*I’m starting off with the last day of my trip first because it’s the freshest in my memory. I’m just chaotic that way.
Day 5 (30th September 2026)
I did some light shopping at Sunway and then had a quick lunch at The Fish Bowl. To me, it’s one of those places you can’t go wrong with. You can choose a set bowl from the menu, or build your own and choose ingredients, bases, sauces, etc. I chose to build my own bowl. I think my body was thankful for something healthy after a week of greasy, fatty foods. Yeah, I did choose fried salmon here, and I can’t remember what that green sauce is, but at least the rest of it is mostly healthy and there’s a decent serving of fruits and veggies.
…it was back to fried foods after that. I went to Shihlin Street Snacks afterwards to get an XXL boneless cut of spicy fried chicken to munch on back in the hotel room. I used to get this often back when I was studying in Kuching. The skin was almost overwhelmingly spicy, the meat not as flavourful as I hoped. I guess there would be high variability in terms of quality and consistency, since there are so many branches.
But the cat is cute. Look at that pink heart-nose.
I also picked up a drink from Chaboys on the way back to the hotel. Apparently, they use ceremonial-grade matcha in their drinks. I was torn between the Strawberry Matcha and the Mint Matcha. I went with Mint in the end, because I always order Strawberry Matchas anyway, so I was curious what Mint and Matcha tasted like together. I couldn’t taste much of the mint, though to be fair the mint syrup was probably really diluted by the time I had time to sit down and drink it. The matcha tasted very earthy and grassy, which I liked. I sat at the writing desk in my room doing some journaling and looking up places I still wanted to go to.
Around 3pm, I took a Grab to a local luthier (“String Master”) who I’d visited before years ago. I needed a new shoulder rest because my old one was in shameful condition. It didn’t help that my rabbit had chewed on one of the feet when I had left my violin propped up on the floor (I wrote a post about Bunbun also chewing my actual violin. I guess he just hates classical music). I asked for one with a taller adjustable height, because I have a giraffe neck and short shoulder rests make playing feel awkward. I went with a Kun shoulder rest again.
I noticed a small black ceramic bunny with a hollow centre on top of the display bench. Bnuuy.
After paying, I sat around and chatted a little with the owner while waiting for my Grab to my next stop at Pavilion BB.
The next item on the agenda was a nice, relaxing massage. I just wanted to lie there and close my tired eyes and do nothing while someone rubs my back and arms for 2 hours or whatever.
I had actually gotten a massage the Sunday before, elsewhere, but it was a terrible experience; things had already gotten off on the wrong foot when the therapist manhandled my hair. He clawed through the tangles and moved clumps of hair away in a manner that yanked at my scalp constantly. Self-fulfilling prophecy or not, I already knew I would hate the massage. Once he started, I found myself wondering what I had done wrong to this man, who I had never met before. He was so aggressive and applied brutish pressure. 10 minutes in, I was already regretting the massage and wondering if it was too late to request for a different therapist. I couldn’t imagine spending the next two hours like this. I woke up the next day and found small, dark bruises on my arms; I didn’t bother checking the rest of my body. I kept telling him to lighten up and that it hurt, but he’d only adjust his pressure briefly and then revert to his baseline torture.
When he moved to work on my thighs and calves, he dug his fingers in so hard that my entire leg jerked out of his grip in a bid to escape his instruments of torture hands that seemed to surprise both of us. He also barely worked on my front; he didn’t touch my stomach. It was a 2 hour appointment. I’d think Bruise Lee here would have more than enough time to spare for a good stomach massage instead of devoting the entire 2 hours to finding new, creative ways to fuel the feedback loop of hatred between us. His nails were also longer than appropriate for a massage therapist, so I had the added enjoyment of feeling like I was being scratched up by a cat throughout the massage.
After getting dressed, I opened the door to the hallway outside. My therapist was nowhere to be seen, which seemed metaphorically on point with how absent he had been thus far. The therapist I’d had last time at that same spa had thoughtfully offered me a comb at the end, unprompted, the moment I sat up with my troll doll hair, and then waited outside the room for me with drinking water in hand. I miss him, his etiquette was perfection. I grieved the 250+ RM that I had parted with just for my back to scream every time I reclined against a chair for the next three days (considering the number of flights and long Grab car journeys I was in for…I did not have a good time).
Anyway, back to the present: I went to another spa in the hopes of getting a better massage that would undo the bad taste the experience left, and maybe soothe my beaten-up body. The next guy also didn’t seem to dare to touch my bare stomach, sadly, but at least he listened to my upfront request for light to medium pressure and I was able to relax and enjoy the massage. And at least he waited in the hallway for me with my ginger tea and water despite me taking like 5 minutes to get dressed.
The haze persisted up to the last evening of my trip. This was the view from my hotel room when I dropped by to dump my shopping bags before heading out again. I had considered going up to Genting Highlands for a day, but it seemed unnecessary now. Two birds, one stone.
I had three objectives that night: to get a souvenir from the Miffy Corner in Kinokuniya, buy this cello-themed musical box set I had seen the other day, and get some comfy undergarments from Uniqlo (there’s no Uniqlo in Brunei). I wouldn’t have any time to spare the next day as I would be flying off and had to go to the airport before any shops were open. If I wanted to tick everything off my list before the night was over, I’d have to finish dinner and start walking by 8 pm.
Since it was my last night in KL, though, I still wanted to eat something nice despite knowing I’d probably have to eat fast. I was still walking around Pavilion after my massage, and I passed a restaurant named Calia. It looked like a place I could have a nice, quiet dinner and the food items on the menu looked delectable. I went in and ordered the full-blood Australian Wagyu with a 63-degree egg and rice, maguro sashimi, and some forest berries-thingy drink. The first bite of meat tasted heavenly, but the other pieces became lukewarm quickly after.
I tried to look for a good photo, but they were all blurry. Sigh.
Anyway, I left and speedwalked across the bridge leaving Pavilion. It wouldn’t be a solo trip without me getting lost, so naturally I got lost trying to figure out how to get to Suria KLCC once I had gotten off on the other side. Sure, I could see it in the distance, but I had no idea how to get there by foot. I wondered how I had walked across to it from Pavilion and all the times before that, and why this time I suddenly had no idea how to get there. Was my mind just exhausted from everything? I had to keep asking people for directions, like it was my first time ever getting there and not, say, my 15th time over the decades.
One thing I remember fondly from that night was the light drizzle of rain. I was worried about getting wet, because I didn’t want my cough to return with a vengeance, but I didn’t have time to wait for the rain to stop. I saw plenty of people walking under the drizzle, so I also stepped out onto the street and continued walking. The crowds walking in the rain didn’t seem to care that they were getting wet. Walking with them, with the occasional tree granting a few seconds of short-lived shelter from the rain every now and then, the walk there felt very lucid, in a dream-like way.
How do I explain that walking under the trees in a light rain at night in a foreign country, with twin towers glowing like two beacons in the distance, has a sort of magic that rushing to a car in the same kind of rain after running errands doesn’t?
This isn’t a good photo by any measure, but it makes me feel like I’m back there again.
The water fountain thingy that I passed on the way to Suria.
I picked this Miffy to bring home with me. I think it’s so darling that it has its own miniature little Miffy sling bag. As tempting as everything else was in the bookstore’s Miffy corner, I’m running out of space on my desk and can’t accommodate more than one new friend at the moment. It’s now sitting together with the mint green Miffy I had bought from that same bookstore two years ago.
I’d actually packed my green Miffy in my luggage in Brunei with the intent to bring it to the places I went so I could take cute pictures of it in various scenes, but I didn’t think about how I’d carry it around if I needed my hands to be free for other things… so it stayed in my luggage the entire trip, and it was one of the first things I unpacked after getting home.
Day 6 (1st October 2026)
I woke up a little late for this one. I had a noontime flight, and I originally planned to leave the hotel by 9am but woke up so tired, I ended up hitting the snooze button a couple of times and only rolled out of bed at 8.15 am. By the time I had finished freshening up, playing last-minute suitcase tetris packing the last of my things, and checked out and got on my ride, it was already 9.40am.
I was already cutting it close when I reached the airport at almost 11 am. Still, apparently there wasn’t quite enough chaos to satisfy me in that one morning yet, because I ducked into the Rimba garden attraction in the airport for 10 minutes to look at the plants and take photos, as if I hadn’t already gone in and taken photos when I arrived at that same airport 5 days earlier. And then I went to grab lunch. And I ordered pasta, knowing that the gate was already open. By the time I was done vacuuming my lunch, they were already announcing the final call for boarding and I almost missed it by a hair. Good to see that I handle time-sensitive logistics with the exact same level of disorganisation abroad as back home. /s
This is the indoor garden at the airport. I found my appreciation for orchids growing throughout the trip, even though I nearly passed out from an ungodly trifecta of equatorial-adjacent heat & humidity, transboundary haze, and dehydration trying to find the Orchid Garden in the botanical park the other day.
I love this shade of pink!
Other Reflections
One interesting thing I noted was that my dry cough, which had been tormenting me for the better part of two months was effectively gone. The first day of my trip, I had still wrestled with unexpected coughing fits, but my cough gradually disappeared over the rest of the trip. This was despite the haze being the haze significantly worse than in Brunei, and despite the fact that I had spent 3 hours outdoors the other day at the gardens breathing in the haze. Possibly something at home was keeping my cough active, but my cough didn’t come back when I returned to Brunei.
Maybe being over-stressed (pre-trip) prolonged the cough, since I never really had the chance to rest or take a break since starting this job. Before the trip, I had been worried my random hacking would ruin the trip, but funnily enough it was the only cure. Three separate doctor visits, various cough lozenges donated to me by three different colleagues, two different types of nasal sprays, no less than 5 total packets of cough drops, and at least 7 different types of medication (pills, medicated syrups), none of them worked. I had stopped drinking all cold drinks and fried foods in an attempt to recover from the cough during the last few weeks; during the trip, cold drinks were almost all I drank, not to mention all the greasy stuff I ate all the time. Incredible.
I also felt differently about this trip during and after, compared to my previous one. I kept waiting for something life-changing (in a good way) to happen on this trip, for something that would open my eyes to the bigger picture, for an epiphany. I think it was because my trip in February came after the resignation of the worst job I’ve ever had, so everything I did on my trip felt like a divine slice of freedom. The current trip was just a break from a job that, despite being stressful, didn’t traumatise me as deeply as my old job did.
Maybe that’s how a vacation is supposed to feel when things are more level; like a ‘boring’ break from daily life, rather than like gasping for air after almost drowning.
I still feel giddy when I think back on how 2 weeks before the trip, I had randomly looked at Pavilion’s IG and seen the bunny decor, and gasped to myself, and started checking my calendar. I had thought to wait until year end to travel to KL, but I thought, why not now? I need some downtime and KL would be celebrating the mid-autumn festival in September. And so, I put in my leave application. I told them that I hadn’t taken any personal leave days since April, except 2 days of sick leave in August.
If I waited until I was ready, I would never get to rest, because I don’t even know what ‘ready’ would feel like. I didn’t exactly do any exciting first-time activities, but I’m still marinating in the post-vacation glow. For something so last-minute, I still think I did a good job making the trip worth it.