Kicking around Kuala Lumpur

We checked out the big city over Chinese New Year. As we had seen, many KL residents had gone to other parts of the country to celebrate the holiday with family, so the city was much quieter and more traffic free than usual. We stayed in the central part of town called Kuala Lumpur City Center. This is where the Petronas Towers sit; they are accompanied by half a dozen malls (each totally packed with shoppers), a lovely outdoor park and many hotels and high rises.

We didn't get up early enough to score a pair of tickets to the sky bridge of the Petronas Towers, but the buildings were stunning nonetheless. They still have a shiny new quality to them, perhaps helped by the acres of marble flooring and polished steel adorning the ground floor.

Over G&Ts that night, we took in an excellent view of the towers themselves from the Sky Bar on the 33rd floor of the Trader's Hotel. The folds and curves of the buildings beautifully reflected the pinks and oranges of dusk. The bar itself was also cool, but with kids still splashing in the pool around which the bar is set, it was a little, um, wet and chlorinated. And we couldn't help but wonder how many drunk people might accidentally fall in that night.

We also explored a bit of the colonial area of town at Merdaka Square. A huge cricket pitch is flanked by the British colonists' Royal Selangor Club, an Anglican church, several moorish-style government buildings from the late 1800s, and a contemporary library. It was a spacious relief from the dense pack of the KLCC.

We'll head back to KL later this year to visit friends who are moving to the city this summer. It will be great to see more of the city, but I'm not sure we'll look forward to seeing what 'real' KL traffic and noise is like.