's coworkers. There is a small grocery store with Eastern European foods at the back of the restaurant. The market had some interesting things that we wanted to try, but nothing was going to keep well in the car while we were out & about. I tried a chicken kiev for the first time. It was good and I loved the lemon butter. 🧈 I could dip anything in that stuff! LOL I tried one of Wes's perogies. It was so heavy; no idea how he ate all 10 of them. I guess we wouldn't be having dinner until late night after the concert so it was a good idea to have a nice meal beforehand. 

The Ghost concert was a phones-free event (so no pictures for the next few paragraphs😢). The concept was terrifying at first (no phones... what if there's a terrorist attack, medical emergency, bad weather??!?! 😳), but it ended up being okay. Ghost's frontman claimed that not having your phone made you "more engaged with the band", but honestly, I think it was to protect his proprietary material -- no concert footage leaked on YouTube. I may have been a bit more engaged but I was also 100x more anxious. 😵 The concert was at the very nice & CLEAN Dickies arena. The employees placed our phones in Yondr bags for us as we walked in, and there were more employees outside of the arena waiting to unlock our bags as we exited. I thought the process would be more chaotic, resulting in a crush... and none of us having a phone to call for an ambulance, but it was very well organized. Kudos to the Dickies arena staff! 👍

Wes loved the concert; Ghost is one of his favorite bands, and that's all that really matters. My opinion is just blah, blah, blah, noise. 💀 This was our second time seeing them live. (First concert was at their 2022 Imperatour) I thought that maybe the first show wasn't amazing because the venue wasn't packed and our energy was off (it was in Lincoln, NE... not exactly a hotbed for heavy metal music). But this time, the Dickies arena housed a sold-out crowd and the vibe was top notch, and I still felt like Ghost wasn't having the time of their lives like we were. 😑 I guess my main problem is that it sounded so rehearsed-- exactly as they do on Pandora; at one point I wondered if it was even live. I know, its a weird complaint that the band sounded too good but that's just me. 🤷

Overall, the show was fun & we enjoyed ourselves.  I've become a Ghost fan over the years and I could recognize the hits. 🎶They played a few of the songs that Wes really likes that they didn't play the last time we saw them; I think he really likes the new Skeletá album so it was a good tour to go to. We wanted t-shirts but the merch line was insanely long before the show. I volunteered to step out during a lull to grab the shirts we wanted, but by the time I got the merch booth, our sizes were sold out. 😒 We had planned to get sushi after the show (Blue Sushi Sake Grill was just 10 minutes away), but it took ages to get out of the parking garage and back onto the main street. We settled for Taco Bell on the way back to the hotel instead; their taco pizza was no replacement for delicious sushi, but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to dinner at 11:30pm.

Hands down the best breakfast I've had in a while!! 😍 Definitely the best mimosa I've ever had.

The next morning, we had breakfast at Lucile's. 😋 We've been keeping a list of restaurants to return to each time we're in Texas; Wes has Hurtado BBQ and Blue Sushi Sake Grill, and I'm adding Lucile's. We ate off the breakfast menu, but I'm dying to try their lunch & dinner options. Lucile's is a cute little house built on a median and inside is filled with open air New Orleans vibes. Super cute decor and very  welcoming. Wes said his bacon was cooked perfectly. I got the crab lump benedicts, with huge lumps of fresh crab. 🦀 Everything we got was so good!

After breakfast, we headed back into Dallas for the art museum. It was still kind of early when we got there, so we got street parking right in front of the museum. 😁 I don't think we've ever been so lucky with street parking. We were only planning to visit the Kusama exhibit, but our tickets came with free general admission so I paid the max time (2 hours) so we could walk around. We got back to the car literally as the parking app's timer went off!

Oh how nice it would be to be a woman spinning yarn in a shop with her husband and cozy dog. #wistful 

The museum also had a pair of shoes that Yayoi Kusama made; she stuffed the shoes with balls of paper-or maybe it was rocks- and painted them, so they were no longer useful. I think it is supposed to represent being saddled down with ills to where you can't function fully as a human anymore.

The Kusama exhibit wasn't really worth the price 😒 so I'm glad we got general admission into the museum as well. I thought it would be larger, but it literally is a 10x10ft box. With no ventilation. There are glass pumpkins all around and the walls & ceilings are mirrors so we were standing in a pumpkin field, completely surrounded. Very cool concept... but there is a time limit and we were accompanied by a museum guard. We could only go in there one time for only 90 seconds. (When we went to the exhibit in Bentonville, we could go in as many times as we wanted and linger for as long as we liked.) I didn't mind the time constraint, but what ruined the experience for me was the guard. She clicked her stop watch when we got in and did not take her eyes off us; she was just doing her job and there was no way for her to be invisible in such a tiny setting, but it was truly distracting. We were free to take pictures & selfies and talk or whatever, but it felt so weird with her there. 😫 I couldn't feel engaged or immersed in my "immersive art experience" (which made me think of the Ghost concert the night before and decide that, yeah, I actually was pretty engaged then after all). 

We tried to find all the new acquisitions since its been a few years since our last museum visit.

The fuzzy pink closet was my favorite! Bottom right: my spoils from the gift shop. I've looked through the Dalí cookbook and there is nothing that I can make as a home chef 😢

We've been to the Dallas Art Museum once or twice before so we just took a quick tour around this time. Wes wanted to revisit the East Asian collection, and I had to say hi to the mummy (I'm obsessed!) I think we saw all the new (to us) pieces, and hit all the collections on the map.

Mummies are truly the best; I am still mad that we missed the Immersive King Tut tour a few years ago.

Check out the amazing detail on these two! 😲

The artist sculpted wind in the one on the left. WIND. How do you sculpt the concept of weather?! It really looks like the man's garment is billowing, and it blew my mind.

The piece on the right is made from beads. Tons & tons of tiny beads!

It was lunchtime after our museum visit. We drove up to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Plano, TX. I imagined it was a shopping center (the website boasted of a food court and Kinokuniya bookstore), but it was actually a giant Japanese grocery store. It was cool to walk around and look, but it wasn't really what we wanted for lunch. The Kinokuniya was a small stall in the store; kind of disappointing 😞 but we can cross another Kinokuniya location off our list. There was another stall with gumball machines, but with blind box figurines instead of gumballs inside. Each cost 3-4 tokens, and tokens were $5 each... no thank you, I can buy a legit tokidoki Unicorno for cheaper than that.

I should have gotten a picture of all the blind box gumball machines.

Luckily for us, we were in the Asian district of Plano and had plenty of other restaurant options. We went to Sichuan Folk, which was just across the street. All the diners were Asian and the menu was in Chinese, so we knew this place would be good. 😄 They had beef soup dumplings, which was a treat (I usually only come across the pork or veggie ones). I wasn't going to get a spicy dish, but I figured I had to since we were at a Sichuan restaurant. 🌶 I got the cold sesame noodles. They were so good but so spicy!! Wes got a spicy pork dish.

There was a boba place next door so we got drinks for the drive home. I got my standard go to... the strawberry matcha latte.🍵🍓 I liked that it had chunks of fresh strawberry in it. Wes got a fruit tea, and he said he didn't like the chunks of fruit. Opposites attract, I guess. 😆 We had to order from a kiosk, which forced us to customize the drinks. No forgetting to add boba, or questioning the sugar level or how much ice you want. I think all boba places should install these because I can never hear the cashier, who always mumbles, over the loud trendy music. LOL

🚗We went to Buc-ee's to fill up on gas & snacks and take our last potty break before the long drive home. We usually try to leave town mid-morning, but decided to stay a bit later since it was summertime, so the sun would be up longer. My night vision has majorly deteriorated but traffic was fine and we got home before it got too dark. 🌓Another Texas trip in the books! And a relaxing one at that. So long DFW, see you next year for Grape Fest! 🍇

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album// Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - DAY 4// March 2025

Our hotel was right next to Suria KLCC (the biggest & nicest mall in town!) and we went there every day but didn't actually walk through it and shop until our last day.

Our final day on vacation was *almost* perfect; the day started out fantastically and continued to go well until we got to the airport to prepare to fly back home. 🛫 There, we ran into a slight snafu that ruined our streak of having an ideal trip (😣but we're not going to talk about that because I'm genuinely trying to practice the "power of positivity" and optimism). 

My donut was frosted like the traditional flag/lanterns that we saw hanging everywhere.

Moving on...  🍩☕On one of our many trips to the mall, Wes noticed that there was a Dunkin' and wanted the classic coffee & donut breakfast. I got a rose mocha latte with whipping cream (which was waaaay too sweet and the rose flavor was grossly artificial; I felt like I was drinking a scented candle) and a yummy ketpat donut with pandan frosting and banana cream filling. I also went to a neighboring Indian restaurant and got chicken & potato and lamb & potato samosas. 

Our morning activity for the day was a tour of the historical Rumah Penghulu Abu Seman House. It is a traditional Malaysian house in the middle of the bustling city. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me, but its not a super popular tourist attraction. Our Grab driver actually asked if it was the right place when he dropped us off. 😬 I told him that I thought it was and we hesitantly made our way to the door. 

This historical house tour was my second favorite activity of the trip (nothing will beat the Batu Caves). 

Tours are offered at 11am and 3pm daily. We got there a couple of minutes before 11am. The receptionist was the friendliest/chattiest person we encountered in all of Kuala Lumpur.! 😄 She explained that the house is a World Heritage Site and asked where we are from and how our vacation was going. I told her it was our last day and asked if there was anything we needed to see before we left. She suggested the Kraft Komplex down the street. It is a handmade artisan market and the kitchen would be serving free porridge at 5pm to all visitors (to break the daily fast for Ramadan). That was a little late for us but we'd definitely give the market a look. 

All the gorgeous woodwork is original to the house, and done by hand. Its amazing how well how all of the old buildings throughout the entire city of Kuala Lumpur have been preserved. 

The house's website said we'd watch an informational video before our tour but we didn't see any tv's around. Instead we went to the little giftshop. Our tour guide arrived promptly at 11am and we sprayed ourselves with mosquito repellant, took a traditional straw fan, and headed out onto the grounds. We were the only two people there so we got a personal tour! 🏡 Our tour guide was a sweet young lady who was sooooo insanely knowledgeable about Malaysian history, culture, and of course, everything there is to know about the penghulu house. I imagine she must have been a history student. 

I'm adding Outdoor Kitchen to my next home's "must have" list.

The "penghulu" is the headman or chief of the town. His was the biggest house and it also served as a police station, jail, wedding venue, and community event center. We started outside in the garage area underneath the house. We were told that most of the cooking is done outside so the rest of the house wouldn't smell. 🍲 The #1 problem I currently have with cooking at home is that the entire house has begun to smell like a dirty/stale restaurant, so this outdoor cooking room spoke volumes to me. #chartrusewithjealously LOL Our tour guide also told us that having the house built on stilts prevents animals from coming in, and if a burglar came, the residents could easily push him off the very steep stairs.  

I want a vintage telephone and typewriter!

The first room is the headman's office. It looked like your typical office, but it also tripled as a police station and jail. 👮 She said that criminals would be temporarily held here, but I didn't see any doors with locks or bars. So I guess they all complied out of respect. She also said that he would bring both sides of the crime into his office for statements and conduct a small trial. 

Wes & I got to pretend to be guests of honor to be photographed in the community event room!

The next room was the wedding venue. 👰🤵 The bride and groom would sit at the end of the room while the villagers came to congratulate them. All well wishers brought (or was gifted, I can't remember which) a feather and a flower with an egg tied to it, which were symbols of fertility. Each couple staked flags with their wedding colors around town that lead to the house; everyone would know that the green couple, say me & Wes, is getting married on Thursday. After the wedding, the flags would disappear and a new color would be placed for the next wedding. 

The living room doubled as a community event center and was the largest room in the house. The house has very high ceilings and lots of windows for fresh air. The breeze was nice but I was still sweating profusely. Our tour guide didn't break a sweat, but she did agree that it was an unusually hot morning. 🌞 The front door of the house is much lower than the rest of the door frames so all guests would have to bow to the headman has they entered. Unless you're me... I walked through that door just fine with my 5"2' stature. 😂

The house has two bedrooms. I think I remember our tour guide telling us that the room with the red bed is the regular everyday bedroom while the other one, with the white bed, is used for guests and special occasions. The house has wide breezy hallways that lead from section to section. I was jealous at how spacious it is! 🏡 Our guide said that the entire community would club together to build a new house when needed, and if you wanted to move to a new plot of land, everyone would meet up to literally pick up your house and walk it over to the new area. 😲 But that required a petition to the headman with a really good excuse as to why you needed to move. 

The baby would be placed in a swaddle pouch that hung from the ceiling (top right). One of the toys is a little handmade beanbag; the children made those to practice their sewing (middle right). 🧵

The next room was the nursery. 👶 It is the biggest room in the house. The kids would play with toys that make noise (like the traditional marble game) while mom and the other women in the household would be in the kitchen in the next room. Our tour guide said that as soon as the noise stopped, they would suspect that the kids were up to something and could rush in the check on them. LOL The nursery is also the family's dining room. The food was kept underneath a wide basket to keep bugs away from it, and water was kept in cooling jugs. There was also an old Singer sewing machine, which I thought was super cool!  

The last room on our tour was the kitchen. 🍲 It is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I know gathering & eating is an important part of all Asian culture, so I assumed the kitchen would be one of the biggest (most important) rooms.🍛 But, a majority of the cooking is done outdoors and then cooked food is brought into the kitchen for its final preparation. Our guide showed us some of the tools that were used, including one that was for cracking coconuts. 🥥 She said that all food was found on the land. The family would raise chickens and eat coconuts and other vegetables that grew naturally. 🌴

Our tour guide took some nice pictures of us. All of the influencers we saw turned their phones upside-down to take pictures.  That's what she did and I think it is supposed to make the angle or perspective look better 🤷

After our guide (I wish I knew her name so I could give her a shout out; she really was great!!) wrapped up the tour of the house, she seconded the receptionist's suggestion that we go to the Kraft Komplex. It was just a block down from the house and she assured us that we'd make it there and back in plenty of time for our Grab pick-up. 

The complex is just 2 little shops but it looked so cool on the outside. The buildings were modeled after traditional Malaysian houses. The first "shop" was actually for displaying sample items. It had traditional garments, fabric, jewelry, and handbags. 👚 I wanted a small basket-weaved clutch but there was no where to pay for it. We walked around until we finally found a sales employee. I told her that I wanted to make a purchase and she said that I couldn't! 😐 After some back & forth, I finally understood that everything in the first shop is just for display, and we had to walk down to the second shop to buy the items that are actually for sale there. Weird. There was as small section of handbags for sale but none looked like the one I wanted. I found some clutches in a similar basket-weaved style but there weren't the same size or color. I wanted to ask the clerk if he had any others (or if I could just buy the one from the sample shop), but it was getting close to our Grab pick-up time and I think Wes was starting to get embarrassed at all the "arguing" (I call it "asking questions for clarification") I was getting myself into on this trip. So I left souvenirless. 😔

The only thing I really wanted was a purse from Dior, but it was more expensive than duty free would allow, and I can always just order it online. 

We spent the rest of the day at the Suria KLCC--Kuala Lumpur City Center--mall. There is a nice park that wraps around the back of the mall (which was on my to-do list), but it was too hot for an afternoon walk. 🌳 The mall is enormous!! It is separated out into four stories, with each floor having it's own theme, and more importantly- it's own food court (this is how we could eat every one of our meals there. LOL). The second floor houses all of the luxury brands. I wanted a nice handbag or pair of shoes, but most stores were by appointment only and once you made your appointment, you were expected to buy. I really just wanted to look around (without the pressure to purchase), so we window shopped instead.

Those two figurines in the middle, cabbage dog & the sassy eggplant cat, were way more expensive than anyone can possibly guess. Bottom right: my spoils 😍 2 fat quarters & a Unicorno figurine.

We always go to Kinokuniya on my annual birthday trip to DFW. I go for the tokidoki merch and Wes goes for everything else. This was our first major (aka large) Kinokuniya shop; we may have gone to one in San Francisco but it was nowhere near this big. This one had all of the manga and nerd culture stuff I'm used to seeing, but it was also an actual bookshop too. And it randomly had a fabric section! Granted it was part of the arts & crafts section, and only sold fat quarters, but I was still excited to see it 💗

I got cabbage, rice, shrimp & an egg. Wes got rice, bean sprouts, and lamb & chicken for his protein options.

After walking around two floors of the mall (I don't remember what the fourth floor is, but the third was children's stuff and sporting goods), it was lunch time. Malaysia has Malay, Chinese, and Indian cuisine. We ate plenty of Malaysian food and had a great Chinese meal at Din Tai Fung, so it was time for Indian food. 🦐 I walked around the food court and picked the restaurant that had the longest line; that one would have to be the tastiest, right? 😋 I ordered a combo plate with the BIGGEST shrimp I've ever seen! It looked straight out of an ocean documentary. LOL It was spiced, deep friend and delicious!

I ordered a peach yogurt tea drink to go with my meal (because no one serves water here 😠). It wasn't the best tea but at least it came with cute stickers. We spent the rest of the day on the first floor, which had a mix of stores and was more accessible (cheap 😅) to regular consumers. I listen to a lot of British podcasts and they're always talking about Marks & Spencer so I was excited to go in one, but I was not impressed. Wes wanted to go into Japan's UNIQLO for novelty t-shirts. He didn't find any but I picked up some cute things. 👕🎀 And, then came my handbag. 👜 I had decided I wasn't going to spring for a luxury brand but I still wanted something. We came across the Vincci store, which is a prominent Malaysian brand. Perfect!! A Malaysian handbag from my Malaysian trip 😍

Vincci was awesome and I wanted one of everything. 😍All the of handbags, accessories, and shoes are so cute!💛

We wrapped up shopping and headed back to the hotel for a quick nap and to pack. I'm glad I didn't go too crazy at the mall because we had just enough room in our luggage for everything. Our Grab driver to the airport was the only one who made small talk with us. 🚦 He said rush hour traffic that Friday wasn't as bad as it usually is. He then said that he got to the hotel early for us because the traffic and time of our flight was stressing him out. LOL He got us there in plenty of time! 

Goodbye Kuala Kumpur!! 👋 Durian is the fruit to eat here; I hate how it smells & tastes but I told myself I'd try it if there was a yummy way of preparing it. There wasn't so I skipped. There is a store with all durian based foods at the airport (bottom left).

✈ We had a long journey home ahead of us! As mentioned previously... airport drama... getting our boarding passes was a bit (okay, it was EXTREMELY) stressful, and we had to skip going to the "secret" rainforest in the airport, but we made it and we were soon seated on our comfy seats on the Korean Air flight back home. It was kind of a good thing that we didn't have time for dinner at the airport because we were served another million meals on our flight.

Our first flight was from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul Incheon. We had breakfast 🍚, which started with a shrimp & ricotta cheese crepe (not my favorite). The main was delicious beef congee, and fruit for dessert. The grapes weren't as large this time around. Surprisingly, this was the only meal were got. But, it was only 6-hours to Seoul. We had a little more time at the Incheon airport this time so I tried to get us on a tour or to see the airport's Korean Cultural Center/Museum, but we were too early for the tours and the museum was too far away. By the time we walked & bused to the terminal it was at, we'd barely have any time to look around before it was time to fly out again. 

Korean Air is doing it right with their 5-course meals!! 

I was more exhausted (physically and emotionally) than I thought I was, so I literally slept through the entire flight from Seoul to Atlanta, GA. 😴 We had terrible turbulence on this flight but I even slept through that! I remember waking up a few times to flight announcements and feeling kind of bounced around, but I really only woke up to eat. We had two main meals and a snack. I slept through the snack, which is fine because I was not hungry, but I was also kind of sad because Wes said the snack options were pretty good. Our first meal was lunch:

* we started with crab salad and champagne🥂 (these flights must go through absolute barrels of champagne!!) top left

* our soup & salad course was seared scallop 🍥 with assorted banchan (since I got the Korean meal option). Wes got the Western meal option which came with an actual salad, I think. Our menu said we'd be getting cream of green pea soup, which I was so excited for (split pea is one of my faves!), but the Korean meal came with a spicy soup that I didn't like. top right

* my main course was Korean Nutritious Octopus Rice.🐙 I thought it would be like a poke bowl or clay pot, but it was neither and I didn't really like it, either. I picked out the octopus bits and ate them with the banchan. My suggested white wine for the meal was Jan-Marc Brocard Chablis Premier Cru.  middle right

* we got a cheese course after our main dish, which was good (I love cheese🧀 so I am happy to eat it at any time) but it was kind of out of place in my Korean menu. The bread was a weird texture, so I ate my cheese with the grapes and nuts. bottom right

* I could NOT fit another morsel of food into my stomach but the flight attendant came by with dessert and who was I to turn down ice cream with assorted cakes? 🍨 bottom left

Our second meal was dinner, another multi-coursed meal.🍴 It was good, all of our fancy first class meals were, but there is just something off about airplane food. 😕 Maybe it's the altitude (I have read that does affect your taste buds) or maybe because it's not freshly prepared, but I didn't really like anything. I mean, I ate it and enjoyed it well enough, but it wasn't anything I'd request again. Anyway, for dinner we had:

* salad with cabbage, edamame, salmon skin and some other stuff thrown in, with miso ginger dressing. 🥗 The best part of the meal, for me. top left I think Wes said the main course was his favorite dish. 

* my main course was beef bulgogi with glass noodles. The beef was great but the onions kind of ruined it for me. bottom left Once again, my soup was too spicy. Eating soup during active turbulence (they call it "rough air" now. LOL) is so stressful! 😫 Wes got the Thai chicken curry.

* we got fruit for dessert. I ate the orange, skipped the pear and gave Wes the watermelon. right

Korean Air is my new favorite airline and I will only be vacationing to Asian countries from now on because I refuse to fly with anyone else. 🙆LOL Our Graff toiletry kit is so cute & I love all our lotions and stuff. Even Wes was impressed with it!

After 13 hours, we were back in the states. 🛬 We landed in that the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. We had a 3-hour layover so I tried to find us something to do. The airport's website boasted a bunch of "best airport" awards but I couldn't find a single thing for passengers to do (besides eat & drink). Oh well, we'd be home soon. We landed safe & sound, and about an hour early, at Will Rogers International Airport and were greeted by my mom & stepdad. Another trip in the books! Also, HAPPY 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!! 👫 #ericaandwes 💖 Our actual anniversary is this week and we plan to go out for a nice meal, but I'm not sure if anything will beat all the great food we had in Kuala Lumpur. I've already decided that we need a big international trip for each milestone anniversary... come on silver anniversary! 💍

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album// Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - DAY 2// March 2025

Before we start, here are some things to keep in mind if you ever want to vacation in Kuala Lumpur -
1. travel bloggers will tell you to start your day early because the weather is nicer... it is not. 😑 The weather is hot and humid literally from morning to night. ☼ But, it didn't rain as much as the weather apps predicted even though we travelled during "rainy season." I would still suggest starting your day early, not for the weather, but to avoid the crowds. The downside to that is a huge majority of restaurants don't open until 9-10am so don't expect a lot of breakfast options if you head out at 8am like we did every morning. 
2. wi-fi in public places is NOT free nor is it widely available. We learned that the hard way on day 1 (more on that to come).😖 All of the places you'd think offer wi-fi-- the mall, hotel lobbies, restaurants-- require a log in & password. We didn't get an international sim card, so for the rest of the trip, we planned our entire day (buying attraction tickets and booking Grab rides in advance) first thing in the morning while we were still at the hotel using the room's wi-fi, and then stuck to a very tight schedule.
3. we did A LOT of walking in 90℉ weather but there are no public water fountains or even places to purchase bottled water. No one was walking around with a water bottle. 💦 I thought that was nuts and was amazed that no one was suffering dehydration. Most places don't allow for outside food or drink so I wasn't even able to keep my water bottle on me like I usually do.
4. the travel posts/influencers I looked up on Instagram lead me to believe that English was widely spoken and the streets are walkable. Both are not true. 😣 Speaking of influencers, we saw so many of them!! 📸 They were unabashedly walking around with their phones out talking to an "audience" and filming themselves. Many of the female ones had a male partner following closely behind taking pictures of them. We got caught in an afternoon rain storm once... as we were running back to the hotel, we saw two girls dressed in cocktail dresses, heels and full hair & makeup filming a TikTok like it wasn't even raining. Hilarious. 

Top right - one of the stores had a bulletin board for tourists to leave a note with our place of origin. Mine is the only post-it from Oklahoma!

Now that all of my complaints are out of the way, I can start in on the fun stuff!! 😀 My plan for the trip was to head out for breakfast, an activity, and lunch in the morning. Then back to the hotel for a catnap and shower. Followed by another activity and dinner in the evening. Wes prefers a more laid back vacation but my way was the only way we'd get to cross everything off my "must see" to-do list. Relaxation be damned, it's tourist time!!

As mentioned previously, not many restaurants are open early for breakfast. We found the Malaysia Food Village in the basement of a shopping center. There were probably 10 stalls in the food court but only a couple were open by 8am. I think we were the only people there who weren't shop employees or janitors. LOL Wes got the "breakfast set" (soy sauced noodles with a fried egg on top, and an iced coffee) from the most popular stall. I went for the pork congee from a different stall. 🍚 I also got an iced Milo, which is their version of Ovaltine and a popular breakfast drink.

After breakfast, we hopped in our Grab and headed to Chinatown. 🚗 We got to Petaling Street right as the stalls opened, but unfortunately, not many were fully set up or ready for business. We did a quick walk through and headed to other parts of Chinatown. We passed many temples randomly situated in between stores and restaurants. It was still Ramadan when we visited so a lot of people were there for daily prayers. I would have liked to go inside to see some of the design & architecture but neither of us wanted to disrupt the worshipers, so we skipped. Some of the temples had plaques out front. I am amazed how old these buildings are (mostly from the 1800s!)

Central Market was my favorite part of Chinatown. It is a mall with shops inside and also outdoor stalls. We (mostly Wes) did 90% of our gift/souvenir shopping here. There were lots of funny knock-offs of movie & videogame characters and pop culture references. Most of the shops had your generic souvenir items, like t-shirts, key chains, and totes, but we found some really cool & unique stuff in a couple of them. I really wanted a pair of sandals but they didn't have the color I liked in my size. 😕

I couldn't get any pictures inside the mall or of any of the stalls because they all had "No Photography" signs and very watchful employees. 

The day we visited Central Market was also the day of their monthly "Makers' Hall" craft show. There was a sign outside saying we could watch the crafters make their items and talk to them about their artistic process. I was so excited! LOL I soon found out that all of the "crafters" are sales people employed by the actual artists who just work at the craft show. 😕Bummer. It was still neat to look around and we got some delicious fruity herbal tea. 

Middle pictures: the tea we got was so good & refreshing; I wish I remember which flavor mine was. I think it was apple. The lady running the booth suggested it to me because I said I like sweet drinks. 

We headed back to Petaling Street after we finished with Central Market. All of the stalls were set up by then so there was a lot more to see.😀 It was fun to walk around & look, but a bunch of the stalls sold the exact same things so it wasn't as great as I thought it would be. I saw a couple knock off handbags that I liked but didn't buy any. I almost bought one that I thought was $15, but I misheard the stall owner and it was actually $50. It was lunch time and I wanted to try a clay pot chicken place but neither of us were hungry. It was too hot to have any appetite, especially because all of the restaurants were outdoors and only sold hot foods (like soups & noodles). And the foods were also spicy hot, which didn't sound great either. 

I thought about getting some buttons from the sewing store but didn't see any I absolutely needed.

The last thing I wanted to do in Chinatown was visit the National Textiles Museum. It was across a major street and a body of water (from what I could tell on maps) so we couldn't walk there. No problem, I thought, we'll just pop into a building and use the wi-fi to hail a Grab. This was when we realized that there is no such thing as free public wi-fi... we were stranded 😳😨 It was mid-afternoon by this point and it was HOT (and I am much too old, grumpy, and out of shape for all this!😡). We walked all throughout Chinatown, stopping in any building, praying there was a connection. It took probably an hour of frantic walking before the Traders Hotel saved us. I got just enough of a signal to hail our ride back to the hotel.

Wes wasn't hungry for lunch after our stressful ordeal but I wanted to eat something. I found a restaurant with good reviews that was close to the hotel, and we headed out for another walk. My mistake was not fully looking at the restaurant's address. We walked around the area for ages and couldn't find the damn place. 😞 A local saw us and must have recognized the distress on my face because she asked if I needed directions. Turns out the restaurant was inside of the Suria mall (which I probably would have figured out sooner if I had realized the addresses of the two places matched 😑 yes, I am dumb).

We had lunch at Serai. I got a traditional chicken & rice dish--nasi lemak--that came with a salted preserved egg (my main reason for ordering it 😋). The rice was blue! Along with the delicious egg, the chicken was served with some fish chips, a sardine stuffed jalapeño, and a salad. Everything was so good but it was hard to eat with how hot/stuffy/uncomfortable it was. Trust me when I say I was SO SADDEN by this... my main reason for travelling is to explore food and eat eat eat. 🍴 But hardly anywhere had the amount of air conditioning Americans are used to. If I had to guess, I would say most buildings kept their thermostat at probably 78-80℉. I found it very difficult to enjoy a meal when I was physically uncomfortable from the lack of air, and had no appetite. 😵 I think Wes felt the same way because he also barely touched his food throughout the entire trip. 

Our evening activity of the day was the Petronas Twin Towers. Literally all of the travel guides I read claimed this to be the "must see attraction" in Kuala Lumpur. I beg to differ. The towers look amazing from the outside, especially when lit up at night, but the inside was sort of a rip-off. We went up to the sky bridge and observation deck in groups of 20-25. The elevators were tiny and we were herded like cattle. The tower employees weren't interested at all at giving us a tour so we just kind of aimlessly wandered around until it was time to pile back into the elevator for the next floor. I guess most people were there just to take selfies, but I'm a nerd and wanted a proper tour filled with fun facts & history. 

The view from the sky bridge was really cool and our tour time slot coincided with the water fountain show outside of the Suria mall. We could also see our hotel all pretty and lit up from the bridge. I do admit that the city skyline is gorgeous and the height of the towers is an architectural achievement but it did seem kind of like a tourist trap. 😒 The windows on the observation deck were dirty and had a terrible glare from the lights outside so it was hard to even get a good picture. My favorite part of the "tour" was our disgruntled elevator porter. He crammed us all in and said that if we felt claustrophobic or unsafe its because the elevator only supports 20 people but his boss makes him put at least 21-22 passengers in. He made it clear how unhappy he was about this, and told to all leave a bad review online and report the safety violation. Hilarious, I love his sass 💅

After the Petronas Twin Towers, we headed back to the mall for dinner. We ate a Madam Kwan's, another popular authentic Malay restaurant. This was the first time that day I got a cool beverage; drinking water is literally impossible to find here!! Restaurants don't offer ice water, it has to be ordered off the menu and it comes at room temperature in tiny glasses with no refills. Because of this, my iced lychee juice tasted better than anything else I had ever drank. LOL Wes got fresh watermelon juice and he said the same thing. I ordered the mackerel fried rice🐟. It was really good but, again, it was hard to eat hot--temperature and spicy-- food while I was also hot, and sweating in the stuffy mall. 

It must have been a combination of the heat and jetlag from the first day because this entire post sounds like me complaining just like an entitled American would. 😅😬 The lack of wi-fi did make things a bit stressful but Chinatown really was a ton of fun to walk around and shop. I loved my three Malay meals. And now looking back on it, the Petronas Twin Towers was actually pretty cool. All of the high-rise buildings in the city were. 🏢 Tomorrow, day 3, was my absolute favorite day on vacation... so brace yourself for A LOT of pictures.