Kuala Lumpur

Walking around Kuala Lumpur

Day 1

Chinatown: we took the monorail to Masjid Jamek stop and wandered along the ‘river’ (more like a sewage canal) to the Central Market. This was a large air conditioned building housing various stalls with items for sale such as purses, baskets, pewter, wooden bowls, Buddhas, soaps, calligraphy, rugs, saris, etc. Lunch was at a food court – I had spicy chicken with rice served on a hot plate and Ian had chicken and veggies from a buffet (you help yourself and are charged with regards to what and how much you picked). Both meals were about 3 dollars each.

Our walk to the Old Train Station was pretty anti-climactic and we continued to Lake Gardens. Lake Gardens has a variety of things to do and see and it would be difficult to do them all in one day. The Masjid Negara, the National Mosque was the first we came upon. It is an impressive building covering 7 hectares and can hold 30,000 worshippers, but unfortunately for us, it was closed to tourists at the time we arrived. Most of the day, it’s open and they will lend you purple robes so that you are appropriately covered for walking around inside. 

We moved on to the Museum of Islamic Arts, RM10 (approx. 3 dollars) – a beautiful building with large foyers of glass walls and domes that houses a collection of miniature replicas of important religious buildings of Islam including the Taj Mahal and the Masjid al-Haram. The Masjid al-Haram is a mosque built around the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia that can hold 1 million worshippers. The museum also showcases textiles, robes, metal works, swords, jewels, china, and ancient Korans.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get to or from the Lake Garden area via transit. While trying to find a transit station we learned fairly quickly that Kuala Lumpur, in many areas,  is not a pedestrian friendly city. Sidewalks, when they exist, are often broken, grates missing, and tiles slippery in the rain. You have to watch where you are walking at all times. Roads are very busy and sometimes you have to walk a distance to find a pedestrian crossing which forces you to jay walk even though this is illegal in Malaysia (but not always enforced).

Day 2

We returned to Lake Gardens and the Bird Park, a large free flight aviary with several different varieties of birds including peacocks, hornbills, eagles, parrots, etc. We spent hours wandering around, feeding the fish and getting right up to the birds.  

Next on our list were the Petronas Twin Towers. Towering over 490m high, they house several floors of stores and offices and at the back, is a park-like setting complete with gardens, lake, fountains, and convention centre.

Inside the centre is an aquarium with a 90m tunnel where you can walk as sharks, stingrays, turtles, and fish swim around you. We timed our arrival perfectly with feeding time, and watched as divers fed the fish by hand. The aquarium houses 4 sharks, two of which were lying next to each other on the ground right up against the glass. The aquarium centre doesn’t just have fish, we also saw water rats, spiders, snakes, gecko, crabs, etc. and we spent some time enraptured by 4 baby otters.

Day 3

We ventured out of the city to the famous Batu Caves. It was easy to get to – their komutar train travels directly there stopping right at the caves. You can see the great limestone cliffs as you approach but the thing that really caught our eye was the Homer Simpson-like statue greeting us on arrival (I’m including a photo and you tell me if it doesn’t look like Homer). 

Inside the complex there is a temple, a small pond, several stores and restaurants, and a very large Buddha. The main attraction is the large staircase leading up to the Subramaniam Swamy Temple set deep inside the cave.

 All along the staircase are monkeys – babies included. They were wonderful to watch but one had to be very careful around them. I watched many grab bottles of juice and food right out of tourists’ hands – some monkeys would hiss and scratch if they were not pleased with what you were doing or should I say, not doing i.e. sharing your food with them. Some would grab women’s dresses and shoes; one even used a woman as a spring board, jumping on and off her back. They could be a bit scary.  Ian and I sat and watched them forever as they do put on quite a show.

We managed the staircase quite easily and were in awe with what was inside.  A large cavern with more stairs, a small temple, and some stores – it was truly astounding how big it was. A trail at this entrance led us to the dark caves where you could take a 45 minute educational tour – so of course, we signed up.

It was a small group and each of us received a flashlight. There was a sturdy cement path that we followed and the guide was quite informative – he immediately reminded us not to shine the light any higher than our heads or we would disturb the bats (none of us were eager to do that as we could hear them clearly, and there were many!).  Guano or bat poo was our first lesson, and the guide explained that that was the odour we had been smelling – and here I had thought it was bad B.O.!  Guano is high in nutrients and feeds a fair bit of insects. We saw many cockroaches, both large and small, and a long legged centipede that eats cockroaches. The cave was pitch- black and I would not want to get stuck without a torch! Along the way we saw the power of water on rock – stippling and holes carved into the stone from the river that once ran through there. We followed the path till it led us to a large cavern where the roof opened to the sky and you could finally see bats flying around. A section of the cave was closed off to us to preserve the endangered trapdoor spider – apparently they like this particular cave.

There is a 3 hour tour you can take that the guide says ‘tests your mental strength’ because you have to crawl to squeeze through some particularly tight spots, but alas, you have to book it in advance – maybe next time!