Kuala Lumpur in a nut shell

Taken at the Pavillion Mall

According to one of my close friends and colleague, it is the dream of every Chinese citizen to travel to 'SingMaThai'. Having already been to Singapore and Thailand, with Malaysia, a non-Chinese's unknown dream is completed. However, while most normal people travel to Malaysia for a vacation, I, on the other hand, had to present a paper at a gender conference being held there. To give it a more vacay feel, I requested mom to come along and spend some (quality) time with me.

With the Gender and Women Studies (GWS) 2019 Conference being held in Kuala Lumpur for 2 out of 3 days of my stay, I sadly barely got the chance to explore in and around Kuala Lumpur much. So, this blog post is going to be more of me sharing my experience than sharing much about the place.

(i) Airline Recommendation

If you are ever traveling from Japan to Malaysia and you are looking for a cheap but really good airline, I highly recommend Vietnam Airlines. The timing of the flights are great, the food and service are really good and the free 40 kgs check-in baggage is the perfect cherry on the cake.

(ii) Preliminary planning before travel

When I plan my travel, I usually check into finances, communications, transportation, and safety of the country. I plan to cover all that in another blog post, but I'll give you an idea into some of the preliminary planning that I did.

I am not a person who likes to convert or carry too much cash. My credit card is the next important thing to my passport for any of my international travels. Other than this, I always look into transportation. I usually google stuff like- ' Cab fares in (country name), bus convenience, or rental cars'. During one of the searches, I stumbled upon the app ' GRAB' which they use instead of UBER. International roaming is way too expensive and sim cards are not always available at the airport. Also, you need a phone number to register yourself with the app. So I downloaded the app before leaving Japan and registered myself using my Japanese number (even though GRAB does not work in Japan). This app was a savior. You do not need an active Malaysian phone number to contact the driver, all you need is a wifi connection and you are all set. I added my credit card for payments to make it easier for me in submitting payment receipts to the university.

The GRAB app

(iii) Places Visited

Taken the fact that I could not travel around much, I was lucky enough to cover the main touristy places.

- Petaling Street (China Town)

- The Petronas Towers ( The twin towers)

- The Batu Caves

Kuala Lumpur runs on a mixed population. The chances of you bumping into a Malay-Chinese or a Malay -Indian is so high that you will just not feel out of place if you are Chinese or Indian. On the first day, we decided to go and walk around China town. The China town in Kuala Lumpur is also known as a bargainers paradise, you will find a replicate of almost every brand available on these streets. However along with this, like Daiso, there are small little no brand shops that sell sunglasses, junk jewelry, and small little tidbits for dirt cheap prices. However more than shopping for stuff, we landed up shopping for fruits. The fruits looked so good and were so cheap (in comparison to Japan), that we couldn't help ourselves. After this, we went in search of food. It was hot and all we wanted was an air-conditioned room with good Chinese food. Now, this was a difficult mission. We hardly could find one and settled for JW Marriott - 'Shanghai' for Chinese food.

Mom at the entrance of Petaling Street

On Day 2, we decided to go and pay The Petronas towers a visit. Our conference finished around 5 pm and we quickly changed, freshened up and left. We wished to see the Petronas towers with and without daylight. The moment you reach, you will find these men who will either be selling a particular type of lens to you or who will volunteer to click pictures for you. I recommend that you buy the lens if you wish to capture moments on your smartphone. They will initially make you want to pay a lot but you can haggle with them and bring it down. I paid around 15 USD.

The Petronas towers during the day

After clicking some pictures outside, we decided to go all the way up. It's around 30 USD to go to the observation deck. Now, these tickets can be bought way before you go, however, we thought it wasn't required but boy, were we wrong! The tickets were sold out for the day and we sadly couldn't make it. However, shopping, food, and drinks at the KLCC mall made up for all the disappointment.

The Petronas Towers at night

On the last day of our trip, we went to the Batu Caves. The caves were a 30-minute drive for us from the city. This beautiful monument is both a natural and man-made wonder. It was hot and we reached mid-day which was very wrong timing, but well packing and checking out took up a lot of our time. The temples at the foot of the caves reminded me so much of Indian temples. The resemblance was uncanny. Adding to the Indian element, were the monkeys and coconut sellers.

Beating the heat in every way

What makes the Batu caves so popular are its 272 colorful steps. It makes it all so perfect for instaworthy pictures. Note that there is a particular dress code for visiting the Batu caves, I recommend pants or jeans. In case, your clothing doesn't pass their dress code you may rent clothes for around 2USD. I chose to wear a maxi dress, which was a bad bad bad idea. It made it difficult for me to climb and also once you reach the top, the floors are a little wet, which made it much worse.

The Batu Caves
Dress: ZARA

Coconut water at Batu Caves

After the caves, we ate lunch at another Chinese restaurant and moved towards the airport.

All in all, Kuala Lumpur is a multicultural, modern and at the same time a beautiful traditional city. Definitely, the time spent was not enough and I hope I get another chance to visit Malaysia soon again, however this time as a vacation.

Other moments from the trip: