Jalan Bukit Bintang

Jalan Bukit Bintang is probably the most well know of all the streets in Kuala Lumpur especially with the foreign tourists..The nearest comparison that I can think of would probably be M.G. Road in Bangalore. The street has nice walkway and is lined up with quite a few shopping malls. What's up with Kuala Lumpur and shopping malls anyways? There seem to be more number of shops here than the number of people visiting them..This city is definitely a shopper's paradise..There are quite a few trendy restaurants on the street too which made it all the more easy for us to have our dinner..

Petaling street

The only reason why I wanted to go to Petaling street was because of the fact that it was rated second among 'Things to do' on the Yahoo travel website (right after petronas towers)..Having nothing else to do today, I figured I will check out the place..It took about 20 mins to reach the place from my hotel..The cab driver seemed to be honest as he didn't really ask me for an outrageous amount..(I guess i looked like any other Indian guy settled in Malaysia)..

Petaling street is known for its shops selling knock off clothing, watches etc...Its actually not too different from the Fashion street in Mumbai..There were quite a few shops selling all kinds of stuff..and a lot of foreigh tourists checking out the latest european branded clothing..I just walked around the street for a while, bought a couple of souveniers and left the place. I decided to walk around the street and see if there is anything of interest..As I walked by, I could notice that there are a lot of indians living there and really I did not get any strange glances (as I am so used to in Korea) from the malaysians..I walked through the chinatown area and after a little while found the monorail station..Since I've never really taken the monrail in KL, I thought I'd give it a try..I was in jalan Bukit Bintang in no time.

Petronas towers

We were supposed to stay in Malaysia for only two weeks, so we have only one weekend to really see the place. All three of us unanimously voted for Petronas towers to be our first place of visit (Frankly, we didn't really know of too many places of interest here).

Although I've seen the towers from my hotel room every single day since i came here, the first look from upclose really took me by surprise..Its a lot bigger than anything that I've imagined..The first few floors are quite big and house huge shopping complexes (Of course!!!). I was pretty ager to reach the top of the building as early as possible, so we went into the building to find out a way to get to the top only to find out that there is a 4 hr wait to go up and what's more, we can only go half way up the towers..This was huge disappointment for me as I was really hoping to go to the top most floor (I was even ready to climb up the spire on top of the buildinig if they let me do it ;-). We had to take some kind of token which had the time stamped on it..We were asked to come back at that time in order to ride up the building. Since we had about 4 hrs, we decided to see something else..and since we came to see heights we thought we might as well go to the Menara tower. Menara Tower is a telecom tower which is quite close to the Petronas towers and is supposed to offer good views of the petronas towers...We walked for about 15 mins before we arrived at the tower (also called KL tower). There is a entry fee to go to the top of the tower..and also staff to explain you the usual boring stuff like the speed of the elevator (yawn!!!!), angle of inclination and other technical specifications :-). We went up the tower to the public observation platform and looked around the city..We could pretty much see the entire city from up there and the has some pretty good views of the Petronas towers..

http://www.menarakl.com.my/thetower.html

Our lunch was at a place called the 'Rum jungle' which seemed more like a bar with nothing much except some greasy food.

We got back to the towers and it was our time to go up..Surprisingly, there is no entry fee to go up the Petronas towers. Visitors are only allowed to go upto the bridge that connects both the buildings and which is approximately half way up the towers..We spent about half an hour up there before it was time for us to go back..On our way back we decided to check out the shopping complex inside the towers..There is pretty much every brand out there that one can think of..There was some kind of fashion show being staged in the middle of the main building that made us stop for a while..