TacoCat’s Travels #143 (Kuala Lumpur): Visiting Bear Friends and Hipster Cafes! 🐻

January 2022 · 6 min read · Petaling Jaya

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last couple of posts, we're currently on a brand new journey back in mid-March 2019 when we flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for an event that Sean got invited too! Since we have friends and family there in KL it also gave us a chance to visit them!

So last week, we took a flight from the new Changi Airport Terminal 4, arriving in KL shortly after, and met up with our friend who took us to dinner at Village Park Restaurant to eat Nasi Lemak! Apparently it was a pretty famous restaurant and for good reason too since it was really good!

But that wasn't all that we did that day because our friend dropped us off at 1 Utama Mall which was near to our hotel and we went window shopping!

15 March 2019. Friday.

If you've been to Malaysia before I'm sure you'll know PARKSON, which is a big department store there. And there was a small section of We Bare Bears merchandise!

If you've never seen We Bare Bears before it's an adorable and American animated TV series on Cartoon Network about follows three bears, Grizzly, Panda, and Ice Bear, and their awkward attempts at integrating with the human world in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Source: Wikipedia) It's really cute and is full of lessons on acceptance and how to fit in, and I think reflects on the creator Daniel Chong's experience of being an Asian American.

Even though it's a show marketed for "kids", it's definitely a feel-good show that people of all ages can enjoy so definitely give it a shot!

Ever since I started watching I've been a huge fan of We Bare Bears, especially Ice Bear! So this display of WBB merch was like a dream!

It was actually just this corner of the store so it wasn't that big, but it was still something that I could never find in Singapore! We have had some pop-up stores here and there but those were pretty temporary and definitely not affiliated with any big department store here.

There was a lot of shirts, bags and plushies! But unfortunately even with the conversion rate it was still pretty pricey..

This bag reminded me of the tote life episode which is really fun!

Here's a clip:

After that we walked around and found this goofy shop with lots of hipster stuff, including these silly glasses!

We were getting hungry for a snack so we bought a drink and a chocolate croissant from this cafe called Chizu & Honzu, which looked really cozy despite being in the middle of the floor!

Source: Atap.co

There wasn't really much else in the mall that we were interested in other than the AEON supermarket so went there to get some drinks and snacks to bring back to our hotel!

I don't think we have AEON here, so the last time we visited an AEON was actually in Japan! And in true Japanese fashion, it was clean and very nicely designed and arranged, and definitely more spacious compared to most of our supermarkets here in Singapore!

We got some snacks and juice, deciding to try some different ones that we can't find in Singapore before taking a car back to our hotel to rest up for the night!

16 March 2019. Saturday.

The next morning, we made sure to wake up earlier in time for the breakfast buffet! I think it was only until 11am so we went downstairs by 10. While there wasn't too big of a spread it was pretty sufficient!

As always there were different types of bread, cereal and fruits, as well as cooked food like Rosti Potato, Chicken in Cream Sauce and an omelette station!

Sorry I didn't take much of the food it got pretty crowded after that and I was starving to get all the food I wanted!

After breakfast, our friend, Dean, came and picked us up from the hotel and he drove us back to his house so we could hang out and play some games! We also got to meet his lovely parents who were great hosts!

Their house was actually very nice and kinda resembled a library/cafe?

It was a pretty big house that's for sure. And we wound up playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch! Fun times!

After gaming for a couple of hours, we were getting a little hungry so Dean took us to this little cafe bistro-like place that he likes to frequent. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of place and I didn't take a picture of the signboard.. dammit. Sorry about that!

But Sean did take an insta story of the interior and it looked really nice! Maybe some of you recognise it?

The menu had a range of items from Asian to Western cuisine and Dean ordered the roast duck rice:

While we tried the mushroom carbonara:

It was also sweltering outside as usual, so we bought a lemongrass drink to cool ourselves down.

The food was pretty good, but also a tad pricey. I remember the place being quite small too, so we had to wait just a bit to get a table. It was still pretty good though, and a nice experience nonetheless!

After that we didn't really have much plans to visit elsewhere so we just chilled back at Dean's place, played more games before he drove us back to our hotel to get ready for the event that we were going to, which was a dinner hosted by FX Primus! Sean used to use their services so they invited him to attend and since we wanted a holiday, we thought why not?

But more on that next week! Thanks so much for reading!