Singapore in Monsoon Season

I got to the bus stop early at Times Square in Kuala Lumpur and had time to stop off at Krispy Kreme while I waited. Have I mentioned recently how much I love Krispy Kreme? The donuts aren’t as good in Malaysia as they are in the States, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyway, I got on the bus to Singapore. The bus was actually pretty comfortable and spacey. I was able to write many of the posts for this site on the ride and the views were pretty good. The trip took about four hours into Singapore and then another hour-and-a-half to get through immigration and across town to the bus station. As we were approaching Singapore, it started to sprinkle. I should have seen this as the ominous omen that it was, but I thought nothing of it at the time. After a full-body cavity search (or something close to it) at immigration in Singapore, I made it to the bus station and took a short cab ride to my hotel in the now strengthening rain.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at my hotel because I was meeting a friend at my hotel to head out into town. I waited for about a half hour and by the time he arrived, the strengthening rain had turned into a Category 5 hurricane. The lightning was so close that I was afraid to sit near anything metallic, even indoors, and the rain was hitting the window in waves instead of drops. But my old friend arrived, along with a new friend – because a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met – and the three of us headed out. Immediately, I started wishing that I owned an umbrella.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to move around in Singapore without spending too much time outside because it is a city that is around 60% mall, much like Kuala Lumpur. I was hungry, so we went to an Asian food court in a nearby mall for dinner. I think I had teriyaki salmon and Tiger beer, but it could have been chicken now that I think about it. Not important. After dinner, we headed to the subway to go to another part of town, Orchard Street, to meet another old friend and another new friend and head to a bar.

Getting off of the subway at Orchard Street, at another mall, and looking around, the first thing to strike you is that Singapore is as decked out for Christmas as Kuala Lumpur. There were lights crisscrossing Orchard Street and on every storefront and ginormous Christmas trees everywhere. I made the comment that it looked like New York in December but felt like New York in July because it was still about 85 degrees and humid even though it was after 8 pm. Immediately outside of the mall/subway stop was a huge purple Christmas tree that was big enough to walk inside. We went in and I took some pictures and as you can see, purple seems to be the color of Christmas in Singapore. (Note: These were the only pictures that I took on my first night in Singapore, so the other photos for this entry are from the rest of my time in Singapore.)

We walked around for a while until we finally found a bar that would let us sit and drink without eating and I had a few beers. It was good to see old friends and meet new ones, but the night was without much excitement. We discussed meeting up a few nights later for some chili crabs and then I took a cab back to my hotel to plan the next day’s activities. More on those in the next post.

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.

Getting High in KL

As I mentioned in my last post, I stood in line all morning trying to get a ticket to go to the sky bridge and observation deck of the Petronas Towers. I got the ticket, but I had about six hours to kill until I could go up, so I had to find other things to do in Kuala Lumpur.

One thing I figured I could do was to go to Times Square. No, not that Times Square, but this one is pretty impressive in its own right. I had to go there to find where I needed to pick up my ticket and catch the bus for Singapore in a few days. Also, I had read that it was one of the five largest buildings in the world, based on floor space, and so I thought it would be a good idea to find where I needed to go before the last minute because getting lost in the building was a possibility.

Turns out I was pretty wise because the building was not simple to navigate. It had at least six floors of mall as well as various entrances to the monorail. I walked around for a while, broke down and went to the information desk, and eventually found where I needed to go to pick up my bus ticket.

Afterwards, I walked around KL some more and also took the monorail to other parts of town. Let me tell you the primary observation that I made in my travels in KL. Nobody celebrates Christmas like the Muslims. Okay, it’s not quite that simple, but Kuala Lumpur is a city that is full of malls. I mean they are everywhere. On pretty much every corner is one of the largest buildings that I’ve ever seen and inside those buildings are six to eight floors of mall. And what do malls want you to do this time of year? Yup, buy Christmas presents. It doesn’t matter that Malaysia is a Muslim country; Malaysia’s malls want you to spend money on Christmas presents. I have never in my life seen a city so dedicated to Christmas decorations. (Though, to be fair, in a few days I learned that Singapore was pretty damn close.)

Finally, it was time to head to the Petronas Towers. I spent about an hour strolling through its . . . wait for it . . . mall. Then I went to the tourist section and we went up to the sky bridge. The sky bridge of the Petronas Towers connects the two towers at the 41^st floor. It’s a pretty cool perspective of the buildings and of the city, but to be perfectly honest, the views were a little underwhelming. They are limited in that they allow you only to look out in the directions that the sky bridge faces. Much of what you can see is obscured by the towers themselves. It was a worthwhile trip, but not tremendous.

Following the trip to the sky bridge, we went to the observation deck on the 86^th floor. The views from this height were much more impressive. Still, because of the metal railings and the way the windows were set up, there still were many obstructions keeping me from getting a great view of the city. Before I made the trip, several people told me that if I had a choice between visiting the Petronas Towers and the KL Tower, I should choose the KL Tower. It turns out that those people were correct, though it didn’t really matter because I didn’t need a choice. I had the opportunity to do both and I’ll talk about the KL Tower in the next entry.

Business Class to Kuala Lumpur

On Monday, it was time for me to finally get out of town. My flight wasn’t until 4:20 pm, so I had time to enjoy another wonderful buffet breakfast in my hotel in Bangkok and to walk around the city for some last minute Thai food and atmosphere.

Around noon, I checked out of my hotel and hopped in a cab to the airport. This was the first time that I had flown from one foreign airport to another, not counting connection flights, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. I was flying Lufthansa Airlines, which also was new to me. I got to the airport early and the Lufthansa station wasn’t set up yet, so I sat around in the back and waited. When it did get set up, it was completely chaotic, not exactly what I was expecting from a German airline, and I got in line at the back of something that appeared to be a line to one of the agents. After about two minutes of standing there, I was pulled out of line by an airline employee who told me that I could move to a different line, which only had two people in it. Beautiful. And it turned out that it was the business class line and when I got to the counter, I was upgraded to business class. Beautiful. It was only a two-hour flight, but I still enjoyed it. It was kind of odd being an American on a flight from Thailand to Malaysia and being spoken to by the flight attendants in German, but, you know, whatever.

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at around nine and hopped on the train that leads from the airport to the main train station in the city. That took a little under a half hour and from there I took a cab to my hotel. I walked around the area a bit and got some dinner at an Italian restaurant next to the hotel and called it a night.

I only had two full days in Kuala Lumpur and the only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to go up the Petronas Towers and the KL Tower. I was told that the trip up the KL Tower was better, but I’ve been a fan of the Petronas Towers for a decade and really wanted to do that trip, so that was what took up most of my first day.

To go up the Petronas Towers, you need to get in line early in the morning to get tickets. They start selling tickets at around 9:00 am and I arrived at the towers at 8:20 am. It was good that I arrived when I did because by 8:40 am, they had stopped letting people in line because they had already reached capacity. I didn’t get my ticket until around 10:30 am, so it was a long time in line, and when I did I had a choice for the 3RM ticket to the sky bridge or the 30RM (about US$10) for the trip to the sky bridge on the 41^st floor and the observation deck on the 86^th floor. (I also had an option of paying about 300RM for a trip to the sky bridge, the observation deck, and dinner on the 87^th floor, but I wasn’t paying an extra US$90 for dinner, especially in a town as cheap as Kuala Lumpur.) My ticket didn’t allow me entry until 5:00 pm, so I still had some time to kill in KL We’ll get to that and the trip to the top of the world in the next entry.