Twin Towers and a Stranger Who Changed Everything
After a beautiful sleep, I got up and went out onto the streets looking for breakfast. An interesting phenomenon I found about KL is that locals here like walking across the road whenever there’s no car coming instead of waiting for the pedestrian’s traffic lights to turn green. Based on my observations in the following days, the reason for that might be the long waiting time before crossing and usually red lights last much longer than green lights. An example is that you need to wait for 5 mins for 15 seconds’ crossing time, which is kind of ridiculous.
I went to Jalan Alor yesterday and was impressed by its crowdedness and noises with lots of vendors along the street persuading pedestrians to take a look and buy their goods. One food that I particularly wanted to try this morning was mango sticky rice. However, when I reached the street, it was completely different from last night. All the stalls and tables were packed up and leaned against the wall so the road was much wider. Nearly all the stalls were close and I could hardly find anyone walking on the street, which proved that it was only a night market. Out of curiosity of what the places I had been to yesterday looked like in the morning, I repeated the route I went last night and found that Nasi Lemak appeared a lot in the menus of many eateries, which made me curious about what it is and its place in Malaysian culture. Another interesting fact about KL is how empty the streets are in the morning and a lot of stalls are not open until 12 am.
After repeating the same route as yesterday, I went back to my residence, entered into bilabila mart to buy a Chicken Fiesta Croissant and bought a cup of mango juice and a few rambutans in AZ Juice Bar nearby. The juice was made by mixing real mango, milk, water and ice into a blender, so it had very strong mango smell and was very smooth and creamy. It might be my first time to taste rambutans and I just used Google Lens to know that it is its name. Tearing away the hairy shell, the whitish flash tasted sweet and a bit acidic with a fragrant smell. The chicken ham croissant was tasty too.
I spent most of the morning researching Malaysian cultures such as local fruits and cuisines. Located in the tropical regions, the hot and humid weather endows lots of unique fruits indigenous or transplanted to Malaysia. Among them, durians are considered the king of fruits. Rambutan (rambut means hair in Malay), jack fruit (world’s largest tree-borne fruit), mangosteen, dragon fruit and papaya are among the most famous and well-loved tropical treats in Malaysia. Malaysian cuisines are mostly written in Malay in menus, such as Nasi Lamak and Nasi Goreng, so it’s very difficult to know what to expect when I came across these names in the eateries.
When it was lunch time, I went to another eatery nearby (SB Corner) which attracted my attentions because the name of one dish (Tom Yam) displayed on the wallpaper appeared in the webpage listing some of the traditional local cuisines, so I thought it served Malaysian food. Most of the items listed on the menu were in Malay so I asked the workers to help me make an order. However, the one who helped me with ordering didn’t seem to know much about English and it’s hard for me to choose among all the options available so I just asked him what options are not spicy and he recommended me trying Nasi Goreng. I ended up ordering Nasi Goreng Biasa (plain fried rice) and Fresh Coconut since I didn’t understand what Fresh Coconut Susu (fresh coconut milk) is. The coconut was big and contained lots of juice which made me really full.
After lunch, I set off to Petronas Twin Towers using Google Maps to help me navigate. On my way to the towers, I passed Molten Chocolate Cafe which I wanted to try in the morning but was closed. It had chic decorations offering European style chocolate desserts. The cafe was pretty empty with the only guests leaving when I was entering. My selected time slot for the entry of the towers was 3 pm so I didn’t browse through the menu carefully but directed asked the owner if there’s chocolate coffee option and ordered a chocolate drink with caramel flavor. I didn’t realize it was hot so I couldn’t finish it in the cafe but carried it with me to the towers when I was hurrying to arrive on time. Unfortunately, the drink spilled a little bit on my hand on the way and my left hand was holding an umbrella to block the strong sunlight at the very middle of the day, so I couldn’t even clean myself up with the sticky chocolate liquid running through my hand.
What I loved about Malaysia when I was heading towards the twin towers was that there were lots of covered walkways, making it more comfortable when walking under the fierce sun in the midday. Covered walkways are signature constructions in Malaysia since it is always sunny or rainy in tropical areas.
Finding the entrance to the towers is a little bit tricky since there’s a large shopping malls underneath the towers and there’s no clear instructions upon entry. I got lost at the first level in the mall until I asked a cleaner how to get to the towers.
I arrived about 30 minutes before my time slot so it was not permitted for entry yet. I hanged around near the entrance and spotted an automatic coffee machine CoffeeBot, which turns out to be very popular in Malaysia. I was lucky to be the last one to join the first group to enter the towers. Upon entry, a photographer asked every visitor to stand in front of a large plain green curtain to take a photo. The people in the photo would then be cut and pasted to different backgrounds, in front of or at the top of the twin tower for example, and visitors can purchase their photos at a rest area on the towers.
After the photographs, all the passengers and one staff member squeezed into an elevator which went to level 41. Inside the elevator, I couldn’t see anything outside because there’s no transparent windows but there’s animations on the wall giving people the feeling that the elevator was climbing along the towers.
Skybridge, connecting the two towers together, is located at level 41 and 42, but we can only access level 41. Upon arrival, the staff gave us a brief introduction of the bridge and 10 minutes to spend on the bridge. On each side of the bridge there’s ceiling to floor windows for viewing while the floor cannot be seen through. At the middle of the bridge there were two projected areas on which the floor is transparent. Here I met another solo-traveler, an Indian businessman who’s responsible for southeast affairs in his company and came to KL for work while taking a break at the weekend. He initiated the conversation with me by offering to take a photo of me standing on the projected area after he politely asked me to stand aside when he took a selfie at another projected area a while ago. We took photos for each other in turn and chatted happily. As the only 2 solo-travelers on the towers, we quickly formed a group and went to the observation deck located at level 86. There we could have a bird’s eye view of the urban landscapes of KL though I only recognized the famous constructions like KL tower and Merdeka 118 and buildings near my stay such as pavilion KL and AIA sentral. We also encountered an incoming rainstorm so we noticed that one side of the sky was grey and gloomy while the other side was bright and clear. We talked enthusiastically and forgot about the time until the staff members came and told us that it’s time to leave. We then headed downstairs to a rest zone, took a selfie of both of us and continue to chat around a table. He said that he went to the aquarium early in KLCC in the morning and it was so incredible that he highly recommended me to visit it. It was not in my plan of visit but I still decided to go there. After checking that the Aquaria KLCC would be open till late in the evening, I didn’t go there immediately but took some photos of the twin towers just outside of Suria KLCC, the large and fancy shopping mall, and went back to the room near the entrance of towers to learn more about the history of the tower and KLCC. After finding that there were more activities in the KLCC that I didn’t know when I was planning my itinerary, I decided to come to KLCC again tomorrow. Aside from Petronas Twin Towers, Aquaria KLCC, there’s also KLCC park located at the center, Lake Symphony which is a fountain light and music show at night, Petrosains Discovery Center which offers interactive experience to learn more about Petronus company, Kuala Lumpur convention center and Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS classical concert venue.
I had my dinner in KAMPONG KRAYERS inside Suria KLCC and ordered SOTO AYAM which is noodles in a spiced-infused broth with shredded chicken, bergedil (fried potato patty), eggs, chilies, spring onions, peanuts, bean sprouts and kalamansi lime with a spicy chili sambal. It’s fragrant with lots of spices and tasted great.
My plan to Aquaria KLCC had to be cancelled due to a sudden rainfall after dinner, so I could only explore Suria KLCC where a stall holder at an open-air BOSS stall sprayed perfume to me and invited me to hold our hands and dance together. A receptionist at a Japanese restaurant, who is also a Malaysian local with parents who teach English, explained to me why they posted the signage “yes we are open” with clear and easy-to-understand English without Malaysian accent. Outside of Suria KLCC, a group of Malaysian travelers from Melaka asked me to take a photo of them and I ended up talking with one of them who could speak English quite well for a long time while enjoying the Lake Symphony. When getting confused about which line I should take to go home in the KLCC metro station, a couple from Singapore kindly offered me help, asking directions from a staff in a cabin and pointing me the way to go (well… it turns out that I mis-recognized the bus symbol in Google Maps as train and couldn’t find the correct line to go). See? Even if I couldn’t make it to the aquarium, I instead had so many intriguing experiences and interactions with locals which I didn’t expect to happen and met so many friendly and kind people who gave me a hand when I mostly needed it. Thus, I feel so lucky that on my second day in KL, the city approached me in a friendly and helpful way and gave me a warm welcome with its kind and passionate locals and visitors to help me adapt to the new environment more quickly and naturally. At night when I thought about all of these adventures that happened in the daytime, I started to be in love with the feeling of solo-travel because you just can meet a lot of incredible people along the way. This is also the time when I finally got rid of the tiredness from sleep deprivation and long flight on the first day and enjoyed what KL has to offer me: A cool city with approachable locals and magnificent urban landscapes.
Reflecting on the entire 18-day trip, day 2 sets the tone for it: talk to people as much as possible. During my whole trip, talking with others, whether they are locals or tourists from different countries, and exchanging opinions on different topics with them, are the most enjoyable and fulfilling activity I’ve ever done. It gave me a different perspective on the things I perceived. It helped me learn more about and gained a deeper insight into local culture and customs. And the one who lays the foundation is the Indian businessman. Here I want to use 3 keywords to summarize the role he plays to me.
1. Courage. He showed me how fun it can be when you have the courage to initiate a conversation with someone and continue to have a meaningful conversation with him/her. Thus, in my later trip, starting conversations with a French woman when waiting in queue led to we becoming friends and spending the whole day together.
2. Practice. Before talking with him for an extended period of time, I only had short conversations with locals whose Malay accent English is too hard for me to understand so that I didn’t have any enjoyable and long conversations with anyone yet. His clear English lessened the burden of me understanding his words so that I could respond to him logically and extensively practice my spoken English and listening English at the same time.
3. Confidence. Failing to understand locals’s English made me disappointed about my English level, especially listening. Being able to understand what he said and express my opinions clear gradually gave me confidence and made me believe that it’s possible for me to talk with other English speakers fluently. This confidence ensures me to try my best to understand what others are saying and respond to them appropriately and fluently.
