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 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.

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album// Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - DAY 3// March 2025

We headed back to the Malaysia Food Village for breakfast before our busy day. Wes got the breakfast set again and I went with a shrimp omelet this morning. I really wanted a pork & rice bowl, or some fried eggplant & dumplings, but neither of those stalls were open, yet. 😠 My omelet was really good with lots of shrimp so it wasn't a bad choice.

We spent the rest of the morning & early-afternoon at the Batu Caves. 🌄 If you look up things to do in Kuala Lumpur, the top 2 are the Petronas Twin Towers and the Batu Caves. The caves ah-mazing 😲 and hands down the best part of the trip for me. 

How utterly cool is this?? 😮 I've never seen anything like it, obviously in not real life, but I also haven't seen anything like it in movies or travel shows.

The caves are a religious site with statues and temples throughout. There are 272 colorful stairs to climb to get up to the cave. We got there before it got busy so there wasn't too much congestion on the stairs. They were a lot steeper than I thought they'd be from the pictures I saw online. But, there are handrails and platforms where you can stop to rest (and take pictures📷), so everyone was managing just fine up & down the steps. The weather was somewhat nice. It was still really humid but at least it was cloudy that day with a slight breeze. ⛅

Monkey enjoying his snacks, bottom right.

There are monkeys EVERYWHERE! 🐒 They are used to people so they were just going about their day while everyone was trying to photograph, feed & touch them. Some of them interacted with humans but most of them couldn't care less about us. One of them tried to take my sunglasses. LOL And we saw one snatch some snacks out of a guy's hand. The monkeys roam freely but chickens and a peacock & peahens were kept in a cage inside of the cave. We also saw one solitary squirrel and a stray cat.  

Chickens, peacocks & hens inside of the green railing. The lone squirrel is somewhere in the mountains; I got a picture of him but you really gotta zoom in. LOL

After sweating up all the stairs and dodging monkeys, we entered into the limestone cave. It was probably only a couple of degrees cooler inside but it felt great! The cave is gigantic. I wasn't sure what to expect but I was completely blown away. 👀 It was like its own little village in there. There were souvenir booths at the entrance, a few temples throughout, a lot of statues & religious symbols scattered around, and other things we could walk around and look at. And yes, more pigeons & monkeys!🐵

I think it's so impressive that indigenous peoples felt so strongly about their gods that they not only discovered a cave in the center of a mountain to use as a place of worship, but then also built numerous temples and monuments inside of it. 

You'll have to super zoom in but the mountain (largest picture) is covered in monkeys. They were all out and watching us, hoping someone would drop their lunch.😆

The view going downstairs.

Our descent down the stairs was a bit more difficult (in my opinion) because the sun had come out by then, there were a lot more people, and I kept worrying I'd trip and come tumbling down. Luckily, we made it back to the base in one piece. 😁 The suggested time for visiting the caves is 1-2 hours. We gave ourselves 2 1/2 hours before the next Grab pick up. I think we only spent 1 to maybe 1 1/2 hours at the caves proper. But, there are shops, restaurants, and smaller caves & statues in the surrounding area so we spent the entire 2 1/2 hours looking around. 

The best grass jelly I've ever had; partly because it was the only cold/refreshing food I could find and partly because it wasn't out of a can like what I usually get at the Asian grocery store. The other refreshing meal option is whole coconuts.

It was lunchtime but, once again, we were too hot to have any appetite. I really wanted to eat something cold and was SO EXCITED when I saw a picture of grass jelly in the window of one of the restaurants. I got the herbal jelly with rice balls and white sugar syrup. 😋 Wes just got some water and a soda.

There were nature "artistic" walks, more temples & smaller caves, and a "snow cave" in the area but they all cost money to go in, so we skipped. I was pretty curious about the snowy one, though.

We slowly headed toward the Grab pick up location after eating. We stopped to peer in some of the smaller caves but didn't go in because they cost money.
   *an aside - We didn't think we'd need cash on this trip (assuming a credit card would suffice); another thing we got wrong from yesterday. The most common way to pay is with a digital wallet, but not any of the ones I have -- no CashApp and no PayPal. 😩 Wes attempted to download one via QR code but it was weird so we just got cash from the money exchange center (which are everywhere so it wasn't too much of a hassle). We also needed cash to use the public restrooms.*
Anyway, we walked along the path to the Grab station, taking more pictures of statues, saw some more monkeys, passed an ear piecing booth and other souvenir stalls, found our ride and headed back to the hotel. 

Last picture from the Batu Caves - shops and restaurants.

Our Grab driver was watching Indonesian Idol (I hope Angie won; she was really good!🎤) on his second phone as he drove (while his first phone pinged more pick ups and text messages). Normally, I would think this is unsafe but this guy knew what he was doing! He was our youngest and most efficient Grab driver. 🚘 He skillfully navigated the rush hour traffic by weaving in & out of lanes, flashing his lights at other cars that were in his way, and honking at all the right times. 🚗 The traffic in Kuala Lumpur is always busy and the motorcycles zigzag in between cars without abandon. 

Its hard to tell in the picture but the top left is a rainy view from our hotel room.

We saw a couple of American fast food chains around the hotel and decided that for lunch, we'd go see if they had any Malaysian versions of hamburgers & pizza on the menu.  It started raining when we were on our way back from the caves so I was going to order take-out... but the quickest a Grab could deliver was almost an hour. Thanks, rain and rush hour 😩 The closest restaurant to the hotel was a KFC. 🍗The rain was spotty so it didn't rain on us the entire walk. And, luckily, this was the only time it rained on our entire trip. I got popcorn chicken (that tasted exactly like the American recipe of 11 herbs & spices) and a bowl of rice, spicy peanuts, cucumber, and a hard boiled egg that was sort of sweet. Wes got the classic chicken nugget meal with fries and a Coke.🍟

After lunch, we headed out again. 🎨 Immersify KL is a new immersive art museum that opened about a month before we visited.  Wes said he's not a fan of AI generated art, but I've never been to a digital art museum so I was excited to see it. I was a bit worried that it would be crowded since it's still a new attraction in town, but we went on a weeknight and it wasn't busy at all. 😀 The museum is divided into 11 zones; each zone has it's own immersive theme. Some of the zones are small rooms with capacity limits, but we didn't have to wait in line for any of them.

Zone 1: we were greeted by a beautiful color-changing garden when we first walked in. I think all of the flowers are native to Malaysia but I can't fully remember the zone's artist statement. This was one of my favorite rooms 🌺 and great way to start our immersive experience. 

Zone 2: we left the peaceful flower fields for a thundering waterfall. I did not like the second room at all! 😖 The change from tranquil music to loud rushing water felt really jarring to me.🐘 A baby elephant emerged from the waterfall and tried to climb up a rock. 🐘The mother elephant came out to help it and blew it's trunk, which was also super loud & unsettling.

I don't make a very convincing angel or astronaut. 😅

Zone 3: next was a small room dedicated to selfies. 📷 This was the first of 4 rooms that had a capacity limit. The screen showed a moon, angel wings, and flower with instructions to stand in front of the projections to take pictures of your silhouette. We were to pose as the projections changed to a new picture every few seconds. I think I did it right. LOL 

Zone 4: was one of my favorites!! It was a small room made of mirrors that had lanterns hanging from the ceiling. 🏮 The lanterns hung at different heights and changed colors. It reminded me of the Kusama exhibit we saw at the Bentonville art museum a few years ago. I loved walking around in the darkness with the neon colors brightly shining around me 😄

Zone 5: was a pretty boring one. We walked into what reminded me of the old Microsoft screen savers from the 90's. 💻 I think there was some music, too, but I don't remember. We just quickly walked in & out of this one.  

Zone 6: the next "room" was a tiny triangular closet that was made of mirrors. We stood in the middle as the art changed around us. 💥 There was a neon splatter painting (my favorite), one that looked like we were in outer space, and a techy one that made it look like we were inside of fiber optics.

This room was giving mega Lisa Frank vibes!

Zone 7: found us leaving the small rooms and going back out into a large space. We were in the middle of the Malaysian jungle! 🌴 We were surrounded by plants, birds, and snakes. A tiger walked up to greet us. 🐯 Then a large curious gorilla walked up. He looked & sniffed at us, and decided he didn't like us! So, he started beating on the glass and shattered it to break out. 🐵 Then the scene ended and warped around again. I think we stayed to watch it twice, but I forgot to take a picture of the gorilla both times. LOL 

You have to squint but me, Wes, Athena and Zephyr's names are floating around on one of those stingrays.

Zone 8: this was a room for children but I participated anyway. 🐋🐙 The room was a large aquarium made up of sea creatures that we colored. 🐟🐠 I dedicated a stingray to our little family, but you can't really our names on it. After coloring our art, we gave it to an attendant to be scanned in and projected onto the screen. All of the children were writing their names on their sea creatures, which looked so much better! 🐡

I showed my coworkers and they said my DDOK lobster was cool even if you can't see it. It's great to have a supportive team who always nod & smile at your silly ideas. LOL 

Wes bought thoughtful souvenirs for his team at work when we were in Chinatown. I didn't get anything for my coworkers (ooops 😬), so I decided to make art for them instead! I colored the top and sides of a lobster but you can't see my writing when it was projected. 🦞 All you can read is a small blurry version of "Oklahoma." Maybe I should have written on a larger whale instead. LOL 

In hindsight, I wish we had taken a selfie in this room. But at the time, all I could do was stand in awe.

Zone 9: this was both me & Wes's favorite room!! 💛😁 Wes claims that it is the only room that is truly immersive. A giant lantern hung from the ceiling and the light & shadow made it seem like we were in the middle of a revolving mandala drawing. It was also the only room that didn't have any white noise or music. We simply stood in silence as the drawing moved around us. It felt much cooler than I can describe!

This was the most immersive room because it had the giant projections, surround sound, and gusts of air blowing out to mimic wind.

Zone 10: I think this was supposed to be one of the highlights of the exhibit but I didn't really like it. We sat on the floor while a "movie" played around us. It started with a small tree and followed it's growth throughout the four seasons. 🌳 Then somehow we were in the sky, and the constellations came to life as whales started floating around us. 🌟 I'm sure there is a deep allegory within the movie, but I didn't get it and thought it was weird. 

Zone 11: the last room was an art museum. 🎨 I'm not a huge fan of the Impressionists (which is why I hadn't gone to any of the Van Gogh immersive exhibits when they were the hot thing to do), but I enjoyed it. I think being "inside" of the painting makes it more fun, even if you aren't a huge fan of the style. Wes begged to differ and said that the fact that all of the renditions of the paintings being so obviously AI generated took away from the experience. 

My favorite paintings in the "art museum" room.

Van Gogh's Starry Night and Monet's Waterlilies were obvious choices, but I liked that they included other artists, too. My favorite series was Klimt's gold paintings. We came into this room in the middle of the slideshow and I wanted to watch the entire thing. So we stayed to watch it one and half times, which made us a little late coming out for our Grab. But luckily, the driver will wait up to 15 minutes for us before charging an extra fee and/or driving off to their next pick-up without us. 

We headed back to the mall for dinner after the museum (it turns out that all of the restaurants we wanted to try were conveniently located inside of Suria KLCC 👍). I've been wanting to try the famous Din Tai Fung soup dumplings forever! There are a few Din Tai Fungs in California but we didn't get to go when we were in San Francisco. 🥟 I am so glad we went here because the dumplings lived up to all of their hype. 😋 It was my favorite meal on this trip!! And, I think Din Tai Fung was the only restaurant in the mall that was properly air conditioned. It was super busy during dinner but we got seated & served pretty quickly. The soup dumplings were obviously delicious, but I also really liked our cold noodles and spicy green beans. 🍜 We got peanut dessert dumplings, which I may have liked more than the renowned soup dumplings. 

My new travel goal is to eat at all the Din Tai Fungs.

And for the last activity of the day (is anyone still reading this, and if so, how much time have you wasted 😅) ... we headed outside to the Suria water fountains for their nightly show. The fountains lit up as the water danced & swayed to music. I would have liked to watch a bit more of the show but it was hot outside and we were tired from our extremely packed day (it was getting close to midnight by now), so we only stayed for one song.

Tomorrow is day 4 and ends our vacation. How have we already finished our once-in-a-lifetime anniversary trip?? 😱 It feels like we just got to Kuala Lumpur!?