Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Malaysia, a city that interested me ever since seeing the movie Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. We came here last year on our trip and we came back for two reasons... it's Air Asia's hub and because we really like this city. So we stayed here from January 16-19.

Kuala Lumpur, more popularly known as "KL" is similar to Shanghai and Tokyo in that they were all small, unimportant towns in the 1800s. Suddenly the mining industry was discovered/developed in the area and KL boomed. As there were not enough Malay workers for the demand, migrant workers came from India and China.

Today KL is a "salad bowl" population. America was often referred to as the "melting pot" as cultures mixed to develop a new American culture. Of the 7 million or so people who live here, KL is comprised of four main groups... Chinese 43%, Malay 38%, Indian 10% (both Hindu and Mulsim-Indian), and 9% other. For over 150 years these cultures have interacted and worked with each other, while keeping their social and cultural interaction virtually completely distinct.

So two of the benefits that this "salad bowl" provided us on our trip were that anybody who looked Chinese in fact spoke Chinese and we had the girls talk to several of them throughout our stay in KL... they need to keep speaking Chinese! And the other benefit is that great Indian food is never far away!

First, the beautiful towers!
The Petronas Towers define Kuala Lumpur. When they were completed in 1998 they passed the Sears Tower in Chicago to become the world's tallest buildings. They were subsequently passed in 2004 by Taibei 101 in Taiwan as the tallest and passed by Shanghai's own recently-completed World Finance Center. But while those buildings passed these in height, I don't think they passed them in beauty... I've been to them all! My pictures perhaps don't do these towers justice, so here is a borrowed picture that I found on the web:
Do you see those fountains in front of the towers? They provide an excellent place for kids to have fun and pass a little time, so that's exactly what Adayla and Tally did!

The base of the towers is connected by a HUGE shopping mall. You can get everything at this mall, from LV & Tod's bags to Auntie Anne's pretzels. Like last year, we opted for lunch at Chili's... yup the American restaurant chain. I should have counted how many bowls of chips and salsa we (Morgan) went through in one sitting. They were so good!As you may be able to tell by the big red lanterns, the mall is decorated for Chinese New Years. While we were there we also saw a traditional Chinese lion dance. Again, the comment to be made is that you have to LEAVE mainland China to see Chinese traditions...Also available for sale at this mall were these Obama shirts:
In case you don't want to enlarge the picture, the shirts say: "OBAMA, The New Color of America" It just fascinates me how the world has an opinion on American politics... more so than even Americans have on their own politics.

It is just so fascinating to go shopping in such a diverse population. Fortunately English is the common language here!

The backside of the the towers is a beautiful park with dancing fountains and a free, publicly-accessible swimming pool for kids.

Some more pictures of the towers:Morgan and the girls in KL... 7 million people, world's tallest buildings, 3 kids... no problem!

We just had fun exploring the city. One of the tourist places is a chocolate factory. Malaysia produces a lot of cocoa, but if you come to KL, you can probably skip this place. At least the location was pretty!

The Monorail

Like most major cities, KL has a mass-transportation system. But KL is unique in that instead of having an underground subway, they have an above-ground monorail. The trains as you can see below are smaller, but more frequent so you really don't have to wait. It is also very quiet and we didn't even hear these trains passing over us.

The monorail also winds through the city so you can get a good feel for the city relatively quickly. It's just nice.

That's probably too much for one post, but what the heck, it was an action packed couple of days!