I had a full day on the last day of my trip, and it started off with a nice cool swim in the rooftop pool.
❀˖°. AM – Strawberry Victoria Sponge Cake Workshop
I signed up for yet another cake-baking workshop because I don’t really have the luxury of such classes back home, so I wanted to take full advantage of my time in KL. I chose a fluffy-looking 6-inch strawberry sponge cake to make. It was only 10 in the morning, so I got to enjoy having the entire workspace to myself.
They gave me an iPad with instructions and I got started measuring out the ingredients and taking things from the fridge. It was pretty straightforward compared to the earl grey cake I made previously. However, while the lady who oversaw my session was friendly sometimes, she was visibly irritated other times when I asked questions. She seemed annoyed in particular when I struggled with the cake slicer and cut the sponge cake unevenly. As if we were doing the culinary equivalent of nuclear weapons testing where one mistake would vaporise us and everything in the vicinity. I really don’t like paying for a class and then feeling like I have to walk on eggshells when asking questions or needing guidance with something.
Anyway, moving on to the pictures:
I didn’t slap on enough sunscreen the day before when walking down a tea plantation in the 3pm sun, hence the bad sunburn. I have been scrubbing myself vigorously with exfoliating soaps almost everyday since then but I guess I have to make peace with looking like a lobster for a while.
I don’t know why I was gripping that piping bag like it owes me money.
The easiest part was putting the strawberries on.
The swirls on top came out messier than the ones on the inside layers that nobody will see. Go figure. But this is still my second cake, so realistically it was never going to turn out the way I had imagined in my head.
❀˖°. PM – Bunny Textured Painting Workshop
In the afternoon, I set off for a painting workshop at GMBB. I wanted to paint a bunny. The shop owner gave me an apron, let me choose the size of the canvas, and asked if I needed her help to sketch the outline. I said yes, because it was already 4pm in the afternoon and I was feeling lazy, since I had already done that cake thing in the morning.
I wanted a pink background, so they gave me a few shades to choose from and showed me how to mix the colours to get that blush pink that I wanted. The paste had the consistency of sand, or sugar, and I used a palette knife for application. Then, she showed me which colours to use where and how to approach it section by section. I’m not gonna lie, this was harder than it looked. I kept getting the paints all over my fingers like a giant child doing finger painting, but at least they came off easily with wet wipes. At the end, she took the canvas out back to blow-dry it.
Here is a close-up of the texture.
Here’s how it looks in more natural lighting. It now has a place up on my bedroom wall.
Afterward, I went back to my hotel to set down the painting, and it was already night when I took a Grab to my last stop, a spa. I wanted to end my trip the same way I started it, with a relaxing massage. I had a lot of time to sit around that morning while waiting for my cake in the oven to bake, so I passed the time by reading spa reviews and looking for one that was nearby and didn’t have customers and business owners arguing back and forth in the review section.
The driver dropped me off on a nearby street and told me to walk the rest of the way. So I started walking and ended up even further away from the spa than before. I had a long day, was exhausted, and didn’t want to figure out directions while hungry. After having had enough of creeps on the street, I ducked into the first hotel I saw. I sat and waited in the lobby for another driver to take me straight to the spa. I may have made some rookie mistakes on this trip, but walking down Changkat as a lone woman looking like a lost tourist won’t be one of them.
The next driver finally arrived and dropped me off at the hotel where the spa was, and I felt a wave of relief when I saw the signboard at the top of the stairs, illuminated like the holy grail. Finally, something went right that day. Time to get those knots worked out and then find something to eat.
I had a 90 minute full body session. As I put my things down, I glanced at the clock. It was almost 8.30 pm when we started. That means I’d be done at 10 pm. That means I would have to eat dinner and sleep late. I had to leave for the airport by 9 am the next morning. My immediate thought was to shorten my session to 60 minutes, which I personally think is too short to get any kind of meaningful work done.
I decided to just suck it up and accept that I would just sleep late, then. After all, I’m on holiday. It’s not like I have Excel spreadsheets to look at after getting back home. Sometimes I just want someone to shake me by the shoulders and tell me to stop stressing out over every little thing. I had thought about just giving up and cancelling when I couldn’t find the place. It had been a frustrating day up to that point.
Anyway, they did my foot bath and led me to the table, which wasn’t in a room of its own but partitioned from the others with a curtain. I got on the table and thought I could finally relax, but the MT opened the curtain, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me I was lying under the wrong towel, so I had to get up again, replace the towel on the table, then wrestle with the correct towel in my half-asleep state. Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone else around at that late hour, so I didn’t have to listen to anyone else snoring or talking loudly on their phone.
The MT returned and we got started. A couple of times, he cracked his knuckles theatrically before starting new sections, like a pianist preparing for a difficult passage. I found it funny in a dramatic way. My back cracked like a crumpled soda can under his hands. It felt so good to just exhale and lay flat in a safe, quiet space. To be passive, to receive, after a whole day of doing.
The stretching part at the end scared me a little. He had asked me to sit up and full-on yanked my torso in each direction and my joints popped all at once in a way that sounded like fireworks. I remember being a little scared that I would injure something, but I was fine.
I returned to my hotel at 10+ pm feeling light as a feather, ordered food delivery, and sat on the sofa eating cold lamb shoulder at 11 pm while watching Desperate Housewives. I felt really sad that the trip was over and that I would be leaving the next morning. But I did miss my bunnies, though, so I felt less sad after remembering I would get to see them again.