In the building immediately next door to our rental apartment building was the GMBB, also known as the Creative Arts Mall. The GMBB is a seven-story mall, but not with the typical “mall” stores. These stores sold hand-made crafts, paintings, and many more personalized items. Many shops offered art classes, in a variety of mediums. There were a couple coffee stands to get a coffee or snack, a big bookstore, and Jessica even found a nail salon on one of the upper floors that did her nails.
It was quite the experience, and we explored every floor. We wanted to purchase so many items but couldn’t take them back with us. Here are some pictures of the art, and the fun we had at the GMBB.
We stayed in the Bukit Bintang neighborhood of KL, as it is very popular amongst travelers with lots of shopping, food, and entertainment. We decided to visit a contemporary art gallery, called UR @ MU (or Urban Museum), which has a few galleries around KL, and this one was within walking distance, the UR@MU-Bukit Bintang. The roads along the way were super cool with bright street and wall art.
We arrived at the museum, which was on the other side of this gate.
It was a narrow 7-story building with an elevator. We took it to the 7th floor and proceeded downward. There was a statue on a patio looking out over a part of the city.
There was so much great art inside, we spent a lot of time checking it all out. Sometimes contemporary art isn’t our cup of tea, but most of the pieces here were very cool.
Also in the Bukit Bintang neighborhood was one of the biggest and fanciest malls in KL, the Pavilion. We needed to buy some shoes, and Malaysia carries bigger sizes than most of the countries we’ve visited previously. I wear a men’s US 13 (EU size 47.5), sadly not easy to find in SE Asia. The last shoes I bought four months ago was in Shanghai, and those shoes had been in the backroom for maybe a decade. Luckily the New Balance store in the Pavilion Mall had two size 13 sneakers, so I was able to get a new pair. After shopping, we bought some afternoon iced coffees to cool off and watched a live music performance, with a man and woman singing with a whole group drumming on the stage behind them.
After we finished our coffee drinks we started the walk back to our hotel. We were a little hungry and saw people waiting in a line for food. We joined the line and ordered some Chinese Roti at Mon Chinese Beef Roti, where we could watch the Roti being made while we waited. They only made Beef or Chicken, and we waited to order four, as that was to become our dinner that evening. When we finally obtained ours, the line had doubled, but they were well worth the wait.
I mentioned above that UR @ MU (or Urban Museum) has multiple locations, and we had such fun exploring the one in Bukit Bintang, we decided to visit another one that was pretty close, UR@MU Toffee. It’s called Toffee, which is also the name of the building it is located in. This museum was on two floors, but the entrance was not the easiest to find, but figured out where to find the elevators to take us to the 6th floor.
Many of the same artists we saw at the other location were on display here as well, and we liked the art a lot here. Many of the paintings below were nearly wall sized.
The most impressive was this one below, done by Anisa Abdullah, called “Berhidang Tamu” which translates to “Serving Guests.” It is a paper collage, made up of all these tiny pieces cut from magazines and glued to canvas. It was truly something special.
We liked the art at the Toffee location a bit better than the Bukit Bintang, but both were worth the small entrance fee and they were not crowded, plus they are air conditioned. If you’re interested in art made by Malaysians while in KL, make sure to visit them both. After we finished there we saw some street art;
and saw the outside of the Sri Maha Mariamman Hindu Temple. We did not want to take off our sneakers, so we skipped going inside. It was impressive from the outside, and we did peek inside.
We carried on, through Petaling Street Market on our way to another Art Mall named REXXL. REXXL was much more popular although smaller than GMBB, and much older. The stairs and walls were in bad shape, but it must be a social media spot, as it was packed with people having photoshoots throughout. We visited the bookstore Bookxcess, and we had visited another location when we were in Ipoh just a couple weeks earlier. There were way too many people so we couldn’t explore easily, but did take some pictures before we made haste.
For dinner we were back in our neighborhood of Bukit Bintang and we ate at an Indian Restaruant called TG’s Bistro, especially famous amongst Chinese tourists for its Long Pancake Roti (which is like three feet high). We ate tasty biryani rice, veggie curry, and lamb and cheese martabak, which we had first tried back in Jakarta. It was delicious.
We had a great time exploring all the museums and staying in a fun area of the city!
