Mga Lakwacherang Doktora: The Ultimate Kuala Lumpur-Singapore Vacation Leave: Food Trip Galore at Jalan Alor

This is the fifth part of our 6-days-5-nights Ultimate KL-Singapore Vacation Leave.

Jalan Alor

After the Petronas Towers adventure, we decided to get some dinner. In our research, most of the blogs recommended to visit Jalan Alor for food tripping galore (hey, it rhymes haha). Getting to Jalan Alor from KLCC is quite easy, you can opt to take a taxi or walk towards Bukit Bintang which is a pleasurable walk since you would be passing through an airconditioned walkway.

Here's how to walk towards Bukit Bintang from KLCC:

From Suria KLCC, look for the Concourse level (again, look for the signs they are everywhere!), follow it and then head towards the Center Court.
Once at the Center Court, enter the underground walkway and follow the signs leading towards the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center or Aquaria KLCC (If you have time, you can visit Aquaria KLCC as well, which we weren't able to do)

The Underground Walkway towards Aquaria KLCC and the KL Convention Center

Look for this helpful signs and follow them!

Once you see the Aquaria's entrance, there is a stairs nearby just walk up to it to go to the ground level. This is the KL Convention Center. Exit from there.

The Entrance to Aquaria KLCC. Beside it is the stairs going up the Convention Center

Once you've exited, if you turn to your right you would see an escalator connected to a covered walkway with a sign saying Bukit Bintang with an arrow. Walk up towards that escalator and enter the covered walkway. It's about a 10-minute walk but you won't get tired easily since the walkway is air-conditioned with security guards roaming so it's not a scary walkway even during night time.

This is what the entrance to the covered walkway looks like

The Airconditioned Covered Walkway

Just follow the signs leading to Bukit Bintang, eventually you will come across the road bridge over Jalan Raja Chulan. Just continue on and you will find yourself in the restaurant area of the Pavilion Mall. Once inside the mall, it will get a bit confusing but if you just follow the signs (or ask anyone how to get to Bukit Bintang road, it will be fairly easy to find your way).
The exit that you would have to go out of is the one between the Pavilion Mall and the Grand Millennium. It's quite hard to miss because there's a huge fountain infront of the entrance and a huge Sephora store across the road.

View from the Exit from the Pavilion Mall

From the exit, you don't need to cross over the road but just turn right past the Grand Millennium and walk along the sidewalk. You would know you're in the right direction if you see the KL monorail straight ahead from a distance.
Just walk in the sidewalk towards the KL Monorail. In your short walk, you would be able to pass through other malls such as the Starhill, Fahrenheit, and Lot 10. If you have time, you could explore them while on the way. If you see these malls, you are in the right direction.
Once you have reached the monorail, that is the intersection of Jalan Bukit Bintang and Sultan Ismail. You can go straight over, however during our visit there, there were a lot of road construction going on so we can't cross over. What we did was we turned to the right and looked for other people crossing the streets hahaha and then we followed them across the Sultan Ismail and to the other side of the KL Monorail. We found ourselves in the corner of Jalan Berangan street.
Once you have crossed the street, with you back to the road, turn left and walk straight ahead until you see a McDonald's store. That corner is the Jalan Bukit Bintang road again, from the McDonald's turn right and walk along Jalan Bukit Bintang.
Walk straight along Jalan Bukit Bintang until you see a KFC store. At the corner, turn right, this is the Changkat Bukit Bintang street. Along these streets there are already a lot of street vendors selling souvenirs and such.
The second corner on the left (about 30 meters) from the KFC store is the Jalan Alor Street. You won't miss it because there are a lot of people and a lot of lanterns stringed up on the streets. Once you see those lanterns and lots and lots of restaurants, you have finally arrived at Jalan Alor!

Map showing where we walked from Pavilion Mall going to Jalan Alor (click on it to see a clearer map)

The Stringed Up Lanters signaling that you are in Jalan Alor already

The walk took about 20minutes (factoring in us getting lost in the Pavilion Mall haha). There are other ways to go to Jalan Alor, you can take the KL Monorail from KL Sentral and get off the Bukit Bintang station and walk towards Jalan Alor, but if you are coming from Suria KLCC, walking would probably be the best option. Or you can take a taxi which is around RM20-30 depending on the traffic.

Jalan Alor is probably one of the most popular and unique food destination in Kuala Lumpur. If you type it on Google, a lot of blogs would pop out and would recommend for you to go there if you are in the area. It was once known as a red light district, however, several renovations has been done and now it is known as a food haven for both locals and tourists alike. If you go here during daytime, not a lot of activity is seen although there are already some restaurants selling food. But if you go during the night time, the street would be bustling with activity, with hawkers on both sides of the streets selling Malaysia's famous culinary delights. It can be quite intimidating for first timers (like us), because there's just rows and rows of food stalls selling various types of food. Our advise is to walk along the streets and look around before settling in a restaurant you want to eat at.

Lots of food stalls and restaurants all over

Most of the menus are in Chinese characters but there are also some restaurants who provide English translation in there menus. But you can also ask any of the waiters there if you can't read Chinese, they are very nice and very helpful. They serve pretty much almost every Malay, Chinese, and Thai dish, from grilled fish and satay or chicken in oyster sauce, there's also some fried noodles, and of course, who would miss out on the smell of Durian wafting all around. Also, most of the menus they gave out has pictures of the food so you won't get a hard time picking what you want.

Food Pictures are everywhere as well

Since we were very hungry, we just picked out a restaurant which looked a little bit less intimidating. We tried looking for the famous restaurants mentioned in other blogs such as the Restoran Dragon View, The Wong Ah Wah, or the Restoran Meng Kee, however, we weren't able to find them. If you do have time, please look for this restaurant as they are said to offer one of the best dishes in Malaysia. I couldn't remember the name of the dishes we ordered so I'll just post the pictures here hehe. Total cost of all the food we ate was RM64 which is approximately 720php for the both of us. Actually, a bit expensive from what we were expecting.

This is the unrecalled restaurant we ate at

A noodle dish (I really forgot the name already)

I think this is Chicken Satay

Some pork ribs thingy

Now this I know, Fried Rice!

After eating, we decided to call it a night and return back to MyHotel. So from Jalan Alor, you can walk towards the KL Monorail Bukit Bintang Station which is just around 5 minutes from Jalan Alor. From my previous instructions, the station is just located in the corner of Jalan Bukit Bintang and Jalan Sultan Ismail. You won't miss it! It's across the McDonald's Store previously mentioned. Luckily, the train was still open at 11:50pm, I think they close at around 12:00am? So from this station, just ride the KL Monorail all across towards the last station which is the KL Sentral Station. Fare was RM2.10/person. And from the KL Sentral Station, just walk straight towards the MyHotel @ KL Sentral, it's just very nearby.