KL 5 of 5: Miscellaneous

At one point we took a taxi to a giant craft store (another Spotlight store) located in Ampung Point. We were repeatedly urged to only use metered taxis, not taxis using negotiated rates.  At the hotel you would go to a counter, pay a small fee and they would get you a cab. That meant they handed you your receipt and pointed 10 feet away to a waiting cab. In other places, like at the airport, you prepaid the whole amount, got a receipt then went outside to find a cab. Anyway, we got to the Spotlight. It was more difficult to find a metered taxi on our return, but we managed and back to the hotel we went. We were able to chat with the taxi driver in a combination of English, Malay and Bahasa Indonesian. There is a lot of cross over between Malay and Bahasa Indonesian. One of the questions he asked us was where we were from. We always say Jakarta which gets a puzzled look. We explain that we live in Jakarta. We may volunteer that we are originally from the US or wait until they ask.

At Spotlight I spent some time staring at the cross stitch department so I would have some idea as to what might be available. I decided on photographic documentaton. They had a lot of stuff—probably everything I might want or need.

We didn't leave empty handed. We bought some jersey fabric and some denim,some thread and some yarn (bits and bobs according to my friend from New Zealand).

Are you wondering about KL currency? It's called Ringgit (RM). The word ringgit means "jagged" in Malay, referring to the jagged edges of Spanish silver dollars circulated in 16th and 17th centuries.
The hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia so it adorns the bills. (At the time of writing, there are 3.57 RM to 1 USD).The feel of the bills is in between the 100% paper feeling Rupiah and the plastic feeling Singapore Dollar.

We also saw giant hibiscus flowers on light poles along a major roadway. 

Lastly, I tried aloe vera yogurt for the first time. Pretty good. Tastes lemony.

KL 4 of 5: Around Town and to the Airport

KL has a Hop On/Hop Off Bus program. You buy your ticket and for 24 hours from purchase, you can get on and off the buses. They make a large loop. They do stop running at 8 pm and restart in the early morning so you can use the ticket for parts of 2 days if you time your ticket purchase correctly. We bought our tickets mid morning on the second day of our visit. Had we known how the tickets work, we might have changed our itinerary a little. It meant even though we could have used the tickets again the next day, we were flying out and didn't have time. The bus stops all had the same signage and they were numbered so it made them pretty easy to find. We even got a map! You are supposed to be able to get discount entry into some of the places on the route. We were headed to the Bird Park but the guy was already sold out of Bird Park discounted tickets. He gave us a larger map instead.

We took a taxi the first day to the Aquarium. From there we walked through a giant tunnel to the famous Petronas Twin Towers and the Suria KLCC Mall at it's base.

As I mentioned before, this structure can be seen from everywhere. The towers, along with the KL Tower, dominate the landscape. The Petronas Towers were the world's largest buildings from 1998-2004. Height is 1483 ft (452 m), 88 stories. 567 ft (170 m) on the 43rd floor.The bridge is 58.4 m long. There are 33,000 stainless steel panels and 55,000 glass panels.

The Suria KLCC Mall is a fancy, 5-story mall with mostly designer stores. We managed to find a place for lunch.

The other tall structure in KL is the KL Tower (Menara KL). It appears taller than the Petronas Twin Towers because it sits on a hill. The KL Tower height is 1381 ft (421 m) and there is a restaurant 282 meters up. In this photo you see the KL Tower in the foreground and the Petronas Towers in the distance.

A few more "around town shots" or shots on way to the airport on our last day. The airport was about 60 km from the city so it took a while. I must point out that when entering KL, we found the signage lacking in terms of where to go for customs, immigration, taxi service, etc. On the outbound leg, there was more useful signage.

One of the stops on the Hop On/Hop Off was the Palace. You can't go in the enormous compound, but a lot of people enjoy just standing outside the gate and looking in.

Here are a few of the fast food establishments that have managed their way across the globe to Malayasia.

KL 3 of 5: Hotel Views and Photos

The hotel was very nice and had very good service. We had to borrow two adapters. We have only US to European adapters and in KL they use British plugs. The only thing we own with a British plug is my hair dryer (for which we had to buy a British to European adapter). Just a few photos taken from our hotel room and/or from the lounge area.

While the lanes on the right ( out of downtown) seem empty, the inbound lanes that night were jammed!

It says Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur in the middle of this big buffer.

 

 From the hotel we could also see the Birdpark- it's where the large netted areas on the right side of the greenspace.

A great panoramic shot from the hotel:

 They had beautiful flower arrangements all over the hotel. Here are just two:

 

KL 2 of 5: The Bird Park

This place was really amazing. It's 21 acres! It is the largest walk through aviary in the world and is divided into several zones. Really good signage. Many of the birds are free range, but some are in smaller enclosures within the giant aviary. With so many natural areas, including natural water features, we were able to observe natural feeding behaviors in many species, especially with the water/shore birds. Because of the size there was a lot of walking and many signs indicating "slippery when wet" but we had no issues as it wasn't raining. We even spotted a 3-foot monitor lizard in the Bird Park.

Just some of the birds here include: hornbills, flamingos, parrots, cockatoos, storks, pheasants, mynahs, pigeons, macaws, ducks, waterhens... the list goes on.

Cattle egret

Pigeon feeding station

One could make an argument that this peacock was animatronic. I simply asked him to turn around and he prompted turned for the photo.

Wood stork

Black-crowned night heron

The tall KL Tower and Petronas Twin Towers can be seen from everywhere in KL. This is a shot from inside the Bird Park.

Eclectus parrot

We had a request for a selfie so we tried. This isn't easy, but in case you didn't believe we were really here, hope this helps! Or does it?

KL 1 of 5: Intro and the Aquarium

We recently spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I should point out that here Kuala Lumpur is referred to as KL. I kept hearing people discuss KL but I at first I assumed it was part of Indonesia, and would turn out to be spelled Keyelle or similar. Finally someone used Kuala Lumpur and KL in the same sentence and the light bulb went on in my head. I finally got it! When we were looking for a short get-away, we decided on KL. KL is an easy 1.5 hour flight from Jakarta.

How did we get there? B was in Singapore for a meeting earlier in the week. The day B flew back here, Oky brought me to the airport about the same time B was to land. As B exited Immigration and Customs he called me. We were just pulling in to park. When Oky found a spot, he unbuckled his seatbelt and hopped out of the car saying he was going to move a car. I assumed he was going to ask the driver to move a car that was parked in the driving lane and was partially blocking the spot he wanted. I was sooooo wrong. When Oky said he was going to move the car, that's what he meant. As I looked out, he walked to the back of the car and pushed it forward to clear the parking spot. We parked and walked towards the airport. Oky and I met B, he handed Oky his Singapore suitcase and took the KL bag we had brought with us. Then we headed into the airport and Oky headed back to the apartment to leave the suitcase with Bu Tin.  When we got home, Tin had unpacked B's suitcase, done the laundry and folded and put everything away.

On to KL.

One of our stops was the KL Aquarium. It was very nice and had good signage. There were a lot of staff photographers wanting to stage us in front of backgrounds or blue screens but we managed to evade them all. A lot of the creatures we'd seen before, but there were new things and interesting exhibits.

Here are just a few of the photos we took. Cute piranha tank.

A major focus of this aquarium was sharks. This did include educational information about not eating shark fin soup, etc., with a strong conservation message. It is a delicacy in SE Asia. But they also had the traditional shark stuff.

Shark species exhibited here included sand tiger shark, tawny nurse shark, white-tip reef shark, shovelnose ray (also known as guitarfish)- pictured above. There was a very slow moving walk through shark tunnel but the lighting made it really difficult to get good photos.

Other areas included a rocky shore touch pool, an electric zone with  electric eels, electric catfish and elephant nose fish and a stream exhibit which included an Asian small-clawed otter area. This exhibit was lifted up and under the exhibit you could crawl around and pop up into acrylic domes right in the middle of the exhibit. Guess who tried it out?

One of my favorite spots was the Malaysian Deep Forest. The backgrounds painted on the walls were gorgeous! I'd love to paint something like this on one of my office walls...

 This was the cutest cartoon rendition of a lionfish I've ever seen:

A fun tube tank!

They had an area discussing the extinct megaladon shark (I should point out there are some people who think they are not quite yet extinct). Just a little taxonomy: sharks are in the cartilagenous fish class Chondrichthyes, in the subclass Elasmobranchi. The megalodon lived 15.9 to 2.6 million years ago (unless you believe they are still around). There isn't a lot of fossil evidence because they are mostly built of cartilage. Only teeth and a few central vertebrae have been found. The teeth can be 7 inches in height. Max length might be 59 feet or even larger. Some numbers I've seen give these examples: a 52 foot long megalodon might have weighed 48 metric tons; a 67 foot megalodon might have hit 103 metric tons. The megalodon is believed to have resembled a great white, only stockier, but the megalodon potentially could have swallowed a great white whole.B gives a size comparison.

McDonald's Drive Thru

I admit we have stopped at a couple of McDonald's establishments here since our arrival. In all cases we simply needed something to drink and there are so many McDonald's here they are readily available and much cheaper than getting a drink at Starbucks, for example.

Once again after visiting the gas station we were thirsty and the McDonald's was handy. Even though McDonald's delivers here, they still have a drive-thru. The sign says: Hungry but busy? Telephone McDelivery.

 We got a coke for each of us ( they don't sell diet at McDonald's here). As often happens in the US, the window lady handed us the wrong order: a bag of food and one drink. She really didn't want to listen that this wasn't our order but we managed to convince her and we got our 3 cokes and went on our way.