Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur

Upon arrival at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, I sought the closest ATM to load up on local currency as is my custom when entering a new country.  I inserted my card, selected English, and retrieved about seventy dollars in Malaysia ringgits, which I figured would get us to our apartment, fund dinner, and maybe take care of breakfast the next morning before finding another ATM.  Two days later, I still had over half the money in my pocket, and I tried my best to find places to spend it on necessities just to avoid the dreaded airport exchange ripoff on the way back to Thailand.  We discovered that goods and services in Malaysia are insanely cheap to the point of being almost free in some cases, and our one-day sojourn in Kuala Lumpur turned out to be a fun and inexpensive whirlwind with a great view.

The country of Malaysia occupies the tip of the Thai peninsula and the northern region of the island of Borneo separated by the South China Sea and flanked by the Malacca Strait through which forty percent of the world’s trade passes.  Like Indonesia, Malaysia is another country that I knew existed somewhere in the world in the middle of the ocean with jungles and stuff, but I had no point of reference in my North Carolina perspective.  The government is a constitutional monarchy, and the national religion is Islam, but the government mandates freedom of religion for all citizens.  We left the Middle East at the first of January, and it had been a long time since we had seen women draped in black fabric, completely covered except for their eyes, and it was a strange sight in a southeastern Asian country.  Half the population of Malaysia is ethnic Malay, and other large groups include citizens of Chinese and Indian origin with a few aboriginal tribes in the mix.  There are many languages spoken in the country, and fortunately for us, English is prominent just about everywhere.

We left Bali early in the morning in the pouring rain and flew back to Singapore where everything is magical including the airport where we hunkered down for a three-hour layover.  This was no big deal to my intrepid crew, and we all agreed that if we lived in Singapore, we would occasionally buy a cheap airline ticket just for the privilege of hanging out at the best airport in the world.  The flight to Kuala Lumpur was less than an hour long, and we made it through immigration smoothly and quickly summoned an Uber driver right outside the arrival doors.  Our driver was a great guy and an AirAsia employee so we got to good naturedly vent about their strict baggage policy during the sixty-kilometer drive to the city center.  Even though we were on major highways, the surrounding jungle was some of the thickest I’ve seen in southeast Asia with dense groves of deep green palm trees.  

As we entered the urban zone of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city reminded me a lot of large American cities:  sleek steel and smoked glass skyscrapers in the middle fanning out to small businesses and shopping centers that made the metropolis look a little rough around the edges.  The highlights of the Kuala Lumpur skyline are the imposing Petronas Twin Towers, and we had a bird’s eye view of these modern beauties from our fifteenth-floor balcony.  Our host Sam, a native of Chinese heritage, was exceptionally considerate as he showed us around our apartment. When he found out we hadn’t eaten yet, he took us across the avenue to a small streetside restaurant and treated us to a huge welcome dinner full of traditional Malaysian favorites.  Another long travel day was officially in the books, and we spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the apartment looking out at the view of the city.

Since we only had one day to spend in Kuala Lumpur, we decided to hang around the apartment until the early afternoon and then take an Uber ride into the downtown area and spend the evening enjoying the city.  If not for the massive thunderstorms that moved through the area, this would have been an excellent strategy.  We enjoyed a huge breakfast of egg prata and coffee that cost roughly two dollars and fifty cents, and we bought two bags of supplies at the nearby convenience store that barely cost five dollars.  In order to meet the preposterous AirAsia baggage restrictions, we had to ditch several weighty items including our beloved hair clippers; so I visited the salon on the ground floor of our building and treated myself to a three-dollar buzzcut.  The kids continued with their testing for most of the morning, and after a cheap lunch of cheese nanna, we readied ourselves for the trip downtown.  Then the city disappeared.  

Huge thunderheads rolled in over the mountains and covered the skyscrapers as they brought drenching rain and heavy lightning which left the air smelling like ozone.  All we could do was sit and wait out the storms, which hung around until well after dark.  It was still raining when we finally secured an Uber ride downtown. The trip, which typically takes about ten minutes, lasted for nearly an hour as the storms had left traffic snarled all over the city.  Our driver dropped us off at the mall entrance at the foot of the Petronas Towers where we made a mad dash to the food court for a meal of hummus and pita bread before the place closed for the evening.  

After dinner, we made our way around to the KLCC park, which is a beautifully designed green space in the midst of the vast urban expanse of Kuala Lumpur.  There are some nice-looking modern buildings in the world, but the only ones I would call beautiful are the Petronas Twin Towers, which are the symbols of the capital city and the nation of Malaysia.  They were designed to mimic forms of Islamic art and their profiles with soft white lighting against an orange stormy sky was a breathtaking sight that was the highlight of our downtown experience that night.  At 10:00, we were treated to an excellent light and water show with huge jets of colorful sprays erupting to the song, We are the World, which Deena and I hadn’t heard in decades.  The kids rolled their eyes as we tried to name all the artists as they sang their parts, and I think we got them all correct.

We made it back to the apartment late, but we had a great time downtown, and we used our leftover energy to figure out a strategy to defeat the AirAsia seven-kilogram-per-bag restriction looming over our flight to Thailand the next day.  We enjoyed one more cheap breakfast at the restaurant across the street the next morning before loading up and heading back out to the airport.  Even though we didn’t get to explore the city as much as we would have liked, we were still glad we were were able to visit another major world capital and add another country to our ambitious itinerary.  The people we met were welcoming and friendly, and we’ll remember the energy of the city as we anticipate our return to the laid-back beauty of the Kingdom of Thailand.

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