Exploring KL, as quickly as possible

I woke up to a text from a new friend from the previous night, asking if I wanted to join her for breakfast. Excited to explore the city, and having a hard time finding excuses to stay in bed, I joined her at a small cafe nearby. Enticed by the promise of seasonal fruit, we both ordered chia-yogurt puddings. Not quite as exotic as I had been hoping, they arrived adorned with apple banana, and pomegranate seeds. Of course, it was still quite tasty but seemed very much like something I could have at home. From the cafe, we started our day’s exploration by walking to a nearby eco-park, located on a mountainside covered in the undisturbed forest right in the middle of the city. There were many paths winding through the park, but the star attraction seemed to be a set of cable bridges hanging through the canopy. With startling views juxtaposing the massive tropical trees with the imposing skyscrapers just outside of the protected area, it was an absolutely gorgeous walk. Another highlight of the park was the bamboo walk, featuring a couple of bamboo groves far bigger than I have ever seen, featuring towering stalks too thick to wrap my hands around and stretching up into the canopy with all of the trees. The park had another entrance/exit located at the top of the hill, right near the base of the KL Tower, an unmistakable local landmark. After seeing our fill of the beautiful forest, we exited and decided to purchase tickets to the viewing area near the top (as far as the public is allowed to ascend). After a remarkably fast elevator ride which had me feeling the pressure change in my ears, we stepped out onto a large circular balcony with views all over the city. Seeing the urban sprawl stretch out far beyond where I could see made me appreciate the size of Kuala Lumpur in a totally new way. It also provided a wonderful view of two other famous buildings, the Petronas Twin Towers, and the almost-complete Merdeka 118, which I learned is now the second tallest building in the world. The KL Tower even had a glass viewing box, where I could step out over the massive drop below me and feel my stomach lurch with dread. Of course, this wasn’t enough to stop me from getting a nice photo lounging over the deadly drop!

Having had enough of the views from the top, we eventually descended back down to earth and began a trek towards the National Mosque and Gardens, a large complex with all sorts of attractions for tourists and locals. Impressive even from afar, as we approached we decided to take a look around the Mosque itself, despite having to (getting to?) wear some fancy purple robes that barely got down to my shins. My companion was required to wear the hood up the entire time, covering her hair, and we even saw another woman with a head scarf (more the European variety, not a full head covering) get stopped and told to wear a robe, as some of her hair was visible coming out of the back. After jumping through the necessary cultural hoops (shoes off as well of course), we entered the mosque complex and began to look around. This mosque was even more ornate than the mosque from yesterday with a beautiful blue geometric dome covering the center of the complex. There were numerous beautiful fountains, with the whole walking space polished smooth, and covered by roofs to protect from the heat of the sun. Under the blue roof was the largest prayer room, with a small area for tourists to look in. The round room was quiet and dotted by the occasional believer deep in their prayers. I came away quite impressed by the opulence and the beautiful geometric style of the complex, I suppose unsurprising given that Malaysia is a Muslim country, and of course, takes pride and an active role in maintaining beautiful centers of worship.

After exiting the mosque, returning the robes, and donning our shoes, we walked for some time, deep into the surrounding gardens. At this point, I started to feel acutely like I hadn’t budgeted nearly enough time in Malaysia or even Kuala Lumpur. The gardens contained the National Islamic Art Museum (featuring lots more besides just Islamic Art as well), the world’s largest enclosed bird sanctuary, a sculpture garden, the National Monument, a deer park, and a butterfly park, to name a few. It was already getting unfortunately late, so we decided on the butterfly park as it seemed unlikely that we’d get to see it all and the butterflies were fairly close. It quickly became clear that this was a good decision, as the butterfly park was a beautifully curated and remarkably dense section of forests, with butterflies fluttering in every direction. There were several platters filled with hibiscus blossoms and aging fruit beckoning the butterflies to come and eat. Though many were difficult to photograph, or even get a good look at, the ones I did were all brilliantly colored and varied, including some that I think are the biggest I’ve ever seen, weighing down branches like small birds. After a couple of laps around the garden admiring the landscaping and its inhabitants, we walked towards the exit where I was impressed to find even more bugs. A whole room was filled with separate enclosures for massive black beetles; Stag, Rhinoceros, and Hercules beetles were all there, looking impressively big and weighty. There were scorpions and massive grasshoppers bigger than my hand. They had signs teaching about the bugs and their life cycles, and a little sad to see, an incredible collection of dead bugs, pinned and cataloged. If the bugs were killed for these collections, as I presume they were, at the very least I’m glad they’re on display and available for the public to see. After working our way through the bugs and obligatory gift shop, it was getting fairly late and we were both hungry, so we made our way back towards the hostel looking for some food along the way.

We stumbled upon a food truck selling some very unusual corn dog varieties, and hoping to tide myself over until the food markets later in the day, I tried the variety with cheese on the inside, potato fries on the outside, and all sorts of sauce. Pretty underwhelming, but conceptually interesting, this definitely satisfied my appetite for the time being. This bought enough time to make it back to the hostel, clean up, and rally quite a few others for the coming night out, complete with more walking around the city. We started off in the local Chinatown, and had a nice dinner there. Then we walked into a much fancier part of town in order to explore and see the Saloma Link, a famous bridge that can light up with all sorts of different patterns and colors. We explored for a little longer, but ultimately caught the light rail back to the hostel, calling it an early night with plans of journeying to the famous Batu Caves early the next morning.