Trip Report: Malaysia
Visited in December 2012
I think every traveler who wants to visit every country in the world has certain countries that he or she has been to without really seeing much of it. For me, for example, Oman is such a country, because I visited it only as a day trip from Dubai. I could just as well put Mexico into this category. Based on my two nights in Cancun, I can’t really say I’ve seen the country. Despite the Chichén Itzá tour.
Another of these countries is Malaysia. In 2012, it was on one of my first trips, I spent a night in the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur. To be more precise, I landed in the city in the early evening, stored my luggage at KLIA (the airport) and drove into the city, where I then spent the night before taking the next flight to Laos at 8:00am.
My night in Kuala Lumpur in 2012 can be summarized as follows: I had street food in Jalan Alor, took a photo of the Petronas Twin Towers at night (the only picture I still have from that visit) and spent several hours in a shady bar that had a large aquarium with a small shark in it. I also remembered how incredibly expensive the alcohol prices were. While I used to pay 2-3 USD in Thailand for a beer, I think I paid almost three times as much in Kuala Lumpur. Or maybe it was just this bar.
For me, such a short visit is enough to count a country as visited. However, I am anything but proud of such visits and try to avoid them as much as possible. In the case of Kuala Lumpur, however, I knew I would be back at some point. After all, Kuala Lumpur is a great hub in Southeast Asia and I knew that I wasn’t aware that it would be pretty much 10 years, but better late than never.
In December 2022, Malaysia was the starting and ending point of a four-week trip to Oceania. At the beginning of the trip we had two days and two nights in Kuala Lumpur and another twelve hour layover on our very last day of the trip. Unfortunately, our outbound flight was canceled two weeks before the trip and we had to start our trip one day later. So the two days we initially had turned into one. Quite annoying, but what can you do…
Anyway. Our Turkish Airlines flight landed at KLIA at 17:00 on a Friday evening, of course at Terminal 1, where all the “nice” airlines land. Actually, that means all airlines except AirAsia. A Grab, the Uber of Southeast Asia, took Kati and me to the city center afterwards. KLIA is relatively far from the center. Whether by cab, bus or train, you have to calculate with at least an hour until you reach your hotel after leaving the airport.
Our hotel was right next to the KL Tower and about a 15-minute walk from Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur’s shopping and entertainment district. Thanks to a probable error fare, our 5* hotel cost just 138 Malaysian Ringgit, less than 30 USD, per night. But with only one day, we didn’t want to spend much time in the hotel anyway. Besides, it was Kati’s first time in Kuala Lumpur. And strictly speaking, I was also not very familiar with the city after my short stay in 2012.
Unfortunately, it started raining the moment we arrived at the hotel. One of my greatest joys in Asian megacities are rooftop bars at night. Or the night in general. After sunset, these megacities become somehow magical and rooftop bars are the best place to enjoy the ambience with a drink. However, due to the bad weather, it seemed that rooftop bars did not seem to be an option anymore, which was quite disappointing.
So, what can you do when it rains in Kuala Lumpur at night? To be honest, not so much. Even the taxi driver who drove us from the airport to the city said “I hope you guys don’t have any plans for tonight.” Well, actually we did. Fortunately, the rain stopped after a while and we spent the next hour in the food street Jalan Alor. Since I also ate there on my first visit in 2012, this street still seemed familiar to me.
We also visited the most famous landmark of Malaysia, the Petronas Twin Towers. These two towers used to be the highest building in the world until they were surpassed by Taiwan’s Taipei 101 in 2014. Today, they are at least the tallest twin towers in the world. By the way, a photo of these towers is also the only one I have from my 2012 stay.
Although this evening was rather uneventful, I was still glad to be back in Southeast Asia. I was in Singapore for two days in 2019, but other than that, I haven’t been to this region for almost 9 years. And how I missed it. The scent of Southeast Asia, the 7/11 stores, the humidity…. Kuala Lumpur is actually still quite organized and clean compared to other cities, though. Even the traffic seems much more civilized than in Cambodia or Vietnam, for example.
The next day we actually planned to check out KL’s most important sights. Kuala Lumpur is not a city where you need days to see everything, but it has a fair amount of interesting spots. We started with the KL Tower. Supposedly, the KL Tower is the better choice than the Petronas Twin Towers if you want to see Kuala Lumpur from above.
When we bought the tickets, the vendor said to us that we were lucky that the weather was so good, because it would come raining later. We found out that later meant five minutes. For this reason, the Sky Deck and Sky Box, for which we had tickets, were closed. So we waited downstairs and hoped it would open again soon. However, after two hours of unnecessary time sitting, we were told that the tower would probably be closed until the evening. I have rarely lost time in such an unnecessary way.
The weather remained terrible. The sky was gray and there was fog. It probably wouldn’t have been worth going up the tower anyway, because you wouldn’t have seen much. “This stopover sucks,” I said to Kati. It really looked like we could do next to nothing in Kuala Lumpur. I mean, all the things I was looking forward to were impossible to do because of the bad weather.
Funnily enough, the weather became good in between for about an hour. We used this time to go to the KLCC Park and take one or the other photo. It goes without saying that it did not take long until the rain came back. We still visited the Merdeka Square with the Sultan Abdil Samad Building but we skipped other places we wanted to visit. It just made no fun with weather like this. In the early evening, we got a Grab taxi back to KLIA, where we continued our journey to Australia.
All in all, my second visit to Malaysia was not one that I will remember for a long time. However, we also found out that the weather was just as bad the day before. That means that if our flight from Switzerland to Kuala Lumpur had not been canceled, we would have had two days of rain in Malaysia instead of one. So in hindsight, the flight cancellation was nothing to be sad about.
About four weeks later we returned to Kuala Lumpur. As mentioned before, this time we had about twelve hours before we had our flight home. Like on my first visit to Malaysia in 2012, we left our luggage at the airport and then took a Grab taxi straight to the Batu Caves. This place looks like it is in the deep rural area. But in fact, it is only a 15-minute drive from Kuala Lumpur’s city center.
The temples in the Batu Caves are now probably one of the most famous sights in the world. Amazing that it took so long until I finally saw them in real. The highlight is of course the view from below with the golden statue and the colorful stairs. Once you have climbed the more than 200 steps and passed dozens of monkeys, the temples in the caves are waiting at the top. A cool sight if you ask me.
In fact, we also saw that the sun can shine in Kuala Lumpur. It was enormously hot when we were at the Batu Caves. An hour later, what a surprise, it started to rain again. According to climate statistics, Kuala Lumpur has at least 10 rainy days in every month. A considerable disadvantage compared to Bangkok, for example, which is practically rain-free for several months. Initially, I wanted to do a second attempt at the KL Tower but skipped this idea as soon as it started raining again. I assume the Sky Deck must have been closed again anyway.
Thus, we left Kuala Lumpur again without having seen and done everything we actually wanted to. For example, we missed the Thean Hou Temple or the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple. We also missed the Rooftop Bars, which I would have loved to see. Shit happens, though, and it’s not the end of the world. This visit to Kuala Lumpur will probably not have been my last.
Whether it will take ten years again next time is the other question. Kuala Lumpur is and remains interesting as a hub in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, I must honestly admit that other hubs such as Bangkok, Singapore or Hong Kong appeal to me more. This is not to say that Kuala Lumpur is bad. Of course, the city still has a lot to offer, but I still find the other cities I just mentioned more exciting.
The question that rather arises is when I will visit Malaysia properly. Not only the capital, but the whole country. Although the places in Malaysia look very beautiful, the country has the misfortune that I have already traveled a lot in Southeast Asia and the typical tourist places like Langkawi, Penang or Cameron Highlands do not offer anything new to me anymore. Therefore, I doubt that I will travel through Malaysia for a longer time in the near future. At least not in the western part of the country.
However, I would not say that for East Malaysia. Malaysia is a country that is divided into two parts. The western part of the country lies on mainland Asia and borders Thailand and Singapore. The eastern part of Malaysia lies on the island of Borneo, though. Borneo has long been a dream destination of mine, where I would love to travel around for two weeks.
But even though I’m not eager to travel around Malaysia anytime soon, there’s certainly no denying that Malaysia is a cool travel destination. The country has beautiful beaches, a stunning countryside, it is cheap, the people are nice, the food is delicious and traveling within the country is easy. For this reason, Malaysia offers everything a good destination needs.
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