A Trip Filled with Food

As many of you may not know, (unless you've been watching my Instagram Stories from 7th July to the 10th) I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a short trip. It was a budget trip truth be told. From the air tickets to the BnB we stayed at, everything was gotten on a budget. Sure, we had a whole lot of delays for our flight there and our BnB was pretty much an hour's journey away from the airport or more. But we can't complain, it was budget. 

I've never really been to Malaysia much, only Johor Bahru earlier this year. So I don't know what to really expect at KL. Plus, we didn't have any itinerary. You're probably going ballistic now as you read this. How can we not have a basic plan right? But that's just how we are. Even for Korea, we only knew how many days we were gonna spend in Seoul and Busan and winged the rest of it. It was the same this time, we winged it. 

We only sightsee-ed once, and it was at this place called Batu Cave. We climbed up a heck load of stairs and were rewarded with some pretty cool views. Was it worth it? I'm not sure. You can take a look at the photos above and below and decide for me.

I was told that this looked cinematic

How bout that, ma boi Jordy looking fine

Just me giving a million dollar smile

They had some real elegant structures, so I gotta get an elegant photo

Ah, sweet ol' Dom

The bulk of our trip though, was visiting different shopping malls and really just eating. That's where most of our money went. All on food and on taking Grab. But it was also food that caused our downfall, though that's a story for another day. Of course I did spend a significant amount of my money on gifts for my parents, so there's that. But I shouldn't be boring you with details like this. It's the food that we want to see, ain't it?

Mango Crepe aka my winning shot for the whole trip

Featuring Dom's hand and food

Like my title already suggests, this trip was all about the food. Of course, I didn't do something as dumb as to take photos of our every meal. I just took the ones that were aesthetically pleasing, or would make great photos.

As every photographer on social media likes to think these days, "bokeh equals pro". I shot at f/2 - f/2.8 for most of these photos on my 35mm, trying to capture as much bokeh as I can. I can't do flat lay, so I do bokeh instead. Besides, I like trying to capture more detail up close too. 

Fun fact: the above photo of the mango crepe was by chance. I didn't even remember myself taking a photo at neutral level like that. I applied my "cafe brown tones" preset on it which is usually meant for natural light and wooden surfaces in a cafe settings. It was tweaked from the Mango Street's Portrait preset, believe it or not. I found the overall tones to be apt for cafe settings so I changed things accordingly so it made the food still look good. But as I was saying, that photo was originally pretty bright but the preset changed the entire bokeh background dark, enhancing the focus on the mango dripping down that ice cream. Ooh, so bokehlicious. 

Pancakes galore

Pretending to cut it

"Is someone boomerang-ing this?!"

This is it, chocolate heaven

Are we dead yet?

No? Good, round 4 here we go

We had some pretty good chocolate filled desserts at Dip & Dip, which was recommended to us by our friends. No regrets is all I have to say. Simply because they were all so good. And that's coming from someone who is picky with his desserts. So if you're in KL, give it a try. I promise you won't regret it. Though we might have to exercise really hard just to burn off all that sugar. 

But if you asked me which meal was the most satisfying one? It's got to be our lunch on the last day. We decided to have Chinese food at a restaurant and shared some dishes. Braised pork, salted egg yolk chicken, a plate of vegetables, dumpling, etc. All of us agreed that they served the best food throughout our trip. Nothing could top that. I wish I had better photos to show for it, but this was the best I could do. I was starving too badly to even hold my camera straight. But not to worry, they are all bokehlicious. 

Also, one more thing about food worth mentioning is that one of our breakfasts was settled by our man Harvest. He'd decided that he wanted to cook for us at least once, and so we let him. And boy are we glad we did, cause he was a really good cook. Note to self to always bring someone who can cook to travel overseas with. In Korea we had Jordan, this time, we let Harvest take charge. Though Jordan still insisted on cooking his own eggs. It was really funny to watch.

The man in action

I would also like to add that we gamed away every night and every opportunity we had. We really are addicts. But that's not the point is it?

Point is we had our fun, tons of it. 

Cheers.

Bonus story for anyone still reading:

And our last meal at the airport? It had four out of five of us waking up to an intense episode of food poisoning. I said that it was meant to be another story but nah, I'd just share it here. We ate at this Kopitiam looking place in the KL airport, and excluding Jordan, the rest of us ordered from the Western stall. It was all good. Then we got home and had ourselves a good sleep. When we woke up? Diarrhoea and puking. It was mad. I ran a fever, had all my energy drained out of my body and could barely move. Even the doctor was shocked at how white my face had become. It truly was an experience and a lesson learnt. Only eat at restaurants when in Malaysia, and not hawkers and Kopitiams. Well we'd be damn.