Malaysia: Christmas in Kuala Lumpur

Where To Go Next By I&P
Jan 5, 2023
3 min read

Because of Christmas, all KTM trains were pretty booked up so we had to take a very early train to Kuala Lumpur (KL for short) from Ipoh for 26 MYR/pax. The train was pretty comfortable and, good news though, no sign of cockroaches 😊 (we had an extremely bad experience on a night train in Thailand). But it was cold and it had screens that at times played music and you couldn't shut them off, and 3h of that was annoying. Luckily we had our headphones and Netflix!

The moment we arrived in KL, we immediately saw that we were not in the same category of cities that we had been before. The main train station, KL Sentral, is huge and is the key point of 4 rail companies: KLIA, KTM intercity train, KTM Komuter and LRT - we will come back to them later - take notes, there is a quizz at the end!

As we exited the train station, we were marveled by the tall buildings and skyscrapers, a SkyTrain, actual traffic lights (not always respected though), of course the Petronas Twin towers and the Menara tower.

But we can still find street markets and vendors, smaller houses, metal sheet stalls, and a lot of parks sometimes resembling more a small jungle.

KL is extremely well served in terms of transportation with many cheap trains and buses (just 1 to 2 MYR for each trip).

We talked about the KTM intercity train that connects the major cities, but you also have the KTM Komuter that serves the suburbs, the KLIA which is an express train to the airport, and the LRT which is the metro. The fare for all those lines, and also the buses, can be paid with a Touch N Go card bought almost everywhere for 25 MYR (5 for the card itself and 20 as credit). The card can be topped up at any 7-eleven or gas station, gives access to a fare discount (around 10%, we think), and can be used in some stores as well. It was then so much easier to move around within the city!

First stop for us was the Petronas towers and the KLCC park. Those towers were once the tallest in the world until 2004 when Taipei 101 was finished, but they are still the highest twin towers in the world as of 2022, with a height of 452m. As you stand in front of them, they seem really impressive, just as much as the Burj Khalifa, because of the width of the two towers combined.

They are also extremely well lit at night. Though you could not see Catherine Zeta Jones up in the air like in the movie "Entrapment", you could certainly see bats flying at the top of the two towers.🦇

A few metro stations away, but also very accessible through a pedestrian walkway above the ground, is the Bukit Bintang Street, the most animated area in KL with gigantic shopping malls (especially the Pavilion, where there was an enormous Christmas display), huge screens and more Christmas displays by big name brands, shops and restaurants. The intersection of Jalan Bukit Bintang and Jalan Sultan Ismail was especially crowded.

The following day, we went to visit Central Market, which is an old market repurposed for tourism. What must have been a stinky market with stalls of poultry and fish is now a trendy tourist trap, full of stalls selling all sorts of souvenirs. But I admit, we liked it, as it was different from the usual shopping malls and their food court was pretty decent.

In the same area, there was the traditional Chinatown with the traditional gates, shops and food stalls. And just outside Chinatown, there was a great view of the 679m tall Merdeka 118 tower, the new tallest tower in Malaysia, second tallest in the world only surpassed by the Burj Khalifa. It should be completed pretty soon, in 2023. But the contrasts between the towers and its surrounding low buildings is immense. It's as if a huge obelisk was erected in the middle of a otherwise flat area!

Were it green, it could be an immense Christmas tree! 🎄