The past few days we have been checking out the capital city of Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur. Similar to Singapore, there is a variety of different cultures immersed in the city, including many of these various cultures practicing Muslim. We have kept our schedule a little low key for the past couple of days because from about 11:00-3:00 p.m. it is super hot and walking around on the cement concrete doesn't help with that. So we try to do things in the early morning and then later in the afternoon and evening, while finding Air Conditioned activities in the mid-part of the day. Sometimes if we do have to walk in the heat, we'll walk for a bit, find a mall to cool off and then head out to the boiler room again.
KL Communications Tower & Chinatown
Our first day here, we checked out the KL Communications Tower and then found out that they only let you go up to the top if you bought the whole package for about $12 USD. It included several other things that we didn't want to do like a petting zoo, pony ride, etc. so we skipped over that alternative. So we mostly just checked out several of the sights in the Chinatown vicinity. After a break in the afternoon, we went back to Chinatown for dinner and to do some shopping. Alex needed some more lightweight T-shirts and Kristin needed to get a pair of sandals because her flipflops mysteriously disappeared earlier in the day from the hotel entrance, as you have to take off shoes when going into homes/hostels here in Malaysia.
Malaysian Food & Markets
We tried some of the local specialties and one of the dishes Alex tried, Hoikan Mee, looked a little like worms, but at least it was more tasty than worms! :-)
They have a large night market on Petaling Street where they have a lot of knock-off designer clothes, shoes, watches, etc. and you can use your bargaining skills to full effect! Alex was able to get two sports shirts for 35 RM and Kristin got a pair of Croc sandals for 25 RM and a Nike breathable collared shirt for 20 RM. So overall we got those four items for about $24 USD. They weren't quite as pushy as the sales people in the Beijing Silk Market or in Vietnam, but they did like to start you out high on some items; so we were glad that we had our bargaining experience with us! They all told us "I give you good deal" as well!
Petronas Twin Towers
Our second day we headed to the Petronas Twin Towers, which was within walking distance of our hostel. The admission to the towers is free but you have to get a ticket when they are issued at the beginning of the day in order to be able to go up; and they are limited to 800/day. The tickets start being issued at 8:30 a.m., so we showed up around 7:45 a.m. We finally got our ticket by about 8:55, so we decided just to go in the next available group so we wouldn't have to come back later. So Alex went to grab a coffee in the attached Twin Towers mall and then we came back for our trip up the tower. It was nice that it was free to go up to the Sky Bridge and not have to pay to do so.
After the towers we walked to a craft market where several of the locals make their native crafts and sell them. They do a variety of crafts like paintings, painting cloth, wood carving, etc.
Malaysian Movies
We had lunch, and by that time it was starting to get really hot again, so we thought we might go check out the movie theatre in a nearby mall. The malls are so 'fancy' here and are really nicely decorated because of the upcoming Chinese New Year. We ended up going to "Sherlock Holmes" and we were surprised at how good of a deal it was for us. Whereas, a trip to the movies would normally cost you $8-10 just for the ticket at home, we were able to get the tickets and EVEN refreshments for about $7 total!! The tickets were 8 RM each and the popcorn and large iced tea was about 6 RM, which is about $2.25 and $2 respectively. Here you get assigned seats for the theatre, so as we purchased our tickets we also picked out our seats. The popcorn is more of a caramel corn than a butter-coated popcorn like we have back at home. It was a fun and relaxing experience to help pass the hot afternoon hours!
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