Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Although we docked in Port Klang, over an hour away from Kuala Lumpur, that is where we spent our day today. It was HOT, as expected, but not quite as hot as it could have been, for which we were thankful. Our impressions of the KL area of Malaysia were fairly good. We found it to be, as the guide continually said, a developing country. There were older, single story houses still being used but by far the majority of housing was in very tall buildings. There were very dirty and run down areas but far more clean and beautiful ones.

It’s not as modern or as clean everywhere or as put together as Singapore but it is doing very well as the pictures will show. KL seems to have a close relationship with Singapore in that they export many agricultural products to Singapore who grows nothing and Malaysia claims to have a brain drain to Singapore.

As was true in the other countries we have recently seen, Malaysia has a lot of beautiful architecture from times past mixed in with the modern buildings and they are keeping it in good shape.

Some of the older areas have been adopted by the immigrants and look like a totally different country.

And some of the more rural areas definitely didn’t have the same standards as the city restaurant where we had a fabulous Malaysian lunch. I walked through this cafe and absolutely would not have eaten there.

For a “developing” country we were impressed with the highway system, the traffic flow and of course, the toll booths.

Our trip today took us to the National Monument honoring those who died in the Communist insurgency of the 1950s.

We also stared up at the Petronas, the world’s tallest twin towers and got a remarkably quick ride up to the observation deck of the needle-like KL communications tower from which we had great views of all of the city.

As I said, Malaysia is a developing country and Kuala Lumpur is certainly a quickly developing city. This old mosque with today’s financial district in the background, sits at the River of Life where KL, which means “where two muddy rivers come together”, supposedly began.