Kuala Lumpur Walkabout

As promised, here’s pictures from my one afternoon walking around Kuala Lumpur (with a little help from the trains!) Be warned, it’s a long post!

I started the day waiting for a phone call from a colleague to let me know whether my flight could be rescheduled. It was almost 11am by the time I figured out that nothing was going to happen and finally got off my ass and took a shower and packed my stuff.

I was staying at a friend’s home in one of the distant suburbs, so it was a long and uneventful bus journey back to the city.

A quick sandwich at Subway, an hour on the bus and I finally arrived at KL Sentral. If you’re flying out on Malaysian Airlines and you have a ticket on the Express train to the airport, they allow you to check your bags in at KL Sentral. This was huge relief to me as I didn’t see myself wandering around the city lumbered with a large duffel bag!

The check in process was smooth, I was the second of two people in line! What next? I wandered around the station for a bit, debating whether I should try to buy some ringgit (I had only a 100 or so)

Decided against trying to buy more currency (especially since they wouldn’t accept Indian Rupees as payment and I’d have to use my credit card!) and instead looked around for a tourist kiosk of some kind where I could pick up a map of the city.

The lady at the Mlaysia Tourism kiosk was quite bored and when I asked her for a “walking” or tourist map, she pulled one out of a drawer and handed it to me and went back to staring at her computer screen. Well, no worries, I had a map now!

A quick scan of the map and a vague plan to visit Petronas Towers among others formed in my head. Also, I decided to try and take every one of the KL train systems, especially the funky looking monorail I had seen in the city centre the previous day.

I hopped onto a KTM Kommuter train heading from KL Sentral to an area called Masjid Jamek (?) which I thought was close enough to the KL Tower (or Menara KL) and also would provide for some interesting sights along the way.

The train I hopped into was painted a deep purple colour and carried the “Incredible India!” series of ads to encourage tourism to India. Ironic. While trying to take my camera out to take a picture of the interior of the train, I saw this interesting building pass by and quickly took a photo of it. Unfortunately my stop was soon after and I couldn’t get a shot of the train!

I next had to find my way to an entrance to the park in which the KL Tower was situated. There was a conventional entrance where all the cabs and buses and most sensible people would enter from and there was the entrance through a “jungle trail” where overenthusiastic tourists like me would enter from. The Lonely Planet book that I had consulted for 5 minutes at a friend’s place sold me on this “jungle trail” and the tourist map I had went on about how KL was the only city that had a reserved jungle bang in the middle of the city and that the communications tower was built with a lot of ecological considerations, etc.

So I had to see it. I tramped through a few very busy streets, almost got run over once, saw a Mahindra show room selling their Bolero SUV-type vehicles and finally about 25 minutes later arrived at the very small, unassuming entrance to the Jungle Trail about 20 metres away from a train station that I could have just travelled to in the first place!

Right then, looked like a bunch of stairs heading in. I guessed I could handle it.

In about five minutes I was huffing and puffing and there seemed no end to the stairs. Also, while I could see the road through the trees in the distance, all I could hear were typical jungle noises. And the helpful Malaysia Tourism notices which told you to beware of snakes and bugs. Nice.

Finally, through the trees, I could see the tower. Phew, I thought. I’m getting there. Not quite. A tramp up a rope bridge, some more stairs and I was at the base of the tower.

By now, I was pooped. I was breathing heavily (dammit, I’m in bad shape!) but luckily for the me, the ground level of the tower was filled with souvenir shops and a couple of restaurants. I bought my ticket to the top of the tower (20 ringgit) a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate and wandered around looking at the shops for a bit until I was a little less out of breath!

Time to go up! I rode up the couple of hundred metres up to the observation deck all alone in the elevator and stepped out to see this:

My next stop, the Petronas Towers was also visible from the deck and the afternoon sun shining on them made the metal exterior glow with a pale golden hue.

The view was amazing! I just kept wandering around and around, looking out the windows and when I got bored of that looking at the display they had around the inside of the deck about the world’s tallest towers and took a few random pictures of buildings and the general view.

Time to leave. I took the elevator back downstairs. Stopped to take a picture of the famed ceiling of the entrance area and then wandered out the regular road back into the city.

I was lost for a bit, since the road names on my map didn’t match the signs! And some buildings seemed to have the same name. Gah! I took a breather and sa t on a bench on the sidewalk and did some people-watching before I tackled the map again. This time I managed to figure things out. I decided it was time to ride the monorail!

I was a short distance away from the nearest station and I didn’t strictly need to take the train since my destination was the very next station, but nevertheless, I bought my ticket and hopped on!

The Petronas Towers were a short walk from where I got off and along the way I saw these:

And this:

Looks like there’s no escaping Bollywood or Pakistan! 😉

I also saw this interesting building which was sadly being demolished. In all probability to make way for a another glass and steel high rise. Sigh.

At the base of the Petronas Towers, after successfully dodging a guy who tried to sell me a cheap watch, I did the usual touristy thing and clicked a bunch of photos. You know the kind, right? But I just had to include one here! I was exhausted. I didn’t see much of the city, but my feet sure met a lot of pavement! I stopped for a coffee at a cafe next to the towers and sipped it while doing some more people-watching.

Time was running out and while I considered for a moment entering the shopping centre next door, I decided I couldn’t risk it and I did so want to see the KL railway station before I left.

Hopped onto another train that dropped me off near the KL railway station (which the 5 minutes with the Lonely Planet had told me was worth looking at) and I was being my usual click-happy self again, when time and the batteries started running out!

So back it was to KL Sentral. A slightly longish walk from where I was and I panicked about missing my train, but the trees, grass and beautiful buildings (including the National Museum) along the way made up for it.

I was sweaty, grubby and bone tired. It felt sooo good to step back into the air conditioned comfort of the station. And in a lucky break, I got there just in time to catch the next express to the airport.

A short ride (and nap) later I was running through the airport to get to my gate on time. Guess what? The gate printed on my ticket was wrong and I had to go to one about 20 gates away. Aaargh! When I arrived at my gate, the queue was huge! And this was about 30 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave!

Not surprisingly, the flight was late. In fact, the airplane hadn’t even arrived yet. We had to spend a boring 30 minutes standing in line until we were finally allowed to enter the waiting lounge.

So, if you thought you couldn’t do much in an afternoon, you’re mistaken! Of course, I could have got a lot more done if I’d actually planned it out. But I still had fun! I was completely knocked out by the end of it though. Slept soundly for the short flight back home.

p.s. View all of these photos and more on my Kuala Lumpur set on Flickr.