KL's Royal Museum was the National Palace until 2011. But it didn't start out as a royal palace. Built in 1928, it was the home of Chan Wing, who had made his fortune in tin-mining. After serving as accommodation first for the Japanese army and then for the British RAF, it became the Sultan of Selangor's temporary palace. In 1957 it was renovated to become the National Palace.

It makes for a nice little visit. The windows look out over pleasant lawns and stands of trees. The photographs are interesting.



The furnishings are fairly modest. If you disregard the gilt and the large amount of royal yellow, it's almost homely.

I very much admired the reading room with the sliding book ladders and the chaises longues, and I would definitely enjoy luxuriating in the royal suite, with its vast bathroom and restroom and powder room.

But I wouldn't have felt very comfortable in the stiffly organized little seating areas, I don't think. I guess people didn't relax much there, but just concentrated on not knocking their tea over. The palace is also equipped with a private dental surgery, and all its shallow dentist's sliding drawers are appropriately yellow.



Afterwards it's an easy walk to Vishal Food and Catering, Jalan Scott, Brickfields.

This is a simple eating place. Its no-nonsense rows of tables -- heavily populated on a Sunday lunchtime -- are described as a "mess-hall" arrangement in many of the accounts I have read.

But you can pig out on delicious biryani and a host of side curries, washed down with delectable lassi. In your ears are the chatter of the diners, the beat of some nearby Indian music, and the odd burst of drilling from the Sree Veera Hanuman Temple, still under reconstruction after all these years.

After a meal like that, I wouldn't call the king my uncle, as my dad used to say.