Celebrating the New Year with Pakistani Cuisine - No problem if it's delicious!【55】

The fourth morning in Kuala Lumpur.

The discomfort from the previous day continued, especially my stomach was in the worst condition. The symptoms were similar to when I had gastroenteritis; I felt like throwing up whatever I ate even though I was hungry.

However, since I had only eaten a sandwich, a few fries, and juice the previous day, I thought I needed to get some nutrition and came to the usual Starbucks. I managed to finish the yogurt, but left the American coffee after a few sips as it made my stomach feel uneasy.

By the way, it's about a 3-minute walk from the guesthouse to Starbucks along this road. There were some dubious hamburger stalls at night.

Since I was feeling extremely unwell, I decided to go to a spa facility to rest my body. It's "Lavish Spa" on the 5th floor of "Fahrenheit88".

I purchased a 6-hour + body scrub course. The 6 hours included unlimited use of the bath, sauna, game room, nap room, pool, etc. The menu was limited but it included all-you-can-eat and drink.

First, I sweated in the sauna, refreshed in the bath, and then received a body scrub. There was a small incident where I didn't know how to wear the pants and a relatively young lady helped me put them on. After a long time, I took a good bath, washed my body thoroughly, and felt refreshed, so I slept in the nap room. The guesthouse had 8 people in the same room so it wasn't restful, but I was able to sleep soundly alone in a quiet, dark room.

I left the spa around 16:00 and headed to Pavilion to buy a T-shirt and pants. I was hesitant to do laundry, but thought it was a waste of time and decided against it. Buying one more of each would last me until I return home, and above all, I didn't want to waste New Year's Eve and New Year's Day doing laundry.

Along the way, I browsed through some foreign books and checked the prices. The bookstores here didn't have much price difference compared to Japan, but there were several shops in Kuala Lumpur where you could buy foreign books at a good price. I felt that there were overwhelmingly more books here, perhaps because reading English is a part of daily life.

Eventually, I bought a T-shirt from a Spanish brand called "MANGO". Every shop was having a sale and it was cheap.

On the Skywalk, I walked from Pavilion to KLCC and saw preparations for the countdown event. Near KLCC, vendors were starting to gather.

I returned near Pavilion again and finally bought a tapioca tea from "tealive" which I had been curious about. It's a shop originated in Malaysia and was very popular. Every shop had a queue no matter when you went.

There were many items on the menu, so I ordered the most popular one and it was indeed delicious. On this day, I had only eaten yogurt in the morning and drank juice around noon, but my stomach didn't recover by dinner time, so I was satisfied with just this juice. I lamented becoming unable to eat while on an overseas trip, but later on, I unexpectedly ate something unexpected...

After finishing the juice, I returned to the guesthouse for a break and to gather some information.

As soon as I arrived, one of the staff asked, "Are you coming to dinner with us now?" Although my stomach was upset, I was somehow persuaded with a "come, come" and thought it would be fine to eat lightly, so I decided to go along.

We walked about 10 minutes from the guesthouse to a Pakistani restaurant called "Paradise Restaurant". I found out later that it's quite a popular place.

It was a New Year's Eve dinner with two Indian staff members and an Algerian guest who arrived that day. Although I was supposed to have a stomachache, my appetite came back when I saw the food. This restaurant had a buffet-style system where you serve yourself as much as you want and pay later. I didn't understand the billing rules well, but the bill got higher as we served a variety of items little by little, and we got a discount with the staff's face pass.

Most of the dishes were curry-flavored, but not too spicy, and all were delicious. There were several types of rice, but this restaurant is famous for its naan.

When we went outside, the streets of Bukit Bintang were crowded with people. We had a McDonald's soft serve for dessert after dinner (courtesy of the Algerian) and discussed where to spend the countdown, but decided to return to the guesthouse for the time being.

We parted ways with the two staff members here, and a Chinese guest joined us, so the three of us headed to KLCC.

It was just people, people, and people everywhere.

We welcomed the moment of the New Year right under the Twin Towers. Fireworks were launched, but we couldn't see them from near the Twin Towers. We enjoyed the sound with the many people gathered and returned to the guesthouse.

Late at night on 1/1 after the New Year, I was chatting with the owner of the guesthouse, a self-proclaimed journalist from China, and a Korean woman. (The Algerian friend I got along with went to bed earlier)

The owner and I talked about "Ikigai". It seems there isn't an equivalent English word for the Japanese "生きがい" (Ikigai), and I struggled to explain it. Even in Japanese, it's hard to explain, so I'm not sure how much got across in English. The owner, who knew about Japanese culture, understood, but the other guests had puzzled expressions.

After that, we talked about each other's countries, our travels so far, the end of last year, and typical stories.

Since I usually don't stay up late, my head started to spin from fatigue and sleepiness.

Amidst that, I remembered thinking, "I should have asked for the contact information of the Indonesian woman I talked to here two days ago,"

I went to bed around 3 o'clock on this day.