We had to say goodbye to the Cameron Highlands and the cooler temperatures to head to Kuala Lumpur. We booked a bus through Father’s Guesthouse at 11 am on CS Travel. The bus left exactly on time – a rarity in Southeast Asia! The first 1.5 hours of the ride was windy and motion sickness-inducing (even with having taken my pills). Thankfully the last 1.5 hours was straighter, so a much easier drive. We stopped about mid-way for a bathroom break and arrived in Kuala Lumpur at KL Sentral around 2:45 pm. From the bus station, we ordered a Grab to take us to our hotel – The Chow Kit – An Ormund Hotel. This hotel was one of the nicest we stayed in on our entire trip and for just under $40 USD per night including a 10 rm ($2.50 USD) tourist tax fee. Patrick particularly loved the décor of the hotel (black floors, brass finishes, and teal wall paint) – perhaps some inspiration for our own home in the future?
Kuala Lumpur is an impressive city when it comes to skyscrapers. It is also a huge city, so we could have filled more than our four days easily. Here’s what we did manage to see in those four days:
Not surprisingly, the first and foremost sight on the sightseeing list was the Petronas Towers, which we crossed off on the first full day in Kuala Lumpur. They are beauties, really remarkable in person. It is hard to describe how impressive they are just looking up as you stand at the base. We took so many pictures.
The base of the towers, maybe six stories-worth, is a large, modern mall filled with stores and shops. We walked through for a while, mostly just to enjoy the air-conditioning. There is also a movie theater playing several (maybe all?) movies in English. 1917 was starting about 10 minutes after we arrived, so that was an easy choice. By the time we were done shopping and watching the movie, it was around 6 pm. Every evening at 7:30 pm a fountain and lights show occurs at the park/pond area in front of the Petronas Towers. The lights show is joined with music at 8 pm and 9 pm. It’s definitely worthwhile to watch! Plus, the Petronas Towers take on a whole new appearance after sunset.
Entrance to the museum was only 5 rm per person, incredibly low! The building that the museum is housed in is nice. The museum consists of four sections – Prehistory, Malay Kingdoms, Colonial Era, and Malaysia Today Galleries – and is well curated with plenty of informative signs (in English) and displays. Well worth the few hours we spent there, and a good way to learn more about Malaysia in the air conditioning!
After our museum visit, we also walked through the museum park complex which includes the Planetarium, National Mosque of Malaysia, Police Museum, Islamic Arts Museum, Zoo, Butterfly Park, and the list continues. We didn’t have time to visit any of the other museums, but they are conveniently located near each other if you wanted to make a day of it!
We walked through this square on the way to the National Museum. This is where the British flag was lowered, and the Malaysian flag raised for the first time when Malaysia gained independence (midnight on August 30, 1957). The square is located in front of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, which originally housed the offices of the British colonial administration and was then renamed after the new reigning sultan. Now it houses the offices of the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia and Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Malaysia. The public library also sits adjacent to the square, along with a large flagpole and “I Love Kuala Lumpur” sign. This would be a nice place to sit if you had cooler temperatures.
The Tower is known for its great views of the city (as I mentioned, the skyscraper scene is incredible!). There are a few ways to go up in the Tower; observation deck, sky deck (outside, but closes for bad weather), sky box, and restaurant (Atmosphere 360°). Plus, there are several other attractions (e.g., mini-zoo, upside down house, aquarium, KL forest eco-park). It cost 49 rm per person to go up to the observation deck. However, the restaurant offers an afternoon tea from 3:30 to 5:30 pm every day for only 60 rm per person – this includes food (tea sandwiches, noodles salad, fruit/veggie salad, fried rice, and a dessert plate) and unlimited tea. Cleary the more economical choice! And you can avoid the large crowds in the observation deck. After tea, your ticket gets you entrance into the observation deck as well, so you can enjoy that too.
As you eat and drink, the restaurant slowly rotates. It takes about two hours to complete an entire rotation, so if you start the tea right at 3:30, you should be able to see the entire 360-degree views in your two hours! We arrived around 4:00 pm, so only made it about three quarters of the way around. When we were there, a couple new skyscrapers were being constructed – The Exchange 106 at 397 meters (or 455 meters to the tip) and the PNB 118 Building set to be the tallest building in Malaysia and Southeast Asia (and second tallest in the world below the Burj Khalifa!) at 644 meters. For reference, the Petronas Towers are 452 meters tall.
- Visit the Chow Kit Morning Market:
We have enjoyed visiting the markets in a lot of the cities we have visited, and this was no exception. As is typical, there was a wet and dry section, the wet selling tons of fish and meat. Each meat stall had heads of goats or cows sitting proudly on their tables, almost like trophies to draw people in. Butchers were chopping meat right before our eyes and blood was running down the aisles to the surrounding drains. The fish was just as plentiful and cheap! Some fish were alive, and some were dead, on ice. The dry market contained the fruits, vegetables, spices, etc. Quite a scene!
There are apparently four caves to visit at the Batu Caves complex – Temple Cave, Dark Cave, Cave Villa, and Ramayana Cave. The Temple Cave is free and the main attraction. You can walk up the 272 colorful stairs, past the large Lord Murugan Statue (Hindu deity) to the largest cave. The cave is cool, but I was distracted by the many, many trash monkeys and pigeons. They were funny for the first few minutes and then it was just annoying – make sure you keep an eye on your bags!
The Dark Cave requires you to enter with a guide and costs money. You might need to reserve the longer treks in advance. The Ramayana Cave is to the left of the stairs/Temple Cave near the KTM train station. This also costs money, so we just walked over to take a picture of the large green monkey god statue. We didn’t see the Cave Villa, so I can’t speak to this one!
As I mentioned, the complex is located on the train line and from others’ descriptions, sounds like it would have been easy to access this way. However, Grabs were only around 14 rm each way, so this was easier for us.
No blog post would be complete without talking about the food we ate! We found a few favorites early on in our Kuala Lumpur stay, so we repeated several times. Nearby our hotel, there were two well recommended Chili Pan Mee shops (chewy noodles similar to udon with ground pork, chili sauce, fried mini sardines, served with hot spinach (?) water on the side) – Super Kitchen and Kin Kin Restaurant. We enjoyed multiple meals at both places. Super Kitchen’s pan mee included more meat and accoutrements, but Kin Kin’s had better noodles (in our opinion).
We also ate several meals at Nasi Kandar Kudu. This is like nasi campor, with slightly different side dishes. It was also buffet, but they served you (you just pointed to what you wanted). Everyone who worked here was so nice, especially considering I didn’t always know what I was ordering! We ordered a variety of rice, dark sauce chicken, fried chicken, a mutton mix, veggies, and okra with a mix of delicious sauces (mixed by our server thank goodness!). We ordered way too much food each time but couldn’t resist because everything was so delicious!
For our other meals, we found stalls and food courts wherever we were at the time – nothing exceptional like the two above, but all very tasty! We’ve found that you can’t go wrong with food in Southeast Asia.
Our next and final stop in Malaysia is Malacca (or Melaka), about two hours south of Kuala Lumpur.