Arriving in KL and Visiting the Petronas Towers

Arriving in KL was a very strange experience. I knew that the city would be very different from how I remembered it. The highway from Melaka had been modern and smooth, and the tolls frequent. Eventually, we saw the skyscrapers in the distance. For the first time, the city reminded me of Dubai, where my father has a home and where I had last visited two years ago.

As we got closer to the city centre I peered out of the window, waiting to see if I could glimpse anything familiar. I really couldn’t find any signs of the place I once knew; the suburbs gave way to larger and larger buildings and busier and busier roads. But far from the chaotic, noisy, free-for-all traffic that we used to know, this city centre’s road system was like any other capital city: too many cars, taking too long to get where they were going, but regimented by signals and road markings. I also noticed the monorail, one of the many innovations that we would never have dreamed of in the 70s.

I asked the driver from time to time which road we were on, and when he told me I remembered the road but recognised nothing. Then, finally, we were on Jalan Sultan Ismail where our hotel, the Concorde, is situated. I had actually been in the building many times before, as it used to be a hotel called the Merlin when I lived there. So it is one of the much older buildings in the city.

Once we were settled in and had organised our car and driver for the next day, we decided to explore. I realised that, like Melaka but on a grander scale, we would have to be careful of bag snatchers and also take great care on the precarious pavements. And, where there were no pavements, watch our step on the side of the road and avoid falling in potholes and monsoon drains.

We wanted to see the Petronas Towers and it wasn’t hard to navigate our way there as the twin peaks loom overhead, and were only about 10 minutes’ walk from the Concorde. Passing large construction sites, we realised that, although the city is packed with huge buildings in various shapes, soon there will be more and more. Arriving at the foot of the Petronas Towers, we looked up. And up. And up. Again, I was reminded of Dubai. Two years ago I had stood at the foot of the Burj Khalifa, too busy visiting my father in hospital to go in, but fascinated by the immensity of it and the fact that human beings could get right ‘up there.’ The Petronas Towers seem just as big, although I know that the height difference is extremely important to the respective cities.

KL is a vibrant city at night. It doesn’t really get much cooler when it’s dark, and the pollution (at the moment, not just the vehicle fumes but the ‘haze’ which has blown over from Indonesia and is concerning many) makes the atmosphere even more oppressive, but there are many people walking about and even more visiting the Towers to gaze up or to go shopping. We went inside and found a wonderful selection of shops, from designer clothes shops, which we walked past, to a large book shop in which we lingered.

We stopped and ate a healthy and satisfying meal of chicken and rice, freshly cooked, served on to proper plates, which cost way under £4 for both of us. It was good to wander round, to shop and to eat like everyone else does in KL. For me, it was a very new and different city, but I wanted to get a good feel of it, and this was a good way to go about it. If you lived in KL, you might well go shopping and stop to eat on a Friday evening. You would think nothing of it; this would be an ordinary day. I wanted to experience the ordinary, the run-of-the-mill. Everyday life. This was it!

We walked back along the uneven pavements, through the thick heat and dirty fumes. We passed the construction sites, the Buddhist temples and the stalls selling food even cheaper than our chicken and rice. And as we explored yet another large suite, I gazed out of the window, at the unfamiliar landscape of lights and more lights, and wondered what tomorrow would bring.