Kuala Lumpur

Our journey to Kuala Lumpur began with breakfast at the Amsterdam Café, followed by a bus ride from Cameron Highlands to the capital city of Malaysia. Upon arrival, we checked into our first apartment at Taragon Residence where we stayed seven nights. Unfortunately, we did not have the most welcoming start as there was vomit on the curtains next to the bed and the bathroom also smelled of it. Nevertheless, we didn’t let that ruin our mood and the landlord immediately came to remove and wash the curtains, which they had overlooked, and cleaned the bathroom again. That evening, we went to see the modern skyline of Kuala Lumpur and we headed to the lively Jalan Alor Food Street market. In a restaurant, we enjoyed Hokkien Mee, lady’s fingers, and drank our first beer in Malaysia, called Anchor beer.

Our first impression of Kuala Lumpur was very positive since it felt completely different from other big cities we have been to. There are significantly fewer people in the streets, especially compared to cities like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, and Hanoi we have recently been to. The streets don’t feel narrow between the tall buildings and as a pedestrian you enjoy a lot of space and many walkways, which are often covered, that help you cross the streets. While Kuala Lumpur does not exactly feel like a big busy city, it still is. The city seems huge and features an impressive skyline with numerous buildings that are very tall. The tallest and to us most impressive one was the recently built Merdeka tower, which stands out due to its height but also its elegant design. At the time of our visit it was the second largest building in the world with 118 stories and a total height of 679m. As a comparison for the people from our home place, if you moved this building to Pfäffikon SZ, its tip would be at the height of Etzel Kulm. Let that sink in! Unfortunately, it was not yet open to the public but we would have loved to go up there, maybe on our next world trip ;)

During our first seven days in Kuala Lumpur, we did a lot of sightseeing. We visited minor attractions such as the street art that can be found around Jalan Alor, did some walking tours through the city on our own, or also visited several shopping malls of impressive size and design. As an alternative to going up on the Merdeka tower, we visited the KL Tower, which is one of the tallest landmark towers and offers a great view onto the city. Unfortunately, due to a legal dispute between the old and new operator over their concession, it was also closed to the public. But we had one last trick up our sleeves to go up a tall building, which we did by booking a tour to visit the iconic Petronas Twin Towers. During the tour we could go into the bridge between the two towers and the observation deck at 370m height from where we could finally see the city from above. After the tour, we also visited the KLCC park just at the tower’s feet which offers great views of the towers from below.
Besides the sights in the city, we also visited two which are located a bit further away. One of those were the Batu Caves, featuring iconically colorful stairs as well as a lot of pigeons and monkeys on the way leading up to caves. The second was the beautiful Putra Mosque which is primarily designed in pink. In the mosque, we met a volunteer who could explain a lot about the mosque and the Islam in general just before a heavy thunderstorm moved in and made us stay at the mosque even a bit longer than anticipated.

Besides sightseeing, we used our time to plan the continuation of our trip, doing sports at our apartment building’s gym, doing video calls with our families at home, and obviously eating at various restaurants in the city. One of our restaurant visits was at a Sri Lankan place where we had lunch. While eating, we got into a conversation with a guy at a neighboring table. It turned out that he was Sri Lankan and after hearing that we like Sri Lankan food a lot he offered to pay for our meal. This was a very nice gesture but we still declined thankfully since we did not feel comfortable with someone paying for our food that is anyway cheap compared to Swiss conditions. A second visit was one we arranged with the German couple we met in the Cameron Highlands (See our “Cameron Highlands” footprint). A few days after us they had also made their way down to Kuala Lumpur and introduced us to the German restaurant Zum Stammtisch just next to our apartment building.

After our first seven nights, we moved to a different apartment in the Luxe building for an additional three nights. This building offered a great view onto the Potronas Twin Towers and other prominent buildings, especially from the pool and gym at the top floor. We did make use of both to either do sports with a view every day or just relax by the pool with the same amazing view. We did a tiny bit more sightseeing from there, like walking by the Petronas Twin Towers and the Saloma Bridge by night when they are spectacularly illuminated or visit the Central Market and get a leather wallet Marina made back in Hoi An (See our “Hoi An” footprint) embossed with her goddaughter’s name. Besides that, we also made use of the remaining days to work on some private projects like cutting a video of the last school camp with her former class, which Marina still wanted to do as a gift to the children and their parents.

And then our last day in the city arrived already. We went up to the pool again to take some photos before checking out and heading to a restaurant close by, which we found serves amazing Kottu Roti. With full bellies, we ordered a Grab taxi to the bus terminal from where we then took a bus to our next destination.

Good Cafés and Restaurants:
- Solace
- 103 Coffee - Chok Kit
- Ra-ft Café / Bistro
- Pokok
- UP KL
- Yarl @ Heritage Road (Srilankan food - delicious Kotu Roti)
- Zum Stammtisch - German restaurant and bar
- ParaThai
- Empire Sushi
- Torro Fries
- Chum Chum
- The Lankan KL (Sri Lankan)
- TG’s BistroLæs mere