As I did not want to stay the whole day in my hotel room, I discovered the city. Using the monorail is a good way to do this as it passes the most points of interests and although the MRT is an easy and cheap means of transportation. The Petronas Twin Towers and the KLCC shopping mall are worth a visit.
You have to get a ticket for the ‘skybridge’ between the towers in the basement of the main entrance. Tickets are available on and after 9.00 am but I get a ticket at 10.30 a.m. for a tour at noon. It depends a little bit of the number of tourist in the city, during high season it could be true, but in the other time tickets are available between 9.00 am and 11.30 am.
If it worth a visit? I would say yes, as you have a good view to the city centre of Kuala Lumpur, but you could not reach the top of the building. You are member of a group and can spend 15 minutes on the skybridge; then your group are called to leave the skybridge. As it is free of charge you do not have to lose money ….
KL Tower is on Bukit Nanas, is quite a little walk (10 minutes) from the nearest Monorail station. Bukit Nanas is a small hill and on the top is the KL Tower. From the bottom of the hill a shuttle bus is available, but you could walk it and get some nice views to KL.
The observation desk it the lowest levels and you have an audioguide. It seems that this is not obligatory as I asked for only observation desk but was told there was only the package including the autoguide tour.
Unfortunately it was foggy / misty but the view to the city KL was okay, the parts outside the city were indeed barely visible. You could easily locate the other points of interests and get a sight of the city with its small buildings beside high-rise buildings.
On my way to Merdeka Square with the famous Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad Building I visited the Muzium Telekom which offers a nice view in the development of the Malaysian telecommunication system, unfortunately some parts of the exhibition were out of order, but the entrance was free. Also it is very interesting, as the telecommunication system developed much faster than the system in Europe.
The National History Museum at Merdeka Square is worth a visit if you are interested in the history of Malaysia. It contains also the time before the colonial time as well as the time before and after Second World War and the time Malaysia became independence. If you have also visited the History Museum in Singapore (in the moment it is closed) a visit in this museum gives you a good overview of the development of this region of the
world.
Central Market is some sort of big souvenir shop in an “art deco building”, this is at least the description of the building style in the guide book by the Tourism Office. If you have a look at the building you will see, that there is not much sort of typical “art deco style”, but if you are looking for souvenirs you should walk through the market and the stalls in the street beside. Chinatown is also just a few blocks away, if you need to buy some fakes (sidenote, the quality of the watches differ from dealer
to dealer, the quality of the clothes is worse and more expensive than the fakes I got in Cambodia for example, DVD are available, but I did not buy any as the films I was looking for were not available).
The Islamic Arts Museum near the National Mosque (Masjid Negara) offers a manifold insight (in the history) of the Islam in Asia, some nice models of mosques of China and the Arab are also visible as artefacts of Islamic World in China, India and Malaysia such as paintings, coins, frit ware.
Lake Garden is a park with a lake in some small valley facing the Sentral Station with the new Le Meridien and Hilton Hotel, but a little bit difficult to reach from there as there is no pedestrian crossing.