Day 259 - 7 Minutes on the Skybridge

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Following yesterday’s aborted attempt, this morning we arrived at the Petronas Towers earlier and joined the already quite long queue for tickets. The twin Petronas Towers (named after the Malaysian state oil firm that completely occupies one of the towers) are joined at their 41st floors by a 2-storey ‘Skybridge’ which featured in the Catherine Zeta-Jones film ‘Entrapment’, and free tickets are available every day for 7 minutes (yes, really) on the Skybridge. The whole trip takes an hour or so, plus queuing time. For anyone who likes skyscrapers it’s a definite ‘must see’, but in about 18 months time there will only be a single ‘must see’ structure and that will be the new Burj Tower in Dubai. At the moment there is no universal agreement on the world’s tallest building. To try and clarify things there are 4 categories of building (eg tallest habitable floor, tallest without antenna etc), with towers such as Toronto’s CN and masts (supported by guy wires) having additional categories. Currently Taipei 101 in Taiwan is generally considered the world’s tallest building, although Chicago’s Sears Tower still clings onto one of the categories. But this Burj Tower will be the tallest in every category which is excellent for skyscraper fans, a bit like a boxing reunification fight.

After this we by chance ended up in a bar showing the Melbourne Grand Prix, and Formula One generates as much spectator interest here as football or rugby does in England. For example an overtaking manoeuvre will be rewarded with a round of applause from the bar! We only wanted to see it because a week ago we’d been in Melbourne watching them preparing for the event, and in a couple of weeks Malaysia hosts a race.

We walked to a sushi restaurant that Gemma had had her eye on but being a Sunday it was closed. So we ended up eating sushi near the hostel. We then split up for a couple of hours because Gemma wasn’t terribly keen to trek over to the other side of town in the searing heat for a visit to the Islamic Arts Centre. It was actually very good, with enormous scale models of the world’s most important mosques, obviously including Mecca and Medina. The Finsbury Park mosque was notable by its absence.

Then we had a shower and picked up our bags from the hostel before catching a cab to the station for 15 Ringgit. The boot had an enormous cylinder in it which Ed asked about and it turned out he’d converted his knackered old taxi to run on LPG as well as petrol. The car’s running costs have been halved since the conversion, the driver enthusiastically told us, but he said ‘No’ when Ed asked if this meant the fare should in fact now be 7.50 Ringgit.

We phoned home for Mother’s Day and then caught our sleeper train to Hat Yai in Thailand, making ourselves comfortable on our beds in a sign of what we’ve got in store for 10 days on the Trans-Siberian.

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Comments

[ben]

towers
i don't think we should recognise towers in Arab states - a bit too "new money."