{"id":30,"date":"2006-12-18T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-18T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/2006\/12\/kuala-lumpur-walkabout\/"},"modified":"2010-04-09T22:53:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T17:23:05","slug":"kuala-lumpur-walkabout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/2006\/12\/kuala-lumpur-walkabout\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuala Lumpur Walkabout"},"content":{"rendered":"

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!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

\"Random<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> I had seen in the city centre the previous day.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

\"Framed!\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Stairway<\/a><\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

Right then, looked like a bunch of stairs heading in. I guessed I could handle it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Finally,<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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!<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Petronas<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> and took a few random pictures<\/a> of buildings<\/a> and the general view<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

The Petronas Towers were a short walk from where I got off and along the way I saw these:<\/p>\n

\"Shah<\/a> \"Priyanka<\/a><\/p>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

\"Pakistan<\/a><\/p>\n

Looks like there’s no escaping Bollywood or Pakistan! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Interesting<\/a>\"Petronas<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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

\"National<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> to the airport.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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>\n

p.s. View all of these photos and more on my Kuala Lumpur set<\/a> on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Kuala Lumpur Walkabout<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[51,54,53,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}