Kuala Lumpur

Since I last wrote, we've been to Kuala Lumpur, the UK, Kuala Lumpur again, Laos, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. We had to go to KL as Air Asia, our airline of choice, fly to London and Laos from there. Our next post will be about Laos which left a big impression on us indeed. With regards to Air Asia, be warned, as they do like to adjust their flight times a lot with their international flights (they changed three of our flight times). Oh, and our flight back to KL was delayed by four hours. What do you expect? You're scum!

So, on our way to the UK last July, we thought we'd take advantage of the KL stopover and explore the city. One thing you'll notice when you fly into KL are the palm plantations. Thousands and thousands of acres of the trees that produce the palm oil has now replaced the once rich and diverse surrounding rain forest of Kuala Lumpur. It's a shame but it pays. Two days is never enough to fully explore anywhere, which is why we decided to stay right in the heart of Chinatown, on Petaling Street. The hotel we chose was the Chinatown Inn - your typical budget inner-city accommodation: windowless but with air-con. This suited us fine as we were going to spend most of our time outdoors anyway. Little tip if you're going to stay at this place: bring earplugs as the cleaners seem to start work at 7am, the doors are thin and they shout down the hall at each other. Look on the bright side - it gets you out of bed so you can explore. I was going to complain but my anger was lightened by their cheery 'hello!' as soon as we stepped out of our room.

Straight into Chinatown and we could see that although the area was still orientated towards tourism, it wasn't as sanitised as the one in Singapore. Amongst the t-shirts, key rings and other what-nots you could still see Chinese fare. And look, there's an old man pushing a cart! What you do notice here is the prominence of the burka and it's a reminder that you're in a predominantly Muslim country. Just over half the population (which is mostly a mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian peoples) follow Islam, which was brought to the country from India in around 1200 AD. Having lived in ethnically diverse countries all my life, the sight of a sea of  burka's was still new to me and, after living in Thailand now for about a year, it was odd to witness SE Asian faces peeping through the fabric. In this case, it was obvious that just around the corner from Petaling Street Kuala Lumpur was going to be a different experience to that of your more Buddhist cultural experience and we were looking forward to exploring. Just at the top of the street was a row of Indian and Nepalese restaurants. Hidden amongst the crowds and pollution from the city's heaving streets. I spotted a sign on a building, 'Nepal House', which was a restaurant on the third floor of a nondescript town house. We entered the doorway and climbed up some narrow stairs, walking past Nepalese men on our ascent. The restaurant, if you want to call it that, was dark, smoky and someone was playing bongo's in the far corner. Simply a long rectangular room with a kitchen in the back, this was a real hangout for Nepalese and Indian locals and it became immediately apparent that we were the only westerners and Erika was the only woman. Any curiosity from the diners, however, was soon ended and we tucked into our food. Lentils, rice and curried vegetables (Dal, Bhat and Tarkari respectively) was offered with an array of different meats. It was delicious. I think we paid the equivalent to a pound each for a huge lunch, which included free refills of Dal.

The rest of the day we hung out around Chinatown.

Day Two - we were pretty much rained out on this day. The skies opened up as soon as we left but we were adamant this wouldn't put us off our plan, which was to go to the colonial district and on to the Islamic Arts Museum. July must be a low season in Malaysia because we arrived at the recommended ex-colonial district of the British (Merdeka Square) only to find it resembling an abandoned ghost town. Building's were closed for renovation, grass was growing over the paving slabs and the underground station was boarded up. 

On day three we did the KL Tower to get a bird's eye view of KL and it was very worth it. Although Erika has a phobia with heights, she mustered up the courage to follow me to the lift.   The viewing pod is about 1000 feet high. As it's a communication tower the bulk of it is simply a hollow tube that the lift shoots up in - the wind blew the lift about and it felt like we were ascending on the outside. Out of the lift, it was all good. 

And then downstairs to a mini zoo where we decided to be idiot tourists. 

Then we checked out a couple malls...

...and the sun came out.

This is one of the most famous Islamic buildings in KL, the Dayabumi Complex...

...which you can walk past on your way to the huge Masjid Negara, Malaysia's national mosque which can hold up to 15,000 worshippers. This picture is just part of the internal structure. We seem to have misplaced the others, sorry!

Some Indian street food...

And of course, you can't visit KL without seeing the Petronas Twin Towers: standing at 1482 feet they are the tallest twin towers in the world. There is a huge upmarket shopping mall at their base and you can walk along the sky walk that connects the two towers. As Erika had just dealt with her fear at the KL Tower, we thought we'd give that one a miss...

Well, that was KL. It's quite hard to summarise a place you've only visited fleetingly but we would say that, although it's a 'vibrant city with a diverse culture', we don't really feel any desire to visit there again. Not sure what it is. Maybe some places need a bit longer but KL doesn't feel like it wants to be visited. If you lived there, however...