3 June - Our day in Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is an hour and a half’s drive from Port Kelang where we docked. Port Kelang is very industrial – absolutely no shops or market stall here. Princess is running a shuttle to the nearest town 20 minutes away – cost is the usual $7 each/one way.


Princess Shore Excursion – Kuala Lumpur On our Own

We decided to do this tour because it will drop us into Kuala Lumpur near Petronas Towers but still give us an opportunity to do our own thing. And Petronas Towers was high on our list of things to see because it is the location where the film ”Entrapment” was made.

Kuala Lumpur began about 150 years ago and has been virtually carved out of the jungle with no real planning. It is so different from SIngapore There is a lot of high rise public housing. The whole area looked swampy. They had a huge flood in 2003 that resulted in a lot of damage and destruction. As a consequence a huge tunnel has been built to protect from flooding in the future. Kuala Lumpur is not like Singapore.

Our Guide told us we wouldn’t be able to go up the Towers because they only sell a limited number of tickets each day and people queue up from 4.30am in the morning. However when we got off the bus we walked into the Petronas Towers building to look for Money Exchange and somehow managed to find ourselves at the Information Desk. When we saw a queue of people we joined the queue. Ironically there were still tickets available for the 1.30pm lift ride to the Skybridge. Added bonus was that they were free.

The Petronas Tower Building is a huge shopping mall so we had a quick look there and then decided to go to Bikit Bitang – another shopping mall. The Guide had told us there was a short cut and to our surprise, we found we could walk more than half way there, through a tunnel. Another enquiry at the Convention Centre and we found ourselves in the Pavilion. This Shopping Mall was beautiful – full of Designer Shops. We wandered around here for a while and then decided to head back to Petronas to get some lunch before our visit to the Skybridge.

Another option for us was to go to the International Marketplace but we would have needed to catch the Hop On Hop Off bus or take a taxi so we just opted to do things nearby. I was sorry to have missed seeing the Blue Mosque but we just can’t do everything.

Skybridge visit was awesome – 44 floors up. The building is 88 storeys tall but most of the floors are occupied by offices.

There was some confusion at the end in trying to find our bus and the weather was hot and very very humid. But somehow everyone eventually turned up and we headed back to the Ship on time. Interesting to have seen KL but no real reason to go back.