I arrived in KL on Saturday, December 12th. Here I hooked up with Yee Guan Chew, friend of Jasmine, and another one of the travellers that I met from the Saigon - Phnom Penh bus. My first two days in KL were a blur of restaurants, malls, mosques, temples, and parks. Yee Guan drove me in her little red car all over and around the city with her friends Sin and Kim. At the end of the first day she quized me on what I had seen and I was unfortunately unable to give many answers. It wasn't until I had a chance sit down and update my journal that I was able to collect my thoughts and memories on what had just happened. My third day in KL I had to myself while Yee Guan was busy at work. It was a less eventful day, but with the many hours of walking over blistering sidewalks and streets, it was no less a drain on my mind and body.
KL was a dizzying array of freeways, highway, bridges, meandering and merging roads, and a street layout that perplexed me. It stands out in my mind as the only city I have yet encountered where I rarely knew exactly where I was or even which direction I might be facing, despite having massive skyscrapers like KL Tower and the KLCC Towers to guide me. I was generally lost, but usually managed to find my way to where ever I wanted to go. KL seemed to me the first truly developed, well designed, relatively clean, and affluent city I have encountered with the exception of Pattaya in Thailand. The architecture of the city was marked by its strong Islamic influence. The geometric stylings of the mosque can be seen everywhere from government building, to train stations, to parking garages; the imagery is practically inescapable.
Photos: KL Tower (Seattle Space Needle Ripoff), built in 1996 during a heavy rain, Dim Sum with the girls, Hibiscus (Malaysian national flower), KLCC Towers at night, the entrance to Batu Caves Hindu temple, various mosques, and a cityscape photo of KL.
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