Kuala Lumpur - Truly Asia
According to 80’s one hit wonder Murray Head, there’s an adventure to be had with “One Night in Bangkok.” What of One Night in Kuala Lumpur? That’s what we had and here’s what we found: It’s definitely not Bangkok.
The first impression was an unfavourable line up at customs. As the crowds of travellers grew, the number of attended customs kiosks shrunk. Then were all the warning and prohibitive signs. First was the beware of taxi mongers alert. We were advised to only take the Airport sanctioned taxis. Which we did - and later learned we paid double! Then came the prohibitions. No littering, No smoking. No eating. Standard stuff. Then there’s No kissing and No squatting on the toilet. Big Brother is quite particular here apparently.
But it does get better. KL has quite an intricate system of monorails. Interesting though that lines may be independently owned so transferring between lines was a bit more involved (buying tickets separately and walking a greater distance to transfer station). And cabbing it wasn’t too expensive, and Grab (Asian Über) is also an option. A visit to the night market showed standard offerings of clothes, local crafts and trinkets, and restaurants. Price tags were similar to those back home in Canada but with triple the buying power of the dollar, it would be easy to spoil oneself to things here.
Kuala Lumpur is a very cosmopolitan feeling city with brand name, high end shops and a skyline of skyscrapers that was very New York or Hong Kong in feeling. The grandest of them all of course were the Petronus Towers, which sadly weren’t open yet for us to tour during our 24 hour layover.
To be fair, we’d need at least 48 more hours to really appreciate what the city has to offer. And with strict signs detailing what is not acceptable, you certainly won’t “feel the devil walking next to me…”
