Once we had decided to go to Bali, KL was a no-brainer, as we were going to fly Air Asia, whose hub is in KL. Since we had to fly through there any way, we decided to spend a few days. We’d heard that the food was great, and were excited to see the Petronas Towers – at one point the tallest buildings in the world, I believe. If you’ve seen the movie Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, you’d recognize the towers from the climactic scene towards the end.
KL wasn’t quite the city we were expecting (somehow we thought it would feel cleaner and crisper…a bit like Singapore is supposed to be), but it was a really interesting place to visit. KL, for those who don’t know, is the capital of Malaysia – the first Muslim nation that either of us has ever been to. It was fascinating to see the various traditional garbs that women use to cover up, encounter gorgeous mosques, and hear the muezzin’s call for prayer at 4:30pm every day. More than any city we’ve been to in Asia, KL seemed to be a seamless melting pot of Southeast Asian, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, and western cultures (even though I think Malaysia has its social tensions like any other country). In addition to the mosques and other signs of Islam, there is a Little India and a Chinatown…and tons and tons of malls (another thing KL is known for).
We spent more time than we were expecting to at one of the larger malls, Berjaya Times Square. After all, how many malls do you know that have both a movie theater (we saw Eclipse), a food court (I ate seafood laksa), and a giant roller coaster (we didn’t ride it…). This was also the place where we bought our new camera after I unceremoniously dropped the old one on the ground, with the lens open, at the KL Bird Park (which was beautiful, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. Just kidding…we took a number of pictures before the camera’s demise!).
We also got some good touring in, walking to the Petronas towers and exploring the nearby park; going to the top of the KL Tower for a 360 view of the city; checking out Chinatown (pretty lame actually, though I did have some delicious fried noodles); wandering through a really cool street market in Little India (where we saw, and ate, numerous foods that we had never heard of and could not identify); riding the monorail; and visiting Merdeka Square, where Malaysian independence was declared from the UK in the 1950s.
And finally, on the last night, we encountered a giant World Cup street party, as the Spain-Netherlands final was that evening at 2:30am. We opted not to stay out for it, though we did inadvertently follow much of the game by the sounds of the crowds outside our window, and then listened to the second half on ESPN radio. When the cheering finally died down around 5:30am (turns out there are a lot of Spain fans in KL) we grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and tried to prepare ourselves for the relaxation to come in Bali…
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