MaTIC. Have you heard about it?

The Tuanku Abdul Rahman Hall - the main building for the centerAnita was really eager to fill up the boys time during this school holidays. She was determine to start early. Therefore we went out yesterday afternoon to inject some 'culture' into the boys. Idlan was not interested. He has been grumpy all morning. Therefore, we left him at home and brought Irfan along. First stop, MaTIC - the Malaysian Tourism Information Center - for the KL Sunday 1 Malaysia Family Fair ......

The colourful rows of stals greeting usEntrance to the Cocoa BoutiqueHmm! Sounded a mouthful? It was either that or having a look at the Dukethon. Unfortunately, we woke up rather late. Apparently there are hot air balloon and stuffs over there. But it was scheduled to finish by midday. That's done then.

MaTIC is a renovated colonial building built in 1975. It was converted in 1988 and the main building was renamed the Tuanku Abdul Rahman Hall. It was beautifully maintained, and the Saloma Restaurant was right next door. The building is along Jalan Ampang, opposite the Renaissance Hotel, right next door to Zouk. We heard about it from surfing the net. Thought that it was intriguing since we planned to go on holiday at some point and we prefer to spend money at home rather than abroad. We wanted to see if there were informations and good holiday packages on offer. The Fair itself was held at the Center's car park. There were ample space. There were activities for children mainly, karaoke, facepainting, bouncy castles and clowns. I counted there were about 20 families and around 40 stalls.

The stores mainly sells local wares and food. There were also sections on local holiday offers which we went to have a look at. There were mainly homestays. The offer were pretty nice and reasonable. We were eyeing for a few in Kedah, but with the flooding at the moment, maybe we will look at it for some time next year. Since it was past midday when we arrived there, there were more retailers than visitors. We found out about the place through the Net. I am not sure if there were other publicity about the Fair. Maybe it was more crowded in the morning.

We then visited a chocolate shop next to the main hall called the Cocoa Boutique. It was a shop selling locally produced chocolate. There is a small exhibition center in it with chocolate-making demonstration. There were about 4 buses with tourists from India arriving at the place when we entered. We ended up not buying anything since the queue was so long. If only there is a nice cafe around there for us to grab a quick lunch. It started to drizzle by then. So we had to split. We headed to KLCC for lunch.

Lunch at KLCCLate afternoon tea at Tapper's Cafe, CapsquareQuick stroll before heading homeThe next destination was Capital Square, or Capsquare. Been there a couple of times before but it was only the first for Anita. It was surprisingly quite for a Sunday. Most of the shops were closed while the rest were unoccupied. A sorry sight really. There were a few bars which looked to be opened at night. As for yesterday, a few restaurants were opened and we had some tea at Tapper's Cafe at the ground floor. It was a typical kopitiam but the food were reasonable. The main attraction seemed to be the cinema on the top floor.