From KL to Bali

Sunday 4th December 2022

We only have a few hours before we need to get our flight, so decided to do a mini food tour of the local area. The streets were very busy with various market stalls and street vendors, and it was quite interesting walking along.

Our first good stop was Karim Roti Canai where we had an egg roti and a roti canai between us. I really enjoyed them, both the roti had beautifully light, flaky layers of delicious dough. Pete wasn’t so enamoured, but I think that was perhaps due the lack of meat (he did say it’d go very well with a curry!)

We continued walking to Warung Soto Lamongan Kuala Lumpur, a very local restaurant that’s got excellent google reviews. We ordered a portion of soto ayam (chicken soup) to share, but it wasn’t really to our taste. It wasn’t unpleasant, just a bit bland and not something we’d rush to order again.

Our final food stop was Nasi Lemak Seri Tanjak Raja Alang, where we shared a Nasi Lemak Rendang. It has a great flavour and the meat was very tender, but unfortunately it was lukewarm. The spicy sambal was also excellent. If only the food was piping hot, it’d have been perfect.

We walked past Chow Kit market, which was absolutely bustling. Of also smells a bit, of all the raw meat and fish. Not sure it’s somewhere I’d want to linger too long.

We made our way back to our hotel then ordered a Grab car to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time so we could weigh our luggage, jiggle things around, and stick stuff in our pockets to make sure we were within the 7kg carry on limit. This time it wasn’t wasted effort, as they weighed every bag as you go through to departures.

The terminal was large with plenty of seating and free drinking water, so it was a comfortable wait for the flight.

The flight itself was uneventful, and the food and drinks surprisingly good value (although we didn’t purchase anything as we’d eaten a lot this morning). We landed around 7.30pm. Exiting the airport was more convoluted than we’ve experienced in previous places, and involved showing proof of covid vaccines, purchasing a visa on arrival, and filling in an online customs declaration form.

Once we’d got out the airport, we ordered a Grab car to our hotel. They even had a dedicated Grab lounge for us to wait in. We were staying in the Oki Taru Residence, which is on a main road pretty close to the airport. We checked in, dropped our bags, then set off in search of dinner, as by this time it was already 9.30pm. However we weren’t all that successful…. You have to go down small unlit alleyways to get to any restaurants. The one we picked had a dog blocking our way and barking quite aggressively at us, so we made a hasty retreat. There are a lot of stray dogs in Bali and although most of them seem pretty placid, it’s not that uncommon to get bitten and we didn’t want to take any chances.

Back at the hotel reception, we enquired about car hire. Apparently the hotel could arrange this for us, and it’d be very cheap (225k rupiah, or about £12/day with a 500k rupiah deposit). So at least we had one success for the day!