I was incredibly excited about visiting this city before I began traveling, not least because of the draw of the spectacular Petronas towers. Sadly, it was not all I had imagined and more. I, and my girlfriend likewise, could not place our fingers on the exact reason why, but KL just seemed to lack the level of personality we had become accustomed to. Flying straight from the frankly insane Hoi An into the sanitised, developed Kuala Lumpur was as much of a culture shock as the first day landing in Bangkok a month or so prior.
We spent 3 days walking literally everywhere in the city, and whilst it was clean, pretty and the towers were very interesting - we still could find no real hint of character. In a determined quest to become a western metropolis, all individuality and 'Malaysian-ness' had been cleared up and thrown away. The Petronas towers were excellent, not as exciting (or as high) as the nearby Menora tower but stunning up close nonetheless. Underneath the towers is the real shock however, a massive shopping mall.
We walked around the sanitised marble flooring in genuine shock and a fair bit of confusion. Finding a Marks and Spencer after living of street-stall food and genuine asian cuisine for over a month in Malaysia seemed a pretty strange experience.
The hostel we stayed in was borderline terrible, but the staff were friendly enough and it was within walking distance of pretty much everything we wanted to see. The food was nice, the markets were expansive and full of all the cheap knock-offs you could ever want and the pollution was nowhere near the levels expected. B
ut (you could see this coming a mile off), we just didn't fall in love with the city, as we were prone to with most of the others visited.
3 days was enough, and the city was great. But compared to the others visited, I feel we may have been a bit spoilt. You can go to a western city anywhere in metropolitan Europe, why the need for another one the other side of world is something I don't understand.
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