Kuala Lumpur: shiny things and good food

he last time we came to Kuala Lumpur was about 17 years ago, on a holiday covering quite a lot of he country and Singapore. Our memories of the capital are hazy, but we remember that the newly opened Petronas Towers were the biggest buildings in the city and the world, we remember bars with older western men talking to younger local women and we remember not really warming to the place.

It’s changed quite a bit. The towers have been out grown by many others around the world and equaled in the city. The city centre has many, many big, new, shiny buildings and there is a modern cosmopolitan feel about the place. That said, there are still lots of low rise old suburbs around with great food and lively atmospheres.

With only 36hrs there, mostly we wandered, firstly following a route from place to place looking at street art (one mans graffiti etc…..), finding interesting suburbs on the way and ate in interesting places. On the scoff front we found a great Indian (The Indian Kitchen), the Lot 10 foodhall for some great duck (you can get pork here too, which is rare in Malaysia) and the wonderful (if you are not a veggie. If you are a veggie, use ‘pretty shit’) Jalan Alor night food court.

The only touristy thing we did was go to see the fountains and lights show in the KLCC park, which whilst a bit naff was also rather impressive, much more so than the lacklustre display in Versailles.

The locals thing we did was use Grab; a bit like Uber and got us around the city really easily and for peanuts.

Our brief encounter made us think that it is a bit like an earthy Singapore, and as I am not that keen on the sterile nature of Singapore, may favour KL as my stop-over of choice in the future.