Arriving in Malaysia’s capital city was like a set back in time; Kuala Lumpur has always been our entering point when travelling to Southeast Asia, yet in the last few years we’ve only used it as a transit point. It’s been over 5 years since our last visit, so we gave KL another closer look.
We’d only have 36 hours before continuing to Siem Reap for some crazy temple running around Angkor Wat, therefore the next couple of hours would be intense.
Stepping out of KLIA airport immediately made me feel like home (even though home was over 10.000 kilometres way); the people, the language, the vegetation but most of all the air. I can’t quite describe it, yet the smell of Asian air is unique and I’ve always thought so since I can remember. Anyway, the schedule was tight so we took the KLIA Express to Sentral station (28 minutes vs. 60 minutes by taxi) and continued to our hotel in Bukit Bintang.
Bukit Bintang is one of the liveliest places in Kuala Lumpur.
One thing was clear immediately, Kuala Lumpur has tuned into a city under construction; wherever you look, huge buildings wrapped in green and/or blue plastic were characteristic for the cityscape.
We passed through Little India and the Chinese Quarter before arriving at our destination. By now, it was almost 5.30pm – this is the time when our bellies start grumbling – so we quickly took a shower, changes into some shorts and headed out for some traditional Laksa soup. A small street vendor not far from our hotel offered the best Laksa in town for a very affordable price. The best ending to an exhausting travel day…
Laksa soup at a street vendor in Kuala Lumpur.
We started a day with a good cup of coffee and some yummy mangoes, which we bought the evening before.
Destination Nr. 1 would be Chow Kit market, which houses Kuala Lumpur’s largest wet market section. Here you’ll come across some real curiosities and it’s definitely not a place for smell sensitive people.
The meat market section of Chow Kit market in Kuala Lumpur.
We must have stayed at Chow Kit market for at least two hours before continuing to the shopping centre inside the Petrona Towers. I needed a new camera bag and I knew that I’d find a suitable one in there (and I did). At the same time, we wanted to buy tickets to up the famous KLCC sky-walk (a real photographers delight), as well as the 82nd floor. But, turned out that all tickets were sold out already. So, here’s a good tip: If you don’t want to wake up at 6.00am to stand in line for one of the very looked after tickets, just go there whenever you want and buy one in advance for the next day or so. Anyway, so this was definitely a bit of a set-back because we really planned on shooting some night-scape photos from up there. We changed our plans and I still got my one-million-dollar photo that same night.
Petrona Towers – KLCC – in Kuala Lumpur.
By now, it was about 1.00pm so we gave ourselves a little break at the pool. By 4.00pm, we were out on the streets again. But not for long as it started raining cats and dogs. But now we at least had a good excuse to spoil ourselves a fantastic massage and a visit to the hairdresser. As it is in Asia, rain comes out of nowhere and it stops just as fast. So we continued our way back to the Petrona Towers for some night-scape photos. As usual, we ended the day with a delicious Laksa soup and some fresh fruits.
Our 36 hours came to an end, the next day would start with a wake-up call at 3.00am…
