Life in Switzerland: Kuala Lumpur

The Saturday morning after Asia Trek was over I flew from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur with my two good friends Roberto and Thom. We had booked ourselves a budget hotel and planned on spending just under 2 days exploring the city. When we arrived in the KL airport I experienced culture shock, because it was the first time I had been in a place where the majority of women were wearing traditional Muslim burkas and the first time I had seen so many women covered head to toe with only the eyes showing. There were also a fair number of Tibetan monks in bright orange robes.

We got a taxi into the city, and the radio was in English and was playing mostly American music, of course. Our driver was nice and quite lucid, but at one point on our way down the interstate he pulled over on the side of the highway and got out of the car to "freshen up", which involved taking a drink of water and splashing some water over his face. Once that 3 minute ritual was finished we were on our way again. The children in the cars we passed were riding freely, with no seatbelts, and it reminded me of the U.S. in the 1980s, before the government got strict on the regulations.

My first impression of Kuala Lumpur was that it was very polluted, and the air just felt extremely dirty compared to the air in Singapore. I kept thinking I was seeing American flags everywhere, but instead they were the Malaysian flag, which looks remarkably similar. In addition, I was blown away by how many American chains existed there, including Papa Johns, Borders, 7-11, Chili's, and Outback Steakhouse.

We arrived at the hotel around 3:30, checked in, went out for a walk around town. We walked the 5 minutes to Chinatown and found a restaurant that had been recommended by a friend. It had only locals in it, which was a sign that it was a good place, and we all tried the hokkien mee, which also had been recommended, and then wished that we hadn't. It was a noodle dish, but it came out resembling worms, and tasted like bitter soy sauce. After lunch we walked around the numerous malls, but the first one sold only electronic equipment and the second one had so many long winding hallways with really low ceilings that we got to feeling claustrophobic and had to leave.

KL's most famous landmark is the Petronas Towers, and are generally considered to be the 3rd tallest buildings in the world, after the Burj Khalifi in Dubai and the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, so that evening we headed to the skybar at the Trader Hotel, which is a large hotel situated next to the Petronas Towers. The bar was gorgeous and incredibly unique, with the main area of the floor taken up by a gigantic swimming pool with tables lining the outside. The view of the towers was unparalleled, and I realized that they must be the most beautiful skyscrapers in the world, if such a thing can be named that way.

The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn, after a very short night of sleep, to go back to the Petronas Towers to stand in line for free tickets to the observation deck on the skybridge between the two towers. We had to stand in line for more than two hours just waiting for the ticket booth to open, and then another 45 minutes before our tour started, so I was grumpy and tired by the time we finally made it to the skybridge. The Petronas towers have 88 floors in total and a height of 452m, and we were on the 41st floor, at a height of 170m. The view was nice, and it was cool to say I'd been up there, but they restricted each tour group to only 10 minutes each, so after the 3 hours spent getting the tickets the 10 minutes on the bridge was hardly worth it.

After the towers we hopped in a taxi to go to north of KL, to the Batu Caves to see the caves and cave temples. The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, and is the focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia. We had to climb 272 steps to reach the top, but the interiors of the caves are stunning, and well worth it. The ceiling rises over 100m and is overwhelming just to look up.

After haggling yet again for a fair taxi back to the city, we realized that the hardest thing to do in KL was getting taxis to turn on their meters. They wanted to quote a set price instead, but for long ride they would quote what we knew was double the price and for short rides triple the price. We got really good at bailing out of taxis who refused to turn on the meter, even leading to almost getting in a fight with one of the drivers.

After a nap back at the hotel we again set out, this time to find dinner, and at the request of Roberto headed to the famous night market, essentially an outdoor food court with a large variety of Chinese, Malaysian, and Thai restaurants. The food was good, cheap, and the atmosphere lively.

Monday morning we slept in to recover from our lack of sleep the night before, then went into town and had coffee and pastry from Starbucks because we were sick and tired of noodles and rice every day for breakfast. I did a quick bit of shopping and then Thom and I went for the famous "fish spa", where tiny minnows eat the dead skin cells off your feet. It was a crazy sensation, and tickled beyond belief, but if I twitched even the slightest bit the fish would get startled and swim away. While I was there I also got a fantastic hour long reflexology foot massage. One of the best parts about Malaysia is that pampering services are extremely inexpensive.

Then it was off to the airport to continue on to Indonesia!