Day Twenty-Two - Kuala Lumpur

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Day Twenty-Two - Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail!

It was a heavy heart that we left Zachry’s and as it was a stepping stone to get to the jungle, I don’t think expectations were high for Kuala Lumpur (KL). I was really looking forward to it though; it’s a city I enjoyed ten years ago and was keen to see how it had changed.

As we were in no great rush, we took a coach from the airport into the city. It dropped us at KL Sentral where our journey through Cambodia and Thailand had begun nearly three weeks before. It was empty and deserted then, whereas it was seething with commuters now.

We got the girls a KFC and tramped off to find the Monorail. When I was here first, it was being built and you could go up to one station and travel about 500m to another as a demo. I think it opened a few years later. They were ridiculously proud of it but it now seems to have fallen into disfavour.


Anyway, I wanted to go on it and all was going through my mind was The Simpsons and Lyle Langley selling them a pup. I shared this by singing “Monorail!” on a slightly repetitive basis.

That aside, it was a nice way to see some of the city and as we glided north we could see KL Tower and Petronas in the background. From the station, it was about 5 minutes to our hotel, Air Asia’s ‘Tune’. These hotels are like Travelodges except the price is stripped out and you add each component you need - aircon, hairdryer, Wi-Fi etc.

It turned out to be really nice, better than a Travelodge and handy for all we needed. Quick shower and we caught a taxi over to KL City Center (KLCC), the location of Petronas Towers, Suria Mall and KLCC Park.

Arriving at the base of the towers is amazing. You get out of the taxi and immediately get a crick in the neck. They are staggeringly high. Malaysians are fond of records and of having the biggest or best so it was a blow when they were only the tallest building in the world for a short time. They got over this by pointing out they were the highest twin towers in the world but I think this is to be overtaken too.

The sun was beating down so after taking the usual pics and gazing up into the sky like eejits, we nipped inside for some aircon and fresh juice. Passing on through Suria (which again had grown from about 25 shops to being a huge centre with every brand name known to man) we reached KLCC Park. This place has a few lakes and a kids water park so we dandered around. The park was being cleaned so was closed and Leanne was thrown out of the activity side for being too big.

As it was getting on and we had no intention of visiting anymore ‘sights’ we hopped on the underground/light railway to Chinatown. Again this was only partially opened when I was there before and the lines were never that handy. It was pleasant to see it up and running and meant we could avoid fighting through the traffic in a taxi.

As we got off at Chinatown, it was drizzling and combined with a bit of hunger we dived into a bar for some food. As we had walked up I had noticed how much Chinatown had been cleaned up - it still stank a bit and was hardly Singapore level but was a marked change. I spotted the hostel I’d stayed in before and it still looked a shithole though. Plus ça change.

Revived we tackled the Night Markets and all the dodgy goods. The quality was superb and the guys selling it open and frank. One Aussie girl asking if one guy was selling a real pashmina was treated with amazement, “For 10 Ringgit??? It feels like it…” and she walked away. She was in the wrong market for anything genuine.

We picked up some presents and some bits for ourselves there - the girls have some stunningly good copies that may fall apart in six months but we’ll see.

After a few hours of intense bargaining (by all of them), we decided to stop by Petronas on the way back to the hotel. At night, they shimmer and take over the skyline. A magnificent way to end a day.


Today’s Highlights Monorail! Seeing KL so changed; and seeing the girls take on the market sellers

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