Day 24 – Kuala Lumpur; A City only an Explorer Could Love
We have two full days in Kuala Lumpur. Two days, which is
both too short to really get to know any major city, but considering what we
had found out about Kuala Lumpur’s tourist destinations, it could easily be
more than enough. Kuala Lumpur is that type of city, a sprawling mega-polis
that was planned with no discernable foresight, no conscious plan. Kuala
Lumpur, the only city I’ve been to that actively avoids making the dishes that
its cuisine is most known for. This isn’t to say it is a bad city. In fact,
there are gorgeous areas of Kuala Lumpur. The only problem with that is we are
going to those areas tomorrow, or are not interested in them. I regret not
spending more days in Bangkok, and I probably wish I could switch my two full
days in KL with my one day in Bangkok, but you have to go to a place before you
realize that it isn’t what you expected.
Anyway, this doesn’t mean I’m going to go into detail of
what I actually did. I will foreworn the reader that tomorrow’s schedule of
events seems a lot more inviting and interesting, and my opinion of Kuala
Lumpur may change, but from what I saw today, this is my reaction.
We started by taking the KL Kommuter train from opposite our
hotel to KL Sentral, KL’s new train hub in the Southwest corner of the city.
The train was clean, efficient and well air-conditioned (something really,
really important in KL, and to their credit most of everything is air
conditioned – even small shops have the air conditioning machines that are
omnipresent on the continent). KL Sentral was everything it is supposed to be,
a bustling but new train station that housed all of KL’s different train lines.
That’s one of the problems with KL, that there are many different train lines,
all with similar names. Anyway, we went to the tourism office in KL Sentral,
got a map and a little guide book, and decided to multitask by reading through
the map and guide while taking the train to the one out-of-the-city sight that
we wanted to see: The Batu Caves.
The Batu Caves was the last stop on the other KL Kommuter
line, and the whole experience was done in a tidy hour and a half, and we
accomplished both of our goals. We were able to use the time in the train quite
well, planning out the rest of the day (a plan that would still get derailed
many, many times) and then saw the site itself. The Batu Caves is slightly a
misnomer, as it really is a Hindu Temple Site, with two large statues of Hindu
Gods flanking an ornate temple. Behind the larger and more impressive statue,
are the caves cut into the mountain backing the scene, with a long, long, long
set of stairs leading to them. The caves are about 300 steps high, and it may
have been laziness (and probably was laziness) but there was little chance my
Mom and I were climbing those steps. So, after taking some pictures, having
some tender coconut water, and seeing some monkeys run around, we headed back
to KL Sentral.
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| There was a better chance of me growing wings than walking up those stairs |
By the time we reached KL Sentral, it was closing in on lunchtime, and because we had yet to have any real authentic Malaysian food (or at least the Malaysian food I was expecting), I was determined to find some. From various research outlets, I had highlighted one place that I thought could provide me the answer, and it was in Kampong Baru, a middle class district to the north. To get there we needed to take the monorail (another one of KL’s many types of rail transport), which provided a nice aerial view of the city. It was on this train that I got my first look at the Petronas Towers. I have to say, I was slightly underwhelmed. The towers used to be the tallest building in the world from 1998 to 2004 (passed by Taipei 101 then, and quite a few places now), but it definitely didn’t seem taller than the twin towers in NYC – of course I haven’t seen those in 12 years now. The towers are constructed beautifully, and are more impressive up close than from afar, which is probably strange given how from afar it is really hard to tell just how tall it is. Anyway, we reached the stop that was closest to the Kampong Baru food stalls, and this led to the first discovery of just how big Kuala Lumpur is.
On my map, the stalls looked about three blocks away. They
were three blocks away. But, in Kuala Lumpur, three blocks is a far greater
distance than three blocks should ever be. By the time we reached, I was ready
to lie in an air-conditioned chamber, which of course this Hawker Center was
not. The food there was also extremely greasy. To be honest, I might have gone
and eaten there if they had what I wanted, but they didn’t and I know my Mom
wouldn’t eat in such squalid environments that a single 21-year-old would. So,
we took a cab there to Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC), the area surrounding
the Petronas Tower, which is, as the name would suggest, the City Center, and a
much more apt area to eat.
The main mall there is the Suria KLCC, which is a large
complex at the foot of the Petronas Towers. While the mall has the same quality
of stores as Siam Paragon and the other top mall complexes in Bangkok, it
wasn’t as fancy inside. However, it had more food options. Honestly, half the
complex was seemingly food. The entire top floor was made up of medium-end
restaurants of every ethnic cuisine, from Indonesian to French to American,
and, thankfully, to Malaysian. We ate at the Indonesian place, in the end,
because it was the only one to have the one dish I was yearning for the whole
time – beef rendang. Rendang is a staple of any Malaysian restaurant in the US,
and was listed as one of the dishes to try in Malaysia in that little guide
book, yet it was about as hard to find as anything. The Indonesian place didn’t
make it quite like they do back home, but it was still damn good and a welcome
break from the Muslim-infused Malaysian cuisine so present in Kuala Lumpur.
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| The first of many Rendangs |
After our brief respite in the Suria, we decided to go to
one of the more famous, but more commercial, sites in KL, the KLCC Aquaria,
located under the convention center. The Aquaria was accessible through an
underground passage from the basement of the Suria. On the way, we passed a
large department store, Isetan, where on the bottom floor was located a
gigantic food hall. We later found out that Isetan is a Japanese chain, which
made me excited for my trip to Japan later on, but also a bit saddened because
almost assuredly the stores in the motherland won’t be nearly as cheap. We got
some iced-mango-filled scones and fried-squid-skewers as take-away gifts, and
three small soft shell crabs for an eventual midnight snack, and went on our
way to the Aquaria.
The Aquaria is listed as the #9 attraction in Kuala Lumpur
by Tripadvisor, which by the end of the trip I realized said far more about
Kuala Lumpur than the aquarium. It isn’t bad, by any stretch, and is bigger
with larger exhibits than the one in Cape Town, but wasn’t as unique in terms
of the fish they had. They did have a large reptile collection, including some
large pythons, but the fish were pretty standard. A couple exceptions were a
cage full of fish from the Amazon, including some seriously large fish that
resembled nothing I had ever seen before. The other was the main attraction, a
giant tank that is visible from a glass-enclosed tunnel weaving through the
bottom of the cage. The tank is filled with the usual: sand-tiger sharks, smaller
sharks, many types of fish, eels, multiple types of giant turtles, and a litany
of rays. The rays were the best part, but the whole thing was a great
experience.
We then left the Aquaria through the exit in the convention
center, and then traipsed along the passageway to the other main tourist area
of Kuala Lumpur: Biltong. Biltong is a glitzy shopping
area with a main street (The Biltong Walk) cutting in between various shopping
centers. The fanciest is The Pavillion, which is about as fancy a shopping
complex as I’ve seen. It had a large entrance area full of little restaurants,
largely of international cuisines, which I thought was the mall. Little did I
know that it was just a little alcove on the side. The real mall is guarded by
a giant façade with waterfall and escalators. If I was a shopper, or if we had
more time, I would have definitely spent a lot of time there. But it was almost
too fancy.
The Biltong Walk outside was just what it is supposed to be.
A large esplanade that connected the different malls, lit up nicely as the
night was starting to set in. It was still happy hour at most of the local
establishments, but happy hour in KL is quite sad, because pints are still
about 15 ringgit (5 dollars). Alcohol is quite expensive in KL, and I’m hoping
this doesn’t extend to the rest of Malaysia as well. We were then picked up by
the Hop-on, Hop-off bus double-decker bus, an enifficient but air-conditioned
and leisurely way to see the city. We took the bus as the sun set and night
presented itself, making the views quite special from the bus. We left at
Merdaka Square (Independence Square), home of a 100-foot flagpole, signaling
Malaysia’s independence from the British. The square is next to other ornate
government buildings that were all lit at night. In the distance was the
Petronas Towers, lit in white, seeming far more impressive at night than it was
during the day.
We were kind of milling around aimlessly, trying to find a
place for dinner. I hadn’t done the same level of research for KL that I did
for the places I went solo, and when I say not the same level I mean that I had
done next to nothing. So, we were quite unsure of where to go. Nothing seemed
to serve authentic Malaysian food that wasn’t outdoor hawker centers. In the
end, we found a place near KL’s Sheraton, on a street full of pubs and clubs,
and had Malaysian food, but not in a place known for the food (it was basically
a bar that we went to early enough that it was still a restaurant). We had
Chicken Satay and Chop Kuey Tun, a local favorite dish of shrimp fried noodles.
Both were decent, but neither was great. We then were already way too tired
even though we hadn’t really accomplished too much. I made a resolution on the cab
ride home that we will definitely have a more structured plan for tomorrow.
There are still enough things left to see that KL could be redeemed, but for
now, it seemed a little like Dallas, a large metropolis without a real
personality (note: I’ve barely ever been to Dallas, so that characterization
might not be all that true). Of course, at least in Dallas it is fairly easy to
find Texan food.
