Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

KL, capital city of Malaysia, home of the Petronas towers and Malaysian Grand Prix. In short, my stay in KL was rather bittersweet. I allocated 5 days in the city, which was about 2 to 3 days too much. KL is the equivalent of NYC or Singapore; it's a business city with very little touristic and historical spots to visit. Had I been working or have close friends who lives in the city, my experience would have been much more different. I spent most of my time walking in a hot and humid sauna and being constantly harassed by girls or pimps for massages, eating and drain my money on alcohol (Malaysia being a Muslim country taxes bars heavily, so the prices of the alcohol was comparable to Australia). My hostel was conveniently located at Bukit Bintang, where all the bars, street food and malls are located, so I was only 5 minutes walk away from an air conditioning building if i were to seek refuge or from street food vendors.

I was hoping to meet local couchsurfers (like I had in Yogja and KK) to show me around, but I didn't have much success finding somebody to show me around. When I got to the chance to attend the meet up, the turn out was over 50 people and it was very hard to talk to everybody. Post dinner drinks quickly turned into a yellow fever meat market. I realized that the reason why I had such a hard time meeting local CSers was because I wasn't born with a vagina and a set of boobs. Local KL CS guys were much more interested in talking with girls and hitting on the hottest ones rather than having a nice conversation. The female CSers are dairy queens wanting to meet the exotic gwai lo. I quickly left the bar in digust.

Although KL doesn't have alot of landmarks, there are a few notable sites that are worth mentionning

Petronas Towers
The tallest twin towers in the world, the Petronas towers is quite impressive especially at night. The towers were superbly lit that even a crappy cell phone managed to take beautiful pictures of the towers. It is also possible to go up the tower and view the city on the bridge, but I learned getting a ticket is quite the mission. The ticket booth only sells 1025 tickets a day, and people line up as early as 830 in the morning to buy a ticket with an allocated time slot, which means one would have to plan their day around the ticket. In addition to the queue, I have been told that you can only spend a maximum of 5 minutes on the bridge because the weight of all the tourists might cause the bridge to collapse! For 50 RM (about 17 dollars), I didn't think it was worth the effort to get the tickets.

Chinatown
Also known as Old KL, this is a night market paradise for those who seek fake purses and cheap tacky tshirts and cheap food. Jalan Petilang reminded me of Tung Tsoi market in Hong Kong: big street with rows of vendors selling virtually everything ranging from shoes, electronics, food and clothings. Being a proper banana my bargaining skills are non existant and my 18 kg jam packed backpack, I didn't purchase anything.

The National Mosque
Almost 2/3 of the malaysian population are muslim, thus a visit to the National Mosque is a must after the Petronas towers. Getting to the Mosque isn't straight forward. Although it was walking distance from Chinatown, one must walk across the "river", then walk through a train station, and then exit through an abandoned gate, to then cross the street and then make their way to the Mosque. It is important to mention that there are only 3 one hour time slots per day for non-muslim tourist to visit the mosque, which is 1h between each prayer time. Women have to wear the robe to cover their hair and body, and men who wear shorts that doesn't cover the knees will also have to wear the robe to enter the mosque.

The bird park
This is the biggest open air bird park in the world, where the majority of the birds can fly free under a giantic net and enclosure. This is a must visit for bird lovers. There are several feeding time and bird shows to see

Batu Caves
A very impressive hindu temple located inside of natural limestone caves, easily accesible by train from the city. Word of advice, be mentally prepared to climb 276 steps under a hot scorching sun to reach the top cave.

Bukit Bintang
The exp party area. Think LKF in HK. Same thing. Heaps of bars and clubs, and street food at every corner. Fun to hangout, not going to make it a habit. Around there are really big malls