October 21, 2013 – Kuala Lumpur

With an uneventful morning which included packing, checking in with my flight and my last Cambodian meal for a long time, I jumped ship out of Cambodia and landed in Kuala Lumpur, but not without one last death defying tuk tuk ride to the airport where a portion of it was spent in the on coming traffic lane. What a difference. Kuala Lumpur is like nothing I’ve seen before. Along with Singapore, it’s fast becoming one of the overachievers in what is a pretty dismal underdeveloped Southeast Asia. There are high speed trains (more on that later), tall sky scrapers and holy crap, they actually drive within the lane markers. More on the trains, it’s not a unified system which makes it complicated. There are 2 major (3 including the airport rail) train companies to which you have to buy separate tickets to instead of the normal “one ticket takes you everywhere” which makes transferring a little more complicated.

After checking into my hostel I headed out to the major mall in Kuala Lumpur called Pavilion. It’s a MASSIVE mall. It’s a 7 story mall layered out in a figure 8 design with shops that rival many of the great shopping centres around the world. What I had planned for a couple hours exploration turned into an all afternooner and into the evening (I’m sitting in the pub area writing this blog at this moment).

I then went for a stroll in the downtown area and what a sight. For a city this size it’s night life is incredible. People everywhere with giant TVs and bars signs to light up the streets. Nothing closes here until at the earliest 10PM including the stores.

One things I’ve noticed is Kuala Lumpur is a very diverse city. I’m always hearing at least 3 languages one time. This includes Malaysian, Indian (more than one dialect), Chinese (again various dialects), Arabic and English. The people here are just as diverse as their languages as well. I’m use to Canada and the USA being the only multinational countries, but Malaysia is just as diverse in every way.

I finish off today in the melting pot area of the city where the two dominant cultures (Chinese and Indian) integrate into one delicious food market. Tomorrow I go cave exploring north of the city and then return to delve into KL’s massive Chinatown.

Picture of the day:

So many things to say about this picture, so little time.