Family Travels: Shopping on Steroids

Okay, on Sunday we visited the monuments, the statutes, the national museum, the war memorial, the kings palace and the lake garden and drove by a host of other cultural attractions. But today, Monday, is dedicated to shopping. We’d heard about the prices in KL and now it was time to check out the shopping scene.

After getting advice from a local, we headed out early to beat the heat and started at Low Yat Plaza, a short 10 minute walk from our hotel. Darin wanted to search for phone and camera deals and Low Yat was incredible. Seven floors of electronics from all over the world with no company – and absolutely no country – left out. Sony, Toshiba, NEC, HP, Panasonic Acer, Asus, and a bunch we never heard of. (Strangely, Kodak did not have a booth of its own but was represented) Needless to say, tourists from every corner of the globe were milling about, checking out the goods and negotiating deals. There were few stores as we understand a mall, just booth after kiosk after booth. Each counter had several calculators where young salesmen quickly figured out the discounts and the prices. If you couldn’t speak the language, read the calculator. Numbers don’t need a translation! It was all about deal making.

Over stimulated, we moved to the ground floor to eat “local” and rest from the action. Deciding to check out phone and camera prices on line in the evening, we left Low Yat Plaza and moved on to Sungei Wang Plaza. This mall, also recommended by our local contact, is not easily described.

Sungei Wang sells everything, except animals. It rivals the Pentagon in size with six floors of four quadrants each. Each floor extends beyond eyesight. There are no windows (think Vegas casino) and no discernible exits. No need to leave to eat because McDonald’s has a restaurant in the mall as well as other restaurants selling Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, Chinese and odd combinations of western foods. During this trip, I’ve become accustomed to disk jockeys spinning records in the mall, huge couches for lounging where your feet don’t touch the floor, supermarkets and bakeries in the mall but Sungei Wang was the mother of all malls.

After a while, the noise, the people and the sheer amount of stuff overwhelmed us and we decided to leave – but couldn’t find a way out. With help from a friendly security guard, we shortly found ourselves on the sidewalk with a much needed view of the sky. Bruised from a blistering morning in the malls, we retreated to the hotel pool for a respite.

Feeling more confident later in the day, we hopped a taxi to Central Market in Chinatown. We plunged into the Chinatown street bazaar where each narrow street had tons of hawkers selling knock off designer goods and cheap souvenirs. From the streets into the cool, orderly Central Market was refreshing. Center Market is a 2 story indoor bazaar selling quality local goods at reasonable prices. Bargaining welcome!