Kuala Lumpur and New Year

The past 12 days here in Kuala Lumpur have flown by, and we haven’t really done a great deal. Although this isn’t all our fault as there isn’t a great deal to do here, as well as it being heavy rain and thunderstorms for a good portion of our time here. Kuala Lumpur is classed as a developing city, and it does show: there are a couple of nice landmarks such as the Petronas Towers and KL Tower, a good metro system and a plush shopping mall, but turn the corner from these and you are met with the usual south-east asian style shops, dodgy pavements, manic roads and stares of bewilderment from some locals.

Getting from Singapore to our hotel went smoothly, we got the metro from the train station to within a 10 minute walk of our hotel so in all it took about 15 minutes to get here. The hotel is quite nice, we are on the 9th floor and have a… view, it has all the mod cons such as a TV, kettle and much needed air con.

To start with, we went on a free guided walking tour of the area provided by the tourism centre. It was pretty good and we got to see much of the ‘old’ town, Kuala Lumpur is only actually 150 years old and was set up by the Brits as a tin mining town, most of the old buildings including the tourism centre, city hall and gentlemen’s club were all built by the British. Most of the modern buildings and skyscrapers have been built post independence (1957), with the wealth mainly brought in by the oil and gas reserves to be found in Malaysia.

We then spent a few days walking around; we found a modern shopping centre contained within the Petronas Towers, it has all the western shops such as Marks & Spencer and Topshop. More interestingly we found the Central Market, which is aimed at tourists but has more stalls selling local goods and food.

For New Year’s eve we walked to the Petronas Towers to see the fireworks, the place was manic as expected, but we managed to find ourselves a quiet spot in the park to watch from.

Since then we have tried to find (cheap) things to do, we went to a local craft market but it was dead, we spent about an hour walking around trying to find the place and when we got there no-one was to be found, apart from one painter who we had a little chat with. We took a visit to the National Museum, which focused on the development of the country after various Europeans took it over, as well as a look round the nearby Botanic Gardens (where we found the big mystery lizard, below).

Couple of days ago we went to the Batu Caves, a cave complex that is used by Hindus for worship. The entrance has got a huge gold statue at the front which is very impressive, and to get into the caves you must climb 272 steps. Unfortunately I don’t think the caves were worth the effort of climbing these 272 steps, the inside of the caves is like a construction site – there were people welding and sawing, rubbish was everywhere and to top it off a port-a-loo and wheelie bins were to be found inside. So much for a nice peaceful place of worship.

Last night we went up the Petronas Towers, it was quite expensive by Malaysian standards at 80MYR (£14!) but we had to do it while here. Unfortunately though I haven’t got any good pictures to show for it, this was due to the cloudy glass they had up there and the fact it was reflecting the images behind us – design flaw.

I’m going to spend a couple of days more here in Kuala Lumpur and work out what to do, might get a train to Bangkok but need to do a bit of research yet – I’m making the most of the good hotel wifi.