Tall, dark and handsome ... Petronas Towers!

Asia » Malaysia
January 10th 2005

Published: July 30th 2006

Edit Blog Post

halefg

Petronas Towers from below

Flying from Bandung, Indonesia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was an amazing experience. We had a chance seeing a glimpse of Indonesian Archipelago from above, which was promising to be a good trip. As soon as we landed in the KL International, we went through immigration like a breeze, then hopped on the Express Train to Sentral Train station in downtown KL. Our first destination was Petronas Towers, the then-tallest building in the world.

To get there, we rode the metro system to the KLCC stop, which leads to the towers. We found out that the skybridge tickets are given for free, first come first serve basis. There was a limit on free tickets per day, and obviously people would fight for it, thus the tickets for the day were given away when we arrived. A little bit of disappointed, we decided to come back the next morning as early as possible. There is NO WAY to miss out the opportunity to be at this famous skybridge!

After taking LOTS of Petronas pictures from below, our next destination was the historical Masjid Jamek, an Islamic mosque, which surprisingly offers an inviting sense to non-Muslim foreigners. Locals were all over the

Petronas Towers at night

This is what we saw across Kuala Lumpur: Petronas Towers glow at night.

place on the mosque ground, taking naps under the palm trees, on piece of cold marble slabs. Even Malaysia has a siesta culture! The architecture is rich, filled with details on munarets and arches.

Merdeka Square, on the other hand, was very hot and open. Ah, tropical paradise, which could be very hot and humid. The square is a huge plaze in downtown Kuala Lumpur, decorated with a big Malaysian flag in the middle. We had a hard time to navigate Kuala Lumpur with our map, and the fact that we were too stingy to hire a taxi didn't help much.

So after having some difficulties finding the Pasar Seni Chinatown, we finally arrived at Jalan Petaling, the heart of Chinatown. Talking about a Chinatown, this place was haven for fake items. We saw many Nikes and Pradas, most of them were sold super cheap, and we knew these were fakes. I was temped to buy a pair of Nike Shox, but as I was a shoe-snob, I knew that I would be very disappointed to these fakes, so I ended up just looking around to see what they have.

We were set up to meet Henny,

Petronas Tower skybridge

I ran across the skybridge, twice!

a good friend of my sister, who works in KL. We met at Bukit Bintang, after a long ride of monorail through the cultural section of the city. Henny didn't change for a bit, she still looked exactly like the last time I saw here. After passing through quick catching up with our lives, she showed us around the area, and found a decent hotel room where Beau and I spent the night.

The nightlife around our hotel neighborhood is very dinamic; with many Chinese restaurants vendors selling smelly cuisine food. Beau found his durian fruit vendor, which awefully smell like dirty socks. We previously had this fruit in NYC Chinatown, and Beau totally hated it. He said that durian tasted like a mixture between dirty wet socks and rotten onions. But SE Asia is not SE Asia without durian, right? Later that night, Beau and I decided a message would be a good treat for us, and for RM 35, we had half an hour professional spa/massage by our hotel.

What to do in Petronas Towers skybridge? Run across it!

The next day we woke up as early as possible to go back to the

Petronas Towers waiting line

This is the waiting line, two hours prior the opening, to get the free ticket to set up. Limited first-come-first-serve.

Petronas, and by the time we arrived, there were already a long line before the ticket window. Hello? This was roughly about two hours before the window was opened. I was a little bit nervous that we couldn't get up to the skybridge, but luckily, we got our tickets to get up. Hoo-rah! Nervously, we waited for our group turn to ride the elevator up.

One of my to-do-list-before-I-die was to run across this famous skybridge, so I asked for a permission to run across to our guide. I didn't want to just run, as many security people were around and cameras were all over the place, I could be mistakenly thought as a terrorist! So my guide was stunned; she probably thought that I was this crazy tourist (which I was), and she said she had to talk to her supervisor. After a roughly 15 minutes of talking through walkie talkie, her supervisor came down with security guards, and asked more detail information about my plan. After a while, they seemed to agree with their decision, and they asked everybody's attention, with a MEGAPHONE not to be alarmed when I was running across. Meanwhile I was stunned; I

Beau in KL Chinatown

Jalan Petaling is the center of KL Chinatown.

didn't mean to be a local celebrity like this, but anyway I was ready to run, while people were wispering, taking my pictures and filming my action. So I did run across the Petronas Towers skybridge!

Bus ride to Melaka

Our trip was continued to Pudu Raya bus station, a dirty and crowded station, to catch a ride to Malaka (Malaysia) then to Singapore. One thing to be taken note at: this bus station was filled with poisonous gas, as most of these bus would not pass the emission test in the states. I surprised that I didn't pass out, after inhaling the combusion gas for hours, waiting for our bus.

Additional photos below

Photos: 18, Displayed: 18

During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain established colonies and protectorates in the area of current Malaysia; these were occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945. In 1948, the British-ruled territories on the Malay Peninsula formed the Fe...more history