Kuala Lumpur

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur this morning around 06:30am instead of the scheduled time of 05:45am due to delays with the plane leaving Sydney/Brisbane. The flight was not to bad, just some turbulence and the plane trying to drop out of the sky over the Timor Sea and Indonesia.

It was barely daylight landing in KL, but what was obvious was the amount of smog surrounding the place. The airport is nearly 60km’s from the city centre but an express train gets you to Sentral Station in about half an hour and from there a monorail trip brought me to within walking distance of my hotel. After booking into the hotel and having breakfast I set out for the KL Tower and a trip up the observation tower. They warned me the view wouldn’t be that great due to the smog but I decided to check it out anyway. They were right, the view wasn’t great, but it highlighted how spread out the KL really is with high rises nearly as far as the eye could see.

On the walk down the hill from the tower there is a little patch of rain forest that I decided to take a stroll through. At the end of the walk there was a sign saying that poisonous snakes and deadly scorpions could be found in the area. Nice! Pity they didn’t put that at the start of the walk! I then took a walk around the Golden Triangle area which is the shopping area of KL and then deciding I had seen enough of the place went back to the hotel.

The humidity is unbelievable here, just taking two steps outside leaves me dripping with sweat. I was surprised how poorly maintained a lot of the highrises looked, some even gave the appearance of having been in a war zone. The traffic is beyond belief, with no road rules and constant blasting of horns. Small motorbikes or scooters are the main form of transport here and at times even jump onto the footpath and zoom past you without warning to bypass the traffic. On top of this the air quality is terrible and the smell of fumes makes it difficult to breath near some of the roads.Late that afternoon we had a tropical storm that passed after half an hour and only made the humidity worse. I had dinner brought up to my room, watched a little bit of Asian TV, laughed at the non-existence of scaffold on the high rise being constructed next door, and went to bed. Got to say I would be happy never to set foot in this country again, some people may love it but its not my idea of a good time