Kuala Lumpur

We have fallen behind on our posting again. Our week in Kuala Lumpur was a vacation from our vacation. We have a few pictures and a few anecdotes which we will try to post in the next day or two. For now, you can check out our pictures on Yahoo (please use the link in the sidebar).

Erin

Joey's turn:
We decided to take a break from the hectic life of traveling and touring while we were in Kuala Lumpur. It was seriously hot and humid, so we left our hostel and splurged on a hotel. In this case, splurge means US $50 per night.

One of the key selling points of the hotel was the swimming pool. We had been dealing with the heat pretty well - ok, not so well, but all of the malls have AC so we were doing our fair share of shopping (more on that later). Anyway, the pool was very helpful in getting away from the sweltering atmosphere. Also, the pool had a very nice view of the famous Petronas Towers (or at least one of the spires of the towers). It was amazing to swim beneath such a monumental landmark.


Speaking of which, the Petronas Towers are seriously unreal. They used to be the tallest towers in the world, but I think they are in 3rd place now. They are so tall that it is difficult to actually fit them into one photograph. Also, at night they really seem like the backdrop to a movie set. In fact, they are prominently featured in the film "Entrapment" with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones if you want to get a better view.

As I mentioned earlier, we did our fair share of shopping. We actually joked that the national sport in KL must be shopping, because it is a major feature of the current "Visit Malaysia 2007" tourist campaign. All of the ads and articles prominently feature shopping as a major "attraction". We figure that most people are just trying to escape the heat of the day by going inside to enjoy a little air conditioning. On a side note, the malls here are enormous. We visited one mall which had 12 floors and had three separate wings. It was so big that it had a roller coaster in the building. I just wish that we had been able to snap a photograph.


In the first neighborhood that we stayed in there were some typical hawker type malls that we had seen previously. Basically, the shop owners spill out into the walk ways inviting you into their shop and calling out for you to see their wares. We also got to see some of the VERY high-class malls where all of the major name brands are sold. I thought that it was funny that you could go into one mall and buy expensive name brands, and then go a block away to a different mall and buy a knock-off of the same item (for seriously cheaper prices).