Kuala Lumpur

After the sweaty wilds of Borneo, we welcomed the civilization of Kuala Lumpur. We spent several days seeing the sights and sampling local food. Our first day was checking out the heights of this very (to us) vertical city -

That is the KL Tower, where we got great views of the city…

the Petronas Towers are on the right side of the picture

… and the surrounding highlands…

… and we really enjoyed the experience of stepping into the Skybox -

One of our best pictures of this trip was taken by the security guard (!) -

We learned that the Merdeka 118 tower is the second tallest building in the world right now (behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai)…

I think you can figure out which building is the Merdeka

… and it was just completed this month.

I thought this was a fun pic -

I hadn’t even realized that the shadow of the tower we were in was in the picture, until I was picking the photos for the blog. :)

We then walked over to get some pictures of the Petronas Towers…

… because for me they are synonymous with KL. I thought they were near the top of tallest buildings in the world, but actually they are “only” the 21st tallest building in the world. We opted not to go up, so this seemed to be a bit of a let down after seeing the city from the KL Tower.

That night, and nearly every night we were in KL, we went to Jalan Alor for the street food Night Market -

There are stalls of food where you can order food, and then eat it at tables right on the street, sitting on plastic stools -

We had these fantastic charcoal-grilled chicken wings, that still make my mouth water.

On the next day, we headed out to Batu Caves, just a few km north of the city proper, but 30 minutes by Grab (the Malaysian version of Uber/Lyft) -

This is a Hindu temple dedicated to Murugan, who is commonly referred to as “the god of the Tamil “ people of south India. At 140 ft high, it is the second tallest Murugan statue in the world. There are 272 steps to reach the first (and largest) cave, and these were painted the ‘Instagram’ colors in 2018.

The caves are limestone, and had neat formations…

… formed by water dripping through over the centuries. There were a series of caves…

… within which a number of temples were built. The cave furthest back was open on top -

As we headed back out, you can see the edges of the city…

… as well as the bright colors that we found on most every Hindu temple -

Did you see the monkeys? There are at least 4 Long-tailed Macaques in the picture above.

Now, after still sweltering in KL (highs around 90, humidity at 75-85%), we’re looking forward to cooler temps up in the Highlands, which is the next post.