Getting Even Higher in KL

I reached my final full day in Kuala Lumpur, I only had a few of them, and I still hadn’t gotten as high as I wanted to get. Actually, I’m not sure I could have gotten any higher than the Petronas Towers, but because it is built on a hill, I’ve heard the view from the KL Tower is actually higher than those from the Petronas Towers. And since everybody had told me about the great views, I decided to check it out for myself.

Like my original trip to the Petronas Towers, I was able to walk from my hotel to the KL Tower. Also like the Petronas Towers, at times it completely disappeared from view. You’d thing that some of the largest structures in the world would be able to be seen from everywhere in the city, but like New York, Kuala Lumpur is an extremely tall city and giant buildings often get obscured by other large buildings.

Anyway, getting to the KL Tower was easy enough. I could tell you all of the statistics about the KL Tower, but I’ll just leave it by saying that it is one of the world’s largest observation towers. The KL Tower sits on top of a hill and upon arrival at the site, I took the free shuttle bus to the top of the hill and the entrance to the KL Tower. I forget how much the ticket cost, but it was fairly inexpensive. More importantly, unlike the Petronas Towers, there was no line required to purchase the ticket and the ticket didn’t require me to come back in order to go up to the observation deck; that privilege was bestowed immediately.

I took the elevator to the observation deck and immediately saw that what everybody had told me – that the views from the KL Tower completely trumped those from the Petronas Towers – was absolutely true. From the observation deck of the KL Tower, you get a complete 360-degree view of Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding area. The trip to the top also comes with a free audio guide that leads you to twelve observation posts and explains what you are looking at as you peer out the windows. If there is any problem, it is that the audio guide appears to get outdated quickly because of all of the construction that continues to take place in Kuala Lumpur. The views were truly breathtaking and this trip turned out to be my primary highlight in KL.

My final highlight in KL came later that night when I went to dinner. A few friends of mine had been to KL a few months earlier and told me about a tapas restaurant that was close to the hotel in which they stayed. I like tapas and I trusted my friends, so I went to the place for dinner on my final night in KL. I was not disappointed.

The place was called Pinchoa and even though it wasn’t the best tapas restaurant at which I had ever eaten, I did live in Madrid for a few months after all, it was the best I’ve ever had outside of Spain and better than some at which I had eaten in Spain. I don’t remember everything I tried, but I did order the usual suspects – Patatas Bravas and Tortilla Española, as well as some jamon y chorizo-infused items. All were tremendous. I also received a free sample of the jamon iberico from the owner, who is from Barcelona, and we sat for a few drinks and talked about Spain and the restaurant and Malaysia. It was a really good time and really good food and it left me with a great final impression of Kuala Lumpur. The next stop on the Sheldon train was Singapore and we’ll pick up there next time.