Christmas in Kuala Lumpur
More festive than we had imagined
Now that it’s April, why not finally write about Christmas? This past holiday was our second outside our home country. We had spent the previous Christmas in Cancun. Once we finally settled on being in Malaysia, we figured it would feel very different from anything we had ever known and that we’d have to make our own Christmas cheer. Well, yes and no!
Turns out Kuala Lumpur was decked out! While it’s a Muslim majority country, its malls are quite commercial and had fully embraced the festive season from that perspective. All of them had elaborate decorations. We were even able to find some decorations for our apartment at Mr. DIY, which is like a hardware-kitchenware store. And our AirBNB host had put up a small decorated tree. We had brought our stockings with us and fashioned a way to hang them from a crib in the living room with s-hooks that we bought at Mr. DIY.
One of the traditions we have every year that goes back to when I was a kid is making Christmas cookies. I loved doing this with my mom and sister and have carried it on with my girls since they were little. When we lived in Colorado I hosted cookie parties, where I’d make all the dough ahead of time and then put out rolling pins, sprinkles, and cookie cutters and let the kids and their friends make their own. Yes, it was a mess but it was so fun! We did a smaller version in Washington and then COVID hit, so it hasn’t been the same since then but we’ve carried on making them ourselves. So that’s one thing Shelby wanted to be sure we did while traveling this year.
Well, if you read about our AirBNB in KL, you’ll know that we had an issue with the oven, and one needs an oven to bake Christmas cookies in. So we almost didn’t get to make them, after we had bought all the ingredients, but our amazing host came through and supplied us with a portable oven and it worked quite well for our needs. Shelby started with the peppermint patty cookies, as you have to make the dough ahead of time, divide and color it, and then chill it. Only then do you roll the dough out, assemble the layers and roll them up together, slice the cookies, and bake them. Yes, it’s a process.
The dough turned out to be a bit crumbly, so S had a hard time rolling it, but she persevered. She then went on to make some sugar cookies, which N helped with, and some Mexican wedding cookies. We had to cut the sugar cookies out freehand, as we had no cookie cutters. And we could only find small tubes of colored icing, so we stretched a batch of homemade royal icing and did the best we could. I’d say all in all it was quite a success!
Christmas Day was low key, as there weren’t many presents to open nor other family or friends to celebrate with. We slept in and I made crepes. Then we watched Lord of the Rings (for the 2,958,285th time) and went to the pool for a swim. We had several calls with family once the time zones lined up. In the evening we went to a Brazilian steakhouse I had seen while walking through the mall in the days prior with Shelby.
We had made a reservation, just in case. (Side note, when I said “for Christmas,” they assumed December 24 and I almost didn’t catch it. Nope, we celebrate on Christmas Day, not the night before.) We ate our weight in Wagyu beef, among other cuts. It was delicious. Natasha out ate us all; it was impressive. And considering we paid a kids’ rate for her, she was by far the best deal. Ha!
In the end, it wasn’t my favorite Christmas, but it definitely wasn’t my least favorite. I’d say we made a pretty good go of it for being far, far from home. Hopefully, for Christmas 2024, we can be with more family, wherever in the world that may be. How and where did you spend your holiday?