Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

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Alreet. This isn't about to be a tirade about Oasis' worst album, its about our visit to the Petronas towers, the heighest set of Twin Towers in the world and the second heighest building in the world (452 metres above street level). Me and Will got up to catch the 8am bus from our hostel to Petronas, when we arrived we were greeted by a huge windey cue of people cuing up to get tickets to go to the viewing bridge, which connects the two Towers. The tickets are free but only about 1500 are given out every day, hence the early start!

Before going up to the bridge we visited te exhibition room , which was showing videos about the building of the Petronas Towers. Petronas is the name of the largest petroleum company in Malaysia, so they've got a bit of money to splash around on building huge buildings. The building work began in 1991 and took years to complete, the narrator of the video fired out stats in quite a dramatic voice saying things like, "The single largest concrete pouring in Malaysian construction history!", when you hear stats like that you can't help but get excited about the place! The exhibition room also had various science-typed games as well as showing a fictional drama portraying what would happen if the Petronas Towers were hit by lightning: apparently the towers have something called a Telsa coil built in which filters the lightning down the side of the building and thus protects it from lightning.

A lift took us up to the viewing bridge at a rate of one storey per second, therfore it would take about a minute and a half to reach the top (There are 88 storeys in both towers, you do the math). Anywhere above the sybridge is strictly of limits to tourists, so we got off on the 42nd floor and crossed the bridge. Just like in the KL Tower days before the views were amazing and it really emphasised how many skscrapers are dotted around the city. As it says in the guidebooks and the videos we watched in the Exhibition room, the Petronas Towers truly represent for the Malaysian people "A Vision realised"!

The Towers have a shopping mall inside them for the first few floors, so we decided to have a look around. The ground floor had a big World Cup 2006 section which had a big screen showing classic World cup moments and had a mini football pitch with two sets of football goals- People were invited to go on the "stage" and do the Socccer Am thing of kicking the ball through some small holes. They are football mad in Malayisia, as in every other country we've visited do far.

Decided to go to the cinema, seen Lucky Number Sleven, you should go and see it! The cinema food prices here don't absolutely bankrupt you like in England. I'm trying to think of excuses why going to a multiplex cinema can count as experiencing Malay culture, but i can't! However whilst watching the film, which was subtitled in Chinese and Malay (thank God it wasn't dubbed!) we could notice a bit of a differnce in sense of humour- Once in a while the whole Cinema would burst into hysterics at a part of the film which was meant to be serious, maybe the subtitle people had made a few altercations! Also, despite all of the violence in the film the F word was edited out-everytime someone was about to use it their voice would be speeded up so they talked like smurfs until the swearing was over, was quite funny.

After the cinema we headed back to the hostel via the monorail which runs through the city, from certain angles KL could look like something out of Futurama, despite all of its colonial heritage the most noticable thing about it is definitely how modern it is. That night we played snooker in the snooker hall on the floor below for the fourth night runnin- still pretty uselss though!

Mike

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Photos

The view below
This is the fountain at the front of the towers. Behind the towers is a nice park, with a small lake and a big paddling pool for kids.

Random Weight Machine
These were scattered around the Shopping Mall. I dont't think they have your size Dan! banter.

Comments

[Rob]

Is Beadle about?
Now then Michael. Just thought I'd commend you on this crackin' piece of infotainment; loving the original blend of local history, travel diary and study of the football allegiances of our South-East Asian brothers. Well done on saving the local female population from Andy's attentions by the way! About this beard of yours. It's totally understandable to go a bit native when you're on a round-the-world voyage of discovery. That's fine. But if you should start hanging around with Australian travellers who just like to "chill out" and discussing who was the first to discover Jack Johnson, I should say, oy, Michael, nooooooooo. Anyway, that aside, keep living it up and furnishing us with your insights!