Niall Clerkin

January 20th, 2010

KL Communications Tower

We decided to get the public bus from the Highlands to Kuala Lumpur for 22.50 ringadindongs. The tourist bus available at the hostel was 37 MR and it was a minibus. The public bus was an aircon coach. Go figure! The young manager at our hostel was very disappointed that we weren’t using his tourist bus and tried making a derogatory joke about our “friends” in room 117. It didnt work so we just thanked him for his meagre facilities and headed to the bus station, dignity intact. There is a sign on the wall at Kang Travellers lodge  “F*ck the Lonely Planet”, placed there after a particularly bad review. They’re really improving things.

5 hours-ish on the bus was not too bad. Its hardly the stuff of legend, and it was was on super highways. The roads in Malaysia are so much better than the other countries on our route. They put the road network in Ireland to shame also. I read up on Kuala Lumpur (or KL as everyone calls it) and earmarked a few things for us to do. The famous Petronas Towers, the aquarium, the zoo, the planetarium, shopping, blogging, chinatown, downtown KL. We were going to be busy. Chris & Kathrina were to fly to Auckland in a few days but we were to have company for our tourism until then. I’d like to point out that while I was doing all this research my lovely Elaine was having a snooze, as was Kathrina and Chris was heavily engrossed to some computer game about marauding chickens. You just can’t get good help these days….

Robbed from the web

We arrived in KL with a fair notion of where the hostels were located and after 2 or 3 viewings we found ourselves a very nice spot, Casavilla, bang in the middle of the city. The hostel comprised of 3 or 4 old town houses, joined together as one. It had a nice open veranda style lobby, with 2 TVs and sitting areas, 2 pool tables, and stacks of pot noodles. Room rates were pretty reasonable and the whole place seemed well looked after. Happy enough to dump our stuff and head for food, we agreed to reconvene in the lobby in 15 minutes.

Read the sign!

We headed off to Chinatown in search off some lunch and found ourselves on Jalah Petaling. This is chinatown hawker central. Enough fake watches, bags and pirated DVDs to keep the fraud squad tied up ’til Christmas. The restaurants off the sidestreets were overcharging tourists in search of a bargain. Oh sweet irony. A hawker offered me DVDs, which I declined and he enquired as to my nationality (a common trick to keep conversations going). He guessed Scottish, then Irish, which I conceeded. “Ahh, thats why you no want DVDs” and he left us. What is it about the Irish that we dont want DVDs? This one I couldn’t work out. Upstairs next to the greasy foodcourt of a run down shopping mall, we saw our first “Over 18″ internet cafe. There were banks and banks of seats, like an airport boarding gate, and low light, just the monitor glare on the faces of the anoraked (i supposed) ones. Thankfully I had nothing pressing to check my email for.

We ended up eating in MickeyD’s. This is a painful admission from me, so please, no disparaging emails or texts. The blood sugar was low, we were starting to bicker, IT HAD TO BE DONE!

Old and new

After (ahem) lunch, we continued our little stroll through the city, slowly leaving the chinese hoardings behind us, transitioning to high street phamacies, mosques and monorails. Then there were the rather large buildings, banks in the main. We hadn’t seen these close up in quite some time. As we progressed north around KL Park more and more the wealth of KL came into evidence.

Newer and newer

Expensive looking shopping malls, larger newer cars, towers rising on all sides and fancy public transport systems whizzing past us. Upmarket restaurants in the business districts still maintained the look of middle ranking fastfood outfits like TGI Fridays. We had seen this a lot in Asia where American “finesse” is interchangeable with upmarket. Someone really needs to market Paris to the Asians.

Mosque in the city

Razor sharp architecture

Pushing on, through the KLCC business district, we eventually got to within sight of the Petronas towers.

Getting close

Evening was coming on and we elected to keep walking in the hope that on arrival at this KL landmark darkness would have taken hold and it would be lit for all to see. They are immensely proud of the towers in Malaysia and I hoped with good reason. Photographs on the tourist maps look very impressive.

Closer

Wow !!!!! I apologise for the overuse of exclamation marks but holy god!

Closest

Front elevation

I have been to Anghor, to Florence, Rome, Paris. Nothing bowled my over like the Petronas Towers. Fully lit and impossingly close, beautiful, sparkling like a christmas tree. You’d have to be there to know what I mean. The towers are fantastical. They are not even that high (less than 100 floors), but no less lovely for it. We were all quite awestruck, which tells its own story I suppose.

More KLCC

When we finally returned to the hostel, we had been walking around the city for 5 hours. Having hiked for a similar time the day before our feet were killing us but more importantly we were parched. There was nothing else for it but Star Movies, and a few well earned cans of Tiger.

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