Kuala. Lumpur. What a great city!
Whenever Rich and I stay in AirBNB’s, one of the questions we answer during our AirBNB closing review process is whether the place met, failed to meet, or surpassed our expectations. This question seems sort of tricky to me because is it insulting to say a place only met expectations if my expectations of it were set pretty high going in?
With Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I will admit that my expectations were not high at all.
When we meet other couples who travel a lot, Rich inevitably asks them about what place they did not like. Two separate couples named Kuala Lumpur. And then our experience in Penang, Malaysia had been pretty average, probably because a.) we were coming off a long stretch in beautiful Thailand, and b.) we were feeling under the weather. All that to say, I expected our time in KL to be mostly fine.
Boy, was I wrong about Kuala Lumpur. We had an incredible time, and I am excited to share about all we experienced.
Day 113: Easy Travel to Kuala Lumpur + Our Important Meeting
Travel from Penang to Kuala Lumpur was super easy because it was a domestic flight within Malaysia and because the Kuala Lumpur airport was amazing.
We took a Grab (SE Asia’s UBER) to the airport in Penang, enjoyed an airport lounge breakfast there, and then took an afternoon flight to Kuala Lumpur.
Once we landed in Kuala Lumpur, we headed to the landside airport lounge there to get lunch. Rich and I decided to use our lounge time to have our Kuala Lumpur meeting. Yes, with each other.
Please feel free to roll your eyes here, but scheduling meetings with each other to plan out our time in each city has been a game changer for us. It gives Rich and me a dedicated time and space to talk about the things we want to see and do in each new location, and then we put everything on a calendar to block it all out. The Together Teacher would be so proud!
Having our meeting at the Kuala Lumpur lounge worked great, because who doesn’t like a meeting with coffee and food?!?
The Kuala Lumpur airport is NOT close to Kuala Lumpur; it’s a good hour outside the city. We put it into Grab, and the price was really high. After a little googling, we learned that the “economy” taxi was about half the price. Done!
By the time, we arrived at our AirBNB, a gorgeous apartment in a high rise building, it was late afternoon, and Rich and I were both pretty beat. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that for dinner, we ordered delivery McDonald’s! Taste of home, perhaps?
Day 114: Visiting the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur
If you follow travel accounts on Instagram (like ours!), you have seen the famous colorful steps of the Batu Caves. Inside the Batu Caves complex, there are a series of famous Hindu shrines carved into the side of a large limestone hill, all located about 12 kilometers outside of Kuala Lumpur. The 272 stairs leading up to the cave have been painted in a bright rainbow pattern creating a really fun spot to take pictures.
Also, there are monkeys. Lots of them. While we were researching, we watched a video where a monkey at the Batu Caves jumped on a girl’s head and back. And then scratched her. And then she had to go to the hospital to get the scratch checked out. Because monkey rabies.
Still, we had to see it.
The Batu Caves were beautiful. There were definitely devious monkeys walking around with the people, looking to steal things, but there was also the most beautiful gold statue of Lord Murugan, a Hindu deity, as well as the amazing steps.
We had a great time posing for pictures, watching out for monkeys, and taking in the gorgeous surroundings.
Rich and I took the subway back into town and ate a fabulous local restaurant in the heart of the business district. We were surrounded by professionals on their lunch break, and there was something so totally refreshing about not being in a tourist destination. For a minute, Rich and I both even felt envious of the professionals with their jobs, routines, and dress up clothes!
Back to the Apartment and Dinner Out
We headed back to the AirBNB to spend some time at the pool. We went up to the 45th floor and while the views were insane– the KL skyline is striking– the pool was a little lame, and there were no lounge chairs. Weird. We only stayed about an hour.
For dinner, we headed to an Indian restaurant Rich found on TripAdvisor. We sat down, we ordered, everything looked delicious, and then from Rich’s view into the kitchen, he saw a rat. Not a mouse. A rat.
We really do not like to cause a fuss, ever, but we couldn’t stay and eat there. We paid for our drinks and headed back to our apartment building to eat at a local restaurant on the ground floor. The food was outstanding, cheaper, and rat-free.
Day 115: Seeing the City and the Petronas Towers
An Important Apartment Discovery
Remember, what you just read about the disappointing pool on the top floor? Well, the next morning, we got up to go to the gym, and discovered that on the 6th floor of the apartment building, there was an unbelievable, massive infinity pool complete with cabanas and chairs. Glorious!
In addition, the gym was like no other apartment gym I have ever seen. There was one room for treadmills and elliptical machines, one room for weights, and one huge yoga studio. Gyms have been few and far between on our trip, and this was a true treat! I did an Aaptiv treadmill workout, lifted a bit, and then did abs in the yoga room.
Lunch + EcoPark + Petronas Towers
We were hungry post-workout so we ate lunch back at the restaurant where we had dinner. So cheap! So good! If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
We then walked to the EcoPark. The EcoPark is literally a tropical rain forest in the middle of Kuala Lumpur. Everything was so green and lush, and our favorite part was the Canopy Walk. The Canopy Walk is a 200 meter high suspended bridge which allows you to look down on the forest below and look out on the city skyline. The park and walk are free, and we really enjoyed being in nature, in the middle of a city.
We then walked towards the Petronas Towers, but got a little turned around, so this was a high step count day (16,000+ for Amanda and 20,000+ for Rich, even though I was on the treadmill longer) for us.
We finally arrived at KLCC Park, another beautiful green park in the shadow of the Petronas Towers. If you are not familiar with the Petronas Towers, they are huge twin skyscrapers, built in 1994, that were the tallest towers in the world until 2004.
The towers are the most prominent feature of the Kuala Lumpur skyline, and views of them pop up from wherever you are in the city. You can pay to take a tour to the top, but we opted out of that expensive experience.
From the park, we headed to the nearby mall KLCC Suria. Some of the clothing in our backpacks needed some refreshing, and we were hoping H&M would come through. It was a wash though, and our feet were tired! We ate Subway (yes, same Subway) in the mall food court and headed home in a Grab.
Day 116: Walking on Sunshine in Kuala Lumpur
We woke up to unbelievably sunny skies. We have found that checking the weather in Southeast Asia does not prove particularly helpful. On the weekly forecast, every day shows up as storm clouds, and then it rains for about one hour during the day and stops.
So sunshine was fabulous! We headed back to our baller apartment gym, and then decided we would spend some time in a cabana by the pool. Maybe we would even get one of the epic Kuala Lumpur infinity pool shots with Rich staring off into the skyline.
We put our swimsuits on, grabbed a book, and headed to the swanky pool on the sixth floor. Rich takes off his t-shirt, walks toward the water, and is immediately approached by the guard.
“Excuse me, sir, you cannot be here.”
I start cracking up in my head, because I think my former high school administrator husband is getting busted for having on swim trunks that are too short. I imagine that he will go back upstairs, put on his longer Nike workout shorts, come back down, and our morning at the pool will resume. Nope.
So Malaysia is a Muslim country. We still don’t totally have this figured out, but apparently men can only swim in tight swimming pants or shorts (imagine Michael Phelps in the last Olympics). Women can swim in any sort of swimsuit. The guard walked Rich to this sign, it became clear that he had no article of clothing in his backpack that would pass code, and our pool plan was foiled.
Last note here: Rich and I have both googled and googled about male swimwear in Malaysia and have found ZERO information or guidance on this phenomenon, besides a review at the place we stayed in Penang– where we didn’t try to swim– in which a man references not having the correct Malaysian swim wear.
Actually, this is the last note here: A male Speedo bikini swimsuit would have been acceptable. Rich did ask the guard about how a tiny, tight swimsuit would be more modest than his swim trunks, but the poor guard was just the messenger. Swim day cancelled.
Instead, we did some blogging/planning work, and then ate lunch at a different restaurant below our building, a delicious Jamaican (yep, you read that right) coffee shop called Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee. My order was an incredible grain bowl with pumpkin and a fried egg, and it was one of my very favorite meals of the whole trip. I asked Rich if we could come back for dinner!
Seeing More Green in Kuala Lumpur
We walked in the opposite direction from the day before to Merdeka Square, which translates to Independence Square. The square is outside the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, a beautiful office building constructed under British rule, and in 1957, the Malaysian flag was raised for the first time in the square.
The area reminded me a lot of the National Mall in Washington, DC or the area outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was clear that it was a historic and significant spot. It was also a great place to take pictures in the bright sunshine!
Once we finished with pictures and sightseeing, we decided to check out one more Kuala Lumpur mall to see if we might have better luck finding a few replacement items. We hit up the Pavilion, another huge mall in Kuala Lumpur, but couldn’t find what we wanted and grew weary quickly.
We headed back to our apartment, where we ate dinner at Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee.
Closing Thoughts on Kuala Lumpur
We realized in KL that a common denominator of places we really like is the ability to settle in and not feel like tourists. Yes, we obviously did all of the touristy things listed below, but we also had lunch inconspicuously surrounded by professionals downtown, went to a great gym in our building, worked and blogged, and visited two shopping malls.
Kuala Lumpur has to be the most modern city we have visited on our trip, and at the same time, is probably also the most conservative. You hear the Muslim Call to Prayer five times a day, they have swim trunk rules, drinking alcohol is frowned upon (and too expensive for us to afford while we were there!), many women choose to cover themselves, etc.
All in all, we thought it was a really interesting place to visit and felt very welcoming at the same time. Every Grab driver we had in KL and in Penang felt a lot of pride in Malaysia and seemed optimistic about the country’s future. With the amount of major construction we saw as well as the number of high end luxury stores, it seems that they have every reason to believe Malaysia is a country making advances on the world stage.