Goin' Feral One Day At A Time: Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malaysia

Sunrise in Port Kelang was a sweet one this morning.

Today didn’t turn it quite as I’d visualised, that’s for sure. It was after 7pm (our ship was sailing at 6:30pm) and we were now flying along through Friday peak hour, weaving our way through the traffic chaos with millimetres to spare as the Toyota van valve bounced up near it’s red line the whole time. As is usual in my Feral life things weren’t meant to be this hectic, in fact leaving the ship on our bus this morning everything was pretty serene, even accounting for the morning traffic as we made our way from Port Kelang into Kuala Lumpur.

Our first stop today was the National Monument.

The National Monument in Kuala Lumpur.

Kaula Lumpur is a bloody big city so we were never going to even really scratch the surface in one day and today we didn’t even really try. We were happy with just seeing a couple of the highlights thinking that it’s almost certain that we’ll be back at some time. Our first stop was at the National Monument, a memorial that remembers and celebrates soldiers that fought and died during WW2 and the Communist Insurgency War. There is a lot to see here which includes some nice public art in the extensive, well manicured parklands. We didn’t have anywhere near enough time to check things properly, I’m thinking you could easily spend a couple of hours enjoying this spot, if you ever find yourself up here check out the view towards the city from near the National Monument.

The National Monument is is a peaceful and serene spot, as you would expect I suppose.

There are some good city views from the National Monument.

The National Monument commemorates the soldiers that fought and died in WW2.

The National Monument has some beautiful gardens to explore.

The beautifully manicured gardens at the National Monument. It would be nice to spend more time exploring this peaceful spot.

The National Monument Gardens.

After our short stop at the National monument we continued on to Merdeka Square. Merdeka Square is home to a lot of Kuala Lumpur’s old heritage listed buildings, a lot of them dating back to the mid 19 century when tin was discovered and settlers poured in. A lot of the old colonial buildings were designed by AC Norman who arrived here from England in 1897. The square features a large grass field which over the years has been used as a cricket pitch, parades and various civil celebrations. The square is also home to an impressive 95 metre flag pole topped of with a fluttering Malaysian flag.

Merdeka Square is also known as Independence Square.

They seem to like their flag poles here. This one is 95 metres high.

Sultan Abdul Samad Building at Werdeka Square.

The National Textile Museum.

Leaving Merdeka Square we headed towards the Petronas Twin Towers and this is where things went a little pear shaped today. Arriving at the towers we found out that the tour company didn’t actually have enough tickets for us all to get up the tower, basically they needed 6 of us to hang back and do the 4:30pm tour instead of the 3:15pm tour, and I’m guessing because we were some of the youngest on the tour Sam and I and two other younger (I’m talking in relative terms here!) couples were bumped. Now even though the cogs turn a little slowly in my Feral head I didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out that we would struggle to get back to the ship on time. With us being on an official Princess tour I was pretty certain that the ship wouldn’t leave without us but we were still going to be rolling the dice.

Our next stop was Petronas Twin Towers.

The upside (?) of our tour getting pushed back was that we had another hour to hang around the shops in the big mall below Petronas Twin Towers, the bad news was this was mostly all high end stuff. There is only so many Gucci handbags and Prada shoes that I can check out when I know that I’ll never be able to afford them and they don’t really match my Feral wardrobe anyway. Eventually the six refugees regrouped and we set off on our tour of the towers.

As it turned out we had a little more time to enjoy the gardens surrounding the twin towers.

After a quick induction we were whisked up to the Sky Bridge that connects the two towers. The Sky Bridge is a double decker pedestrain bridge that allows the Petronas people to access both towers (Petronas is a big Malaysian state owned Petrochemical company) and tourists to check out the view. The Sky Bridge is on the 41st floor and is 170 metres above the ground, the really freaky thing about being up here was that it isn’t actually anchored to either of the twin towers. Yes, the bridge is slotted into sleeves on both buildings which allow the buildings to sway in a out independent of the Sky Bridge.

Standing on the Sky Bridge it's a little disconcerting to know that neither side is actually anchored to a building.

The view from the 41st floor.

After 15 minutes or so at the Sky Bridge we were ushered into another lift and set off for the 370 metre high observation deck on the 86th floor. For 6 years after it was finished in 1998 the 452 metre Petronas Twin Towers were the highest structures in the world, now days the Petronas Twin Towers height has been surpassed by a hand full of other buildings although it remain the highest ‘twin’ structure in the world. All the statistics don’t really matter that much when you are standing in front of the full length glass windows though, with the sprawling suburbs of Kuala Lumpur spread out in every direction below, maybe it’s an optical illusion but it almost looks like you can see the curvature of the earth from up here.

The view from the 86th floor observation deck.

Kuala Lumpur from Petronas Twin Towers.

Looking out over Kuala Lumpur's sprawling suburbs.

Goin' Feral indeed!

Looking south in late afternoon from the observation deck at Petronas Twin Towers.

After a quick stop at a slightly lower level that had a little more information about the towers, as well as some expensive souvenirs, we were back on the ground, now the Feral type fun would begin! Meeting the owner of the tour company we were whisked out towards a flash black Mercedes Benz Van, which we walked past on our way to our old Toyota Hi Ace Van. Well at least the old Toyota had air con, and mirrors on the ceiling. Working seat belts probably would of been an advantage, but what do you do….

After leaving the observation deck we dropped down a couple of levels to the gift shop and information area.

The view from the gift shops was still pretty sweet.

It's mostly all high end stuff up here....well high end prices anyway!

I must be missing the gene that attracts people to this stuff.

Looking across to the other tower from the information area.

So off we ventured into the late Friday afternoon peak hour traffic, after managing to progress around a kilometre or two in the first 45 minutes of our journey our driver turned to us and asked us what time the ship was leaving, when we told him in about 15 minutes he just laughed and said ‘I think we’ll be late’. Once out of the CBD we trucked along various different freeways, all with our driver at maximum attack, the little Hi Ace sitting millimetres off the cars in front as our driver flashed his lights to get people out of the way. The really unsettling thing (well apart from dying in a fiery crash) was that the driver was getting phone call after phone call as we hurtled along. I’m sure most of those calls were from the tour company checking on our progress (or lack there of) back to the ship but flying along within touching distance of the vehicles around us at maximum speed with the driver shouting into his phone was a little sub optimal!

Maybe working seat belts might of been an advantage this afternoon.

The good news with the phone was the driver was also using it for navigation so I was able to look over his shoulder and count down the kilometres as we got closer to Port Kelang. After getting some air time on a couple of occasions as we crossed over bridges and assorted bumps, and safely avoiding a fiery crash, we arrived back at the cruise passenger terminal at Port Kelang to find our ship still there….ah, was there really any doubt? For a second or two it looked like our driver was going to drive us onto the pier and up the gang plank as has wasn’t for lifting his foot off the gas. Finally we came to a halt and clambered out of the van, with various Princess official urging us to hasten along I didn’t get to look back out our ride but I’m assuming that as soon as we were all out the wheels fell off and the thing self combusted! Not to worry, things for us were soon back under control as we headed up on deck to watch us sail away into the sunset from Port Kelang, after what had been a day that turned out a little more adventurous that I’d anticipated.

We made it...it looked like our driver was going to drive us up the gang plank at one stage!

The Dirt.
We visited Kuala Lumpur on a Princess Cruise today. Our day trip was a ship tour called Skybridge, Petronas Twin Tower & City Drive and it set us back just under $120 US. I've actually sent an email to Princess about our experience today suggesting that they may want to refine the the tour a little. I did get an email back but it was a fairly vanilla 'glad you got back safely, all's well that ends well' type of reply. I guess that Princess probably get lots of punters out to scam them, however as someone who has done more OH+S risk assessments in my life than I care to remember it was easy to see that there was the potential for things to go seriously wrong this afternoon.

Relevant Posts.
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, 2018.