Kickin it KL style

My trip to SE Asia started with a bit of a bang. After a 1am Saturday arrival, some quick shut-eye, and a brief tour of downtown Singapore, Jen and I hopped an 8:00pm Saturday flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - locally known as KL.

KL is the capital of Malaysia and is located about 380km northwest of Singapore.


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After a short 30 minute flight, we arrived in KL and our adventure began immediately. As I waited for our luggage to arrive at baggage claim, Jen took care of the ground transportation. According to various travel websites, it's important to only hire government sanctioned drivers - otherwise you run the risk of getting ripped off. After getting our bags and finding Jen, she introduced me to Ismail - a well dressed chauffeur who led us to our transportation. Ismail's attire should have clued me in that we weren't making the hour-long drive into KL in a taxi, but I didn't expect to come outside and be ushered into a black Mercedes sedan (way to go Jen!). We got into our sleek ride and sped off to the city. As the bright lights of KL rose on the horizon, Jen (who had been rather quiet, taking in the Malaysian landscape) all of a sudden starts talking rather loudly. Bewildered, I look at her and she motions me with her eyes to look toward our driver (who was not Ismail). I looked at our driver through the rearview mirror and noticed he was drifting in and out of sleepiness! I immediately recalled the driver's previous actions and the way he bobbed and weaved through traffic. I thought nothing of it at the time, having been to another country before, you expect other cultures to drive with a little more gusto. However, seeing our driver's tired state, I felt my eyes get wide as I looked back at Jen and continued the conversation at my usual high decibel level. We even tried to include the driver in some conversation, which semed to do the trick. Luckily, if anything were to go wrong, we were in a Mercedes and it was handling beautifly - even if the driver needed a Red Bull. We got to the Hotel Equatorial around 11:30pm, relieved to be alive and on steady ground, so we checked in and crashed for the night.

It was an early Sunday morning when we left the hotel to start our day. The centerpiece of most KL trips, at least the first time you visit, is the majestic Petronas Twin Towers. Petronas, a major energy company headquartered in Malaysia, built the towers in the late 90's to house their headquarters and at the time of their completion in 1999, were the tallest buildings in the world. You may recall their feature placement in the movie Entrapment, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones, where they represented a branch of a huge international bank. I have to say, it's popular - we knew this and got to the towers at 8am (the ticket booth opens at 10am) and there were already  few people there. Here's a shot of the line for tickets:

I could go into a lot of fun facts about the Petronas Towers, but we shot some video of our time there and the tour guide does a better job.

Our next stop was the KL Tower, which is a huge communications tower with an observation deck. Unlike the Petronas Towers, there's a small fee to go up, but the view is 360 degrees and a great way to see KL.

As you can tell from the pictures, KL is a sprawling metropolis and a booming economy. It doesn't have a great deal of can't-miss attractions, but the subway and monorail are easy to use and there's a ton of shopping - from the high-end Aria Mall to the multi-cultural Central Market. One very cool feature is the KL City Centre Park, which lies in the shadow of the Petronas Towers.

KL is a perfect weekend destination with inexpensive 5-star accomodations, but if when you fly into KLIA, take the express train into the city and save yourself the heart attack from a sleepy driver behind the wheel of a high-powered German automobile. There's lots more video and more tales to be told about KL, but we'll save those for later. Don't forget to leave your comments!