A day in Kuala Lumpur

The only thing I knew about Kuala Lumpur is that it used to have the tallest buildings in the world. That has been beaten by the building in Tapei, so now they say that the Pertonas towers are the tallest twin towers in the world. They are tall there's no denying it. I just didn't know what to expect from the place as a whole. As it turns out it's a mixed culture country with the majority of the population being Muslim. Plenty of Indians here, there's a Little India part of town which had plenty of curry houses. First impressions were good. We arrived at our hostel, via another skytrain monorail thingy, and the place seemed to have a good relaxed vibe. Things are getting progressively more expensive the further south was are heading but it's still cheap living.
I never expected it to be soo big and have soo many flash buildings. Everything is fairly modern looking but there are many different styles of building here. It was fairly late when we arrived so we shot straight out for food and I made a rash decision to eat at some dodgy looking curry sort of place. After all we'd done to avoid bad food in Thailand I immediately turn to this dire excuse of an eatery. The food came and it was pure abysmal, it was a traditional beef curry thing but I'm sure it's not supposed to have this much hair in it!....or be totally cold! I sent it back but it was no better, I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for quite while. From this moment on it was higher class places. So what if it cost 1 pound for 2 meals and 2 drinks. I think I'll pay a massive(!) 3 times that and get some quality. Luckily the next day we did and it was fab and we avoided getting seriously ill too, bonus!
Next day was our only full day and we took a dash tour round the city. Whilst eating food at a class place near the city centre we witnessed a crazed white guy argue with a taxi driver at full pelt in the street which resulted in arrest and a rubber necking moped rider to crash into the back of a stopped car. By the time dessert came we'd also seen a girl fall straight on her behind, all just across the road from us. The thing is while all this was going on people just kept smiling. The place has that kind of aura about it. Or maybe I was still on a high from Thailand. But it seemed a good place to be. The cityscape itself is pretty good looking. We went up the communications tower to get 360 views of the city and they were pretty amazing. The whole city is surrounded by lush mountains and has a small-ish jungle in it. The Petronas towers really look the part too and the whole place seems to have benefited from having this massive petrol company, Petronas, right in the city.
Passes to get up the Petronas towers are free but you have to turn up at 8am to get them. NO chance! We went anyway and looked around the building museum they had inside. Whilst we were wondering around thinking maybe we shouldn't be here a woman approached us asking if we had tickets to go up to the observation deck. We said no and thought we may get ejected for nosing round the building. Instead she came back with two passes for us and off we went. First you have to sit through a 3-D advert/movie for Petronas oil company and then you go up a high speed lift to the 41st floor. It's less than half way up but still pretty decent a height. One tower was built by the Japanese, the other by Koreans. Not sure why but there you go. The views were good and the general friendliness of the place made it all the better. When the building is lit up at night it looks even more impressive and a huge display of progress for Malaysia as a whole. This is no tin-pot nation.
Back near the huge street where we stopped was a large free music concert going on, mainly Indian stuff and sounded pretty damn good, apart from the dodgy singing!
There's plenty of money in Kuala Lumpur and it shows. Bars and restaurants everywhere, a lot with a jungle shack type of theme, and the almost compulsory lady-boy type bars for the more discerning traveller.
Our brief stop was over soo soon. It was time to get tickets for the bus to Singapore. A chaotic bus station with bartering style ticket buying was just down the road. We weren't relishing the 6 hour bus ride to Singapore but we had to get on as were were flying to Perth in 2 days.
I'd stop off in Kuala Lumpur for a few days but wouldn't make it a holiday destination. I liked the place and it had a friendly laid back atmosphere but apart from the towers there wasn't oodles to see. I just wish travellers would stop calling it KL.


The Petronas towers at night, huge! And below, the skyline looking from the Communications tower onto the Pertronas towers.