I arrived in Kuala Lumpur very early in the morning after leaving Shenzhen late in the evening the night before with a short stopover in Singapore. From the airport, I took a bus to KL Sentral and took the monorail to Bukit Bintang Monorail station. After getting some directions from a local, I found my hostel on Tingkat Tong Shin, just a block away from Jalan Alor where all street food stalls were located. Arriving very early in the morning, none of the staff was there but one of the residents of the hostel, John, helped me out. I dropped off my bag at the hostel and John gave me directions to get to the Batu Caves.

I caught an air conditioned bus to the caves which took about 45 minutes. Right outside the caves was a giant statue of a Hindi deity. Towering 42.7 metres, it is the tallest statue of Murugan in the world. It was made of concrete and painted with gold paint. Next to the statue were 272 steps to reach the entrance of the caves. As you climbed the stairs, there were monkeys climbing with you. They were literally everywhere. Some monkey had baby monkeys hanging off them. At the top of the flight of stairs, it offered a great view of Kuala Lumpur in the distance. The cavern of the cave itself was massive housing many Hindu shrines inside. Of course, the monkeys were also around. Some tourists seemed more interested in the monkeys than the caves and shrines. The shrines were quite spectacular as there were many figures carved and painted that decorated them. There were also monks praying and blessing their followers. I did find it strange however when I approached some people to help take a picture for me. Often they would look at me very strangely and back away. I thought it was quite obvious what I was asking but from the reactions on their faces it didn’t seem that way. I eventually did find some foreigners who understood me to take some pictures.

I returned back to the city from the Batu Caves and wandered around Chinatown. Petaling Street is the main street in Chinatown which is famous for its markets. Being in China earlier, I found the markets a bit more expensive. What they had was very similar as you would find the same sunglasses, t-shirts, belts and wallets as you would find in Shenzhen. It also seemed that I found more people in Kuala Lumpur that spoke Cantonese than I did in Canton province. Knowing that I would be back in China, I didn’t buy anything. I also knew that whatever I bought, I would have to carry it around on my back for the rest of my trip.
Making my way back to my hostel, I found it incredibly hot. Coming from China where at some parts of my trip I was wearing five layers, I found it quite difficult to adjust to the 36C weather that I was experiencing. Getting little sleep on the flights, I decided to rest up and take a nap.

At the hostel, I met Doris from Singapore and Nadia from Korea. We walked through the city to KL Tower which is the tall tv tower. The tower itself is on top of a giant hill which makes it look like it is taller than the Petronas Twin Towers. Once reaching the tv tower, we elected not to goto the top. Instead, we wandered around the base of the tower which there really wasn’t anything there. We then made our way to the Petronas Twin Towers which were much more spectacular. We first entered the Suria KLCC which is a shopping centre home to many posh stores. It was a breath of fresh air as the shopping centre was air conditioned. We then proceeded out to the KLCC Park to get a good view of the twin towers. The park itself was quite beautiful as there was a swimming pool, playground, pathways and many fountains. We took many pictures from a bridge in the park of the twin towers. Just being there was sort of surreal after seeing the towers many times before in movies. Unfortunately, you can’t actually go up the tower except for the Skybridge which you have to line up early for.

That night, we returned to the hostel and had dinner at the street food market. Like always, I tried to go with what the locals typically eat. So that night I had Curry Mein which is a curry noodle soup. Needless to say, it was tremendously spicy meal. With the night temperatures not dropping much and the extremely spicy soup, I was sweating like crazy and even coughed at the spiciness of the meal. The Singaporean and Korean also found it spicy but not to the same degree.

After dinner, the girls returned back to the hostel. Being only in Kuala Lumpur for one night, I returned to the night markets on Petaling Street where there were a lot more vendors than during the day. From the market, I tried to find the old train station but was unable to even with a map. I had to be very careful as I had been warned that KL is not very safe after dark and by that time, it was close to 11pm at night and the streets were pretty much deserted at night. So, I was running up and down the streets looking for the old train station until I gave up. I ended up finding Merdeka Square or Independence Square where there were surprisingly many families out with their children despite the late hour. Many of them were playing with toys that launched vertically and glowed in the night. Afterwards, I returned to the hostel. I wanted to experience the night life but opted not to as the girls were not up for it and I was quite tired myself.

I woke up early in the morning to go line up to view the Skybridge. Originally, Doris and Nadia were going to join me but they decided not to as they were too tired. When I got there at 8am, there was a massive line and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to see it due to my evening flight. After lining up for about an hour, I got my ticket for 1:30pm. I walked around the area to kill time before going up to the bridge. The views were great but not that spectacular as it wasn’t that high. But just being on the bridge was very cool. It essentially was a very high +15 bridge, but it’s the most famous and coolest one in the world. It would be cooler if it had a glass floor.

My brief stop in Kuala Lumpur was over as I returned to the hostel to pick up my bags and took a monorail and coach to the airport. At last, I was only a few hours from Thailand.