Mallcontent

Friday the 6th

Maybe I watched Crystal Lake too early. Maybe Sky should’ve put it all out next week! Anyway. Right. Friday is my only full day in Malaysia, and I was pretty much outright instructed to make the most of it. For CONTENT, y’see.

First, then, breakfast. I’d slept well on the huge and comfy bed with whatever the default pillows were, had me GLP-1 and done the nil-by-mouth for half hour, during which time I wrote the start of yesterday’s post. So I guess breakfast wasn’t strictly first, but this is too much pedantry and minutiae even for me.

Hey, what about the outside?

Oh yeah! I figured out how to open the blinds properly, and so the view from my room was exposed. Pretty good!

The window is large enough that you can see a fair bit in multiple directions tbf, and the window in the lift lobby even larger - revealing that there’s a big pool area a few floors below me.

Enough landscape, get to the food

OK OK. Right. The Hilton has at least 5 or 6 restaurants and bars, and the breakfast buffet is served in Vasco’s on the lobby floor. It is a phenomenal spread. Possibly one of the best I’ve ever seen, up there with the Shangri-La in Singapore which I realise means fuck all to basically any of you.

The restaurant was busy and I felt very uncomfortable taking photos of the counters and stuff, so you’ll have to make do with a description. There’s standard full English; a japanese counter; two fruit counters; a salad counter; a TON of sugary pastries and cakes; cereal; some weird vegan “alternatives to non-vegan food” stuff; and a vegetarian Indian counter, where I filled my plate with mushroom curry and rice and pakora and stuff.

I also had fruit. I was going to include a terribly boring picture of said fruit right here, but honestly it’s such a terribly boring picture it’s not even worth mentioning that I took it.

Oh, yeah, I did take a pic of the weird vegan stuff. That was empty, probably for good reason.

Washed breakfast down with some pink guava juice and went back upstairs to blog, and narrate, and kick off the creation of a video. Helen had been chiding me that I absolutely must start using my voice clone because it’ll just take far too long out of my day otherwise, and my responsibility is to get outside and experience stuff for CONTENT.

I did not use my voice clone yesterday. More about thaat later.

In the end, blogging and narrating took a while but frankly that’s because I’d done a lot, wrote a lot, spoke a lot, and it’s all brand new. As of this trip, all authoring is done using an app I’ve developed (with Claude Code, of course) to completely replace the Adobe bollocks I’d hated using so much for Stockholm. It’s not without bugs, in fact I just had to pause, take a breath, and mutter for god’s sake at it during the previous sentence, but it’s still so pleasing to me that I’m self-sufficient now.

LEAVE THE HOTEL THEN. WE NEED CONTENT.

Right right right yes yes yes stop whinging. Of course I’m going to leave the hotel. At about 11:30am. WHICH IS FINE. Had been chatting a bit to my friend Tom, since I’m in his time zone now, and he asked me if I needed any beer venue recommendations for Singapore. I did not. Then he more sensibly asked if I needed any for Kuala Lumpur, and supplied me with two.

Down in the lift. Out to the corridor. Down in another lift. Along the long corridor. Down a third lift. Through a busy Sentral station concourse and up an escalator into Nu Sentral mall. Mentally bookmarked the branch of Decathlon that’s just up there on the right. Left Nu Sentral mall, popped into Family Mart to very slowly be sold a bottle of Coke Zero (possibly the latest first mention of Coke Zero or Diet Coke in a trip?). Then to the ticket machine. Time to get some public transport.

The ticket is, well, I guess technically the word “ticket” doesn’t really infer any specific physical representation. But I expected a little credit card sized bit of paper, and what I got was a circular plastic token.

The ticket machines, at least the ones I was using, were next to the arrivals only platform which wasn’t helpful. Scooted round to the other side and put my drink in my bag, since I wasn’t sure if you were allowed food and drink on the monorail. Oh yeah. This is a fuckin’ monorail!

I was going 5 stops, to MR6 Bukit Bintang. Meant to be a decent, busy area full of shops and stuff and also one of Tom’s recommended venues. But first let’s ride me a monorail! 🚝

It wasn’t the most picturesque ride and it was tough to get photos anyway, since I was standing and it’s a very twisty turny route. I was correct that you can’t eat or drink onboard, in fact the list of things you’re not allowed to do is extensive and includes the transportation of pungent items.

The token ticket is scanned like any other NFC thing on the way in, but on the way out you put it in a coin slot. Cute. Outside the confines of the monorail I loitered, since I was allowed to now, and drank the rest of my Coke Zero, since I was allowed to now. Then I wondered where on earth I was. Nothing looked particularly attractive around here.

There’s a maze of walkways suspended above ground. I descended some stairs and wandered up to the big junction where there were loads of people, most of them taking photos of the big junction. So I took a photo of the big junction ‘cos I wanted to fit in.

I crossed over to where everyone else was going, and went into a mall. Didn’t want to buy anything. Wasn’t interested in getting an apartment in the 7th highest building in Malaysia or whatever it was the real estate folk were so proud of. Ended up basically walking in a big circle and came out back underneath the monorail station. Not going well so far.

By now it was well past midday which meant Beer Bank should be open, so I made my way up there. Internet says it’s kind of hidden, a secret entrance out back of a convenience store. Intriguing, and reminiscent of that place in, where was it, Moscow? 2015? Anyway, I navigated my way around and found a branch of Family Mart that in no way had any secret entrances to a bar out back. Where is it?

Spotting the sign, I walked into the other convenience store and straight through it, into Beer Bank.

Crikey, that’s a lot of beer! Had a good nosy at the tons of fridges, which were mostly stocked with exactly the same beer as I can (and do) buy regularly from the Peppered Pear Pantry in Godalming, about a 15 minute walk from my home. Northern Monk, Beak, Verdant, etc, all these English breweries. Don’t get me wrong, they all make great beer, but I don’t feel like this is what I came to Kuala Lumpur for.

En route to Beer Bar I’d had a glimpse of the Petronas Towers. I really don’t know my way around KL much and didn’t have a clue if I was close by, but apparently I was. Even better, there’s a covered walkway specifically from Bukit Bintang all teh way to them. Air-conditioned too, supposedly.

Fantastic. This is basically just the sort of thing I was after. Let’s head off to the towers then.

KLCC

It’s not just one long corridor, there are offshoot corridors at a regular cadence down to hotels, malls, stations and more. Lots of people wandering through in every direction.

After, I dunno, 10-15 minutes or so you are forced down to ground level and then down another level into a shopping mall with an aquarium in it. Tons of kids and families and people in general around here, the aquarium is right next to the food court and it was lunchtime. I wasn’t actually sure where I was, but around the way there was a sign saying I should exit up some stairs and I’d be at the towers. OK I’ll do that then.

I was not, in fact, at the towers. But I was at KLCC, the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center which is apparently the best convention centre in SE Asia. I do not have the experience to know whether I agree with this award.

Anyway. Greenery! There’s loads of greenery. A big park with loads of, like, trees and stuff. And people. But mostly trees.

And the towers! This park is, I guess, in “front” of them? Anyway you can see them from various viewpoints and I, like hundreds of other people, took a selfie. This also proves it was really me and not some robot clone.

Anyway it was really nice to be away from the streets and in some civic nature.

Oh yeah, there was all this water and stuff. Lakes, I guess you’d call them. Since they’re lakes ‘n all.

ALL THE MALLS

From that mall I crossed the street and went into <drum roll> another mall. Suria KLCC I think? They had a big diwali/deepavali thing going on, because that starts in a couple of days.

As malls go it seemed pretty high end, and absolutely chock full of people. Coming out the other end I found myself actually in the Petronas Towers, much to my disoriented surprise. There’s an F1 car hanging up, and there’s like a philharmonic orchestra venue or something, and some young lad was playing the piano very well.

Back into the mall, I found another exit that’s a big underground walkway back to the mall that had the aquarium in it. Also Malaysia’s first ever AI powered recycling machine, which gives out loyalty points too. It isn’t clear what role AI has to play here.

Back in the food court, I looked at every shop and stall and thought everything looked nice but I absolutely wasn’t hungry enough for basically any of it. So instead I went in like a 7-Eleven or something and bought a diet coke and single finger kitkat cookies and cream edition. Back into the Bukit walkway for me.

At the other end I was too early. I’d gone back here to visit another bar with a good reputation, but was under the impression it didn’t open until 3pm. I’d got to the vicinity at about 2.30pm, so I did what all the locals do and popped into another mall. Winky Walnut ice cream is by the entrance and for some reason I am massively freaked out by Winky Walnut. I do not want your ice cream, mate.

This mall was called, eh, I can’t remember now. I’m sure a photo will come along any moment to remind me, ‘cos I recall taking one that said the mall was elite as it showed off the primo eating options such as Burger King.

Out the back of the mall there was a fountain and another deepavali display and, um, I think there was another mall across the road.

I went back in and through Pavilion Elite to the walkway.

I was still walking quite slowly, waiting desperately for 3pm to arrive. Disoriented again, I was very surprised to find myself opposite Beer Bank and briefly considered going back in once I’d found Taps - but - wait - there it is. And it’s already open!

Taps! Beer!

So I went in Taps. Turns out it actually opens at midday. And it was fucking brilliant.

The rain was unrelenting, so guess what I did? That’s right, I had a fourth beer. I mean it was properly wet outside and I don’t have an umbrella or anything waterproof with me and also it’s happy hour (until 9pm).

By now there were about 8 members of staff, and I was the only customer. Bit odd. The music had been half decent the whole time, basically a screamo playlist interspersed with The Scorpions and a very incongruous James Blunt.

As I apparently tend to do these days, I spent some time messing about with the AI image playground thing on iOS too. Took a photo I thought was good, and chose to absolutely fucking ruin it. Let’s start with the real one.

Now let’s look at this nonsense (for those of you listening, either go and read my blog, or watch the video version).

OK look. I should go. The staff warned me about the rain as if I was somehow unaware. I was not. Upped and left, and then stood basically right outside sheltering from the rain wondering if it would pass any time soon. It did not. Oh well, let’s get piss wet through on the way back to the monorail.

Back to the hotel

It was rush hour by now. First monorail was completely rammed but whatever, I wanted to get a photo of the train arriving anyway so I waited.

Since this reminded me of that Simpsons episode about the monorail, I looked it up to make sure I’d remembered the place name correctly and learned that Conan O’Brien was a Simpsons writer. I had no idea. Anyway. Monorail! And more pics, including an apparently less blurry token. And some other random stuff I’d forgotten to include further up.

It was very crowded, which I assumed was because the destination was Sentral but in fact it largely emptied out about 3 stations prior. Through Nu Sentral mall, down into the station, up the escalator, along the corridor, up the lift, along the next corridor, up the lift and whaddya know just like that I’m back in my room.

There’s a new animal on my bed. I forgot that yesterday there’d been this little weird towel troll thing, I guess? well tonight there was a swan.

Charged my phone, chatted to Helen, did a whole bunch of not very much. Decided that since I brought a synthesizer with me, I should play around with it for a bit. That’s the point, after all. So I literally droned on for half an hour or more.

Oh my god! This is a literal staff manual from 44 years ago on how to serve drinks to people. It’s fucking incredible. There’s a section on actual cocktail recipes, but also detailed advice on how to actually speak to or interact with people. It’s AMAZING.

Absolutely superb. So good in fact I couldn’t turn down the third Guinness offer when it came. Also still no update on parkrun, however. And by now I was properly dog tired, and so went back up to the room.

I was also still chatting away merrily to Helen. Well, I say merrily…

She had a critique of yesterday’s post, y’see. Apparently the writing is good. The pictures are good. It was a good blog post. A good video even. But my voice… I sounded, what, bored? Disinterested? Just not as good as the two Stockholm chapters.

Now this was entirely fair. Recording the narration yesterday had felt fucking odd, sat here in strange surroundings talking to myself and no autocue so I was having to scroll things by hand. Helen insists I use a robot clone voice, however, and when I made my clone say an intro piece warning listeners that it’s a clone… it sounded great.

And that’s when I realised. I’m jealous of my clone. It’s better than me. I can see it now, people will still invite me out to the pub but insist that instead of speak, I type my responses into the elevenlabs app and get my clone to reply instead. God damn it. So I resolved to try better today, and narrate with more effusiveness and expressivity and maybe even buy a small mic for improved sound quality in echo-y hotel rooms.

But actually, I might not even have time to narrate all this so for all I know, as I type this final paragraph, you might be listening to the clone right now. If you are, don’t be too complimentary, please?