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Sultan Abdul Samed building during the day

Sultan Abdul Samed building in the early evening

Sultan Abdul Samed building at night

The place where the two muddy estuaries meet.

I arrived in Kuala Lumpar at about 7am, which was too early to check into a guest house. Nevertheless I headed for one of those recommended by the Lonely Planet and settled into a chair until someone arrived who I could ask about a room. In fact the someone was already there, asleep on a mattress behind the desk, but well enough hidden that I didn't see him. I had about an hour or so wait until he woke up, and then another hour before he was ready to hand out any keys.

By about 10am I was unloaded, showered and ready to go. As I was leaving I bumped into Joanna, my companion from Taman Negara, who had come to KL via the Cameron Highlands.

A weird sculpture

My first stop was the confluence of the two muddy estuaries, from which KL gets its name. To get there I walked past the magnificent Sultan Abdul Samed building. As you can see, I made sure to head back in the evening. The weird sculpture on the left was opposite this building on the corner of Merderka Square. I've no idea what it is.

Masjid Jamek mosque

After lunch I got on the new subway system - one of the infrastructure projects which is blamed for Malaysia's economic problems, to go to the Petronas Towers, which is another.

The Petronas Towers

I walked back towards my hotel via some expensive and impressive real estate and was soon immersed in the madness of the city centre. My first impression was that this wasn't as intense as Bangkok, nor as much fun. KL isn't a dry city, though plenty of places do not serve alcohol. The bustling Chinatown more than makes up for this though. Saturday is also night market day, and in one tiny street there is absolute bedlam for a mile or so. The street is almost completely full: clothes stalls, food stalls, shite stalls. Most of it is aimed at locals rather than tourists. As it was Saturday, I headed for a bar advertising football. Big mistake! I ended up sat next to the talkative nutter. Most of his conversation revolved around how well used and badly condomed his dick was, which may be interesting to someone, but not to me. He'd bought me a drink, so I had to be polite and buy him one back, but as soon as I could I made a run for it. If Everton had been playing I think I would have put up with it, but not for any other team.

The National Monument

The next day I went on a tour to the Batu Caves. At least that's what it said on the ticket. As is usual with these tours they crammed in other stuff, always involving gift shops. In this case it was a pewter factory and a scorpion farm. As it was, it was pissing down, so it wasn't ideal weather to see caves. From our bus we could see rivers in full flow, even muddier than they had been the day before. In some places there were flash floods, with partially submerged cars clearly visible.

KL railway station

In the afternoon I walked to the victory monument, and then through the lake gardens. These should have been peaceful, but there were loudspeakers strung up all along the paths, playing what sounded like some local version of Radio GaGa, so that it was all but impossible to find a place where you weren't regaled with some godawful music. Or maybe it was the thoughts of the Prime Minister in song. In any case it was unwelcome.

Looking down at the Petronas Towers from the KL tower

At the southern end of the gardens is the train station, a magnificent colonial building, which would have been closed closed down if they hadn't ran out of money for its replacement.

Central KL from the KL tower

My final call of the afternoon was to the KL tower, which is actually the tallest structure in KL, but doesn't count because it is a communications tower rather than a proper building. This one does let plebs go to the top though, which I gladly did. It was an overcast day, but even so I got a good view of the building site which is KL. If you look closely at the picture on the right you should be able to make out the two muddy estuaries. Find the flagpole, which appears to be sticking out of a skyscraper in the top right third, and there they are just down and to the left. The area of green is Merderka Square

Links to other Malaysia pages  Penang

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Last modified on 22nd December 2007 3:31 PM EST

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