Kuala Lumpur

Arrival + First Steps

I arrived into Kuala Lumpur international airport at around 9.00pm on Sunday night to a balmy 27C. The airport is pretty flash and easy to navigate as almost all signs are in both English and Bahasa(local language most commonly spoken). The biggest shock was coming out of the airport to the 27C temperatures and what felt like near 100% humidity. The smog was also pretty bad at the time and you could really taste the pollution in the air.

On my transfer to the hotel for the first nights accomodation I chatted with a really interesting guy who was looking at the feasibility of starting a dairy farm in Malaysia. This was an interesting task considering the heat and the humidity, but he had already spent six years helping to run a dairy farm in Saudi Arabia, so I guess anything is possible.

Finding my feet and my first scam!

In the morning the realisation really came to me that I was grossly unprepared. I had the intention of going and finding a backpackers to stay in and then organise myself from there. Unfortunately I had no idea where I was let alone where to go to. A quick flick through the yellow pages (in english) and trip down to get a map and I was on my way.

One of my first experiences in Malaysia was something to really bring home the fact that I really am a bit of a country bumpkin when it comes to travelling. On my journey to find accomodation one of the first people I met was a guy from the Phillipenes. When he found out I was a New Zealander he was very interested as his aunty was hoping to immigrate to New Zealand. After meeting his sister who was also in town and sharing a drink I agreed to go and briefly meet their aunty to talk to her about NZ. The aunty was busy but I met their uncle and was given lunch at his home (a nice place). This guy worked on a cruise ship as a card dealer and said that if I was heading through Thailand I should go and visit his boat and gamble at his table (he had a system that we could use and split the profits 50/50). As it turned out the Aunty was not going to be home for awhile and I wasn't to keen on cheating any sort of gambling establishment so I decided to leave and was dropped off in China town (where all the backpackers are). That night I met another traveller who had had a ver similar experience (auntie going to canada, unlce who works on cruise ship). I was quickly informed by another traveller that this was a particularly common scam!! Luckily the only thing I lost was a hour or two of time and I managed to come out with a free meal and transportation directly to where I was going. Anyway lesson learned and being even more careful now.

Weather and city

KL is certainly a growing city, there are construction sites everywhere and partially finished skyscrapers mark the skyline in most places. It is certainly an interesting mix with the new high quality buildings surrounded by the existing derilict ones. The weather in KL is very oppressive, very high temperatures and very high humidity. The temperatures do not help the sewer system which is open to the street (metal grilles dot the footpath approximately every 5m), and can smell particularly pungent.

The amount of traffic is incredible and the fact that there are not more crashes is amazing. Thousands of motorbikes of all shapes and descriptions dart in and out of the heavy car traffic on multilane roads where indicating is very much an option. I also found that all streets curve all the time. I think there is an additional murphy's law here, that states if you try and get somewhere, any road that you walk onto will curve away from where you want to go. Map's should also only be used as guidelines!

What to do

Having no idea what to do in KL I decided to attempt the obvious and go to see the big buildings. The petronas towers are a KL landnmark and I think the third largest building in the world. They also have the big version of the sky tower here but with no glass floor.
As you can see the towers from most parts of the city I decided to take the opportunity to have a bit of a wander through the town and get to the towers on foot(this is how I found that no streets travel in straight lines). After a couple of hours of wandering through the heat I managed to make my way to the towers and got a ticket to head up the towers a few hours later. It took me the next 3 hours to make my way to the KL tower by foot.
After this i returned to the petronus towers for my tour and took the opportnuity to explore the mall beneath the towers. The Malls here are something else, they make anything in NZ look like a minimart. Also all the buildings are airconditioned which make them nice for a brief reprieve from the heat outside.
After all that I decided to attempt to use the train system to get back which proved to be a lot easier than on foot.

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