April 5, 2010: Melaka to Kuala Lumpur

On our last morning in Melaka, our only objective was to find a breakfast more interesting than the one offered at our hotel. Although they don't have a dedicated breakfast menu, the staff at Geographer Cafe were happy to fill that request. We had walked past them several times over the past few days and noticed many a pink-faced tourist sipping drinks from coconuts at their tables. When we stopped by ourselves they were out of coconuts, but their other tropical juices were very much to our liking.

Eating at such a tourist-friendly restaurant meant a couple of things - the prices were a little inflated compared to other restaurants we'd visited (though it was still very affordable by our Aussie standards) and the menu was easy to navigate. In fact, there was a dedicated page of 'Geographer's vegetarian specialties'!

Michael thoroughly enjoyed the Geographer Curry Rice (RM9.90 ~ $3.30), and pronounced that he would happily work more breakfast curries into the Australian diet.

My Nasi Lemak (RM5.90 ~ $2) was a very pleasant surprise indeed. Though I'm not much of an egg or chilli eater, they went down a treat with the coconut rice. The chef had chosen to use brown rice and I found that its filling, nourishing qualities sat well with me at this time of day. The peanuts and tempeh chips had a toasty flavour and pleasing crunch, which worked well against the steamed greens. Nasi Lemak isn't the kind of meal I'd typically cook or order at home but this experience of it had me wanting to change that.

With that, we finished our packing and headed to the bus station. These pineapple tarts, bought from the night market when we first arrived in Melaka, didn't last much of the journey back to Kuala Lumpur.

Michael led the way on our first exploration of KL, nutting out the monorail system and tracing the Lonely Planet's walking tour through the colonial district. Here we saw fountains, stately buildings, and even a cricket field.

The tour took us on to Little India, our dinner destination. We wandered round shops and street markets, noticing that a number of the dedicated vegetarian Indian restaurants were on Lebuh Ampang.

Hot and very sweaty by this stage, we ventured into Sangeetha - it out-competed the other vego restaurants with its promise of air-conditioning.

Sangeetha also boasted a menu with dozens and dozens of items. We may have deliberated over the drinks even longer than the food, eventually going with a ginger lemon cool for Michael and a lime mint cooler for me (RM7.50 ~ $2.50 each).

Michael can never resist a thali and at RM16 (~ $5.40), this Punjabi thali was certainly one of the better value ones of this holiday.

I'm a similarly predictable sucker for dosai, and their were numerous options to choose from. I eventually settled on the cauliflower masala dosa (RM6.50 ~ $2.20) and did not regret it one bit - tender cauliflower made a fabulous filling.

Even while devouring a dosa so good, I couldn't help but take furtive glances at the dessert cabinet throughout our meal. It was heaving with fudgy Indian sweets, and we had some Date Ladhu and Kaju Katli (RM2.50-3.50 ~ $0.80-1.20 each) boxed up to enjoy later (... for breakfast, as it turns out. You'll see why, later.)

We were just barely cooler, though utterly content, as we made our way back past the glamourous Petronas twin towers to our hotel.