Kuala Lumpur

Our flight from Bali to Vietnam had a stopover in Kuala Lumpur and for no additional flight cost, we could have a longer stay in KL. So we decided to stay for 2 days and explore the city. R and I have been here before and we loved the food and mix of cultures. The food (and culture) is a mix of Chinese, Indian and Thai. The religion in KL is predominantly Muslim, but there are also large Hindu and Buddhist contingents.

We booked a 2 bedroom Airbnb apartment near a metro station in the center of KL. We were on the 16th floor and had a great view:

Bintang Night Market

The night we arrived, we decided to eat dinner at the Bintang night market which was near where we were staying. This market sold mostly fruit and meat (and some other random stuff) and was lined with Chinese and Thai restaurants. By Malaysian standards, the prices are somewhat expensive. But it was very lively and interesting.

Food and Drink

KL has great food – the mixture of Thai, Indian and Chinese means that you never run out of options! Also, there are so many varieties of fruit juices and teas on every street corner. We mostly enjoyed Indian food while we were there (I think we missed bread after being in Bali). Every morning we had the typical Malaysian breakfast of Roti Canai – a piece of freshly made roti bread served with 3 curries. It’s also very cheap – 1.5 MYR (32 US cents / 48 Australian cents). We washed this down with coffee with condensed milk, tea or fruit juice.

City Center

On our first day in Kuala Lumpur, we walked all around the center of the city. We started off exploring Chinatown – a vibrant Chinese market street.

Around the corner from Chinatown, we decided to explore the Hindu temple. They were starting a ceremony just as we arrived (if you play the video below, you can hear the music being played by the musicians in the image below).

We then walked across the street to the Chinese Buddhist temple:

Down another block was the Central Market. The central market has a large indoor space with 2 floors of shops selling all kinds of touristy stuff, and then this outdoor section selling mostly drinks.

From there, we walked about 5 blocks to the Indian section of town. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many photos of this area. There were tons of shops selling Muslim dresses and head scarves (see the images below), but then also tons of gold jewellery shops and colourful saris.

KLCC

The next day, we went to a different area of town to visit the KLCC park and the Petronas Towers. KLCC park was really nice – lots of walking paths and an absolutely enormous playground. There was a great kids swimming pool where you could walk under the waterfall and good views of the Petronas Towers (and other skyscrapers).

We then walked over to the Petronas Towers to look at them from close up (and some of the other buildings around them).

Tall Buildings

The Petronas Towers are not even in the top 10 anymore for tallest buildings. However, they still hold the title for tallest twin towers. Kuala Lumpur does have the second tallest building in the world (at time of writing). The Warisan Merdeka Tower at 679 meters. We could see this building from our apartment and also had a great view of it from one of our favourite restaurants.

Next stop is Vietnam. However, there was an issue with our daughter’s visa to Vietnam – it hadn’t processed in time for our flight. Unfortunately, this meant we lost all our money on the flight to Vietnam and 1 night of accommodation in Hanoi. We had to spend the night at Kuala Lumpur airport hotel, but luckily that night the visa came through and we were able to book a flight for the next morning.