Musings about early retirement with no fixed address

A Month In The Green City Of Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is a cosmopolitan city with a green twist. The downtown area could be mistaken for Chicago or New York at first glance. It’s full of tall buildings, trendy shopping, and plenty of traffic. Yet despite the gigantic skyscrapers of glass and steel, nature still exists here. The sidewalks often pass by huge trees that were here before there was concrete or asphalt surrounding them. The tropical climate means that everything grows fast while frequent rains keep things clean and green. It’s a city that was literally carved out of the middle of the jungle and it shows.

Katie and I just spent a month here staying only two blocks from the Petronas Twin Towers, which are right in the heart of the city. It felt great to be back in a major metropolitan city. Large cities almost always have an energetic feeling to them and Kuala Lumpur was no exception. But they also do a nice job of mixing in green spaces to help combat the busyness and provide a spot for some downtime. We were more than happy to take advantage of these too.

The view right outside our front door
We stalked these Twin Towers all over the city

The largest green space in Kuala Lumpur is the Perdana Botanical Garden. This large park spans over 200 acres right in the middle of the city and is full of walking paths through interesting plants and trees. For reference, that’s about 5 times the size of the wonderful botanical garden we used to enjoy in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. We visited this park multiple times during our stay and enjoyed each one. It’s also home to the KL Bird Park, which is a giant free-flight aviary that we loved.

A river scene in the gardens
Zingiberales basking in the sun
Another Zingiberales example
A giant leaf. Katie for scale.

On the south side of the botanical garden is a large lake. This provides some nice viewpoints to  appreciate the contrast between the green park and the city surrounding it. The lake has a few paddle boats for rent as well, although we didn’t venture out on the water like during our time in Bangkok. On our first visit, we thought we saw one of these orange paddle boats capsized near the water’s edge, but as we got closer it turned out to be a school of fish instead. That was a pleasant surprise! We saw lots of other wildlife here too, including a few monitor lizards, some turtles, lots of birds, and a couple of monkeys from a distance.

The lake view
Back towards the city
Our cute little sunken paddle boat

There are a number of themed areas of the botanical garden to explore as well. The sunken garden looked quite cool. They have a bamboo playhouse that’s fun for kids of all ages. There is an herb garden featuring numerous medicinal plants. And even though half of it was closed for maintenance, the section named The Conservatory had lots of interesting plants and trees. Wandering through the park is a great way to spend a day.

The sunken gardens
The bamboo playhouse
A bit of the herb collection

Across the street from the north edge of the botanical garden is a sculpture garden and war memorial. There are a dozen or so sculptures from different artists that represent themes like peace or prosperity. On the hill above the sculptures is a giant war memorial dedicated to Malaysians who fought the British in 1945. It’s a spot that tour buses like to stop, so it can get pretty crowded at times. But it’s still a nice view.

The war memorial and fountains
Great viewpoint

Closer to home, we also went to the KLCC park. While the botanical garden is more of a natural space, the KLCC park is more of a city park. There are children’s play areas, man-made rivers, jogging paths, and it’s all surrounded by skyscrapers. This provides a lot of nice views, especially of the twin towers. It feels like a mini Central Park. There’s also a large fountain with a light show each evening around dusk. This attracts lots of people, and while pretty, we found it a bit underwhelming and left after about 10 minutes. I think it needed music or something to jazz it up a bit.

KLCC park fountains
One of the many walking paths at dusk
The nightly fountain light show

It wasn’t just parks where we found beautiful green things. We found an enormous produce market that we visited often. The Chow Kit market is filled with hundreds of vendors selling meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, and spices. I think it’s the largest one I’ve ever been to. We enjoyed shopping here so much, that we didn’t eat at a restaurant until our last day. I think maybe the universe was making up for the lack of market at our previous stop in Malacca. And boy did it ever.

Lots of delicious green things
Somehow I don’t have a picture of all the mangoes, so you’ll have to settle for apples and grapes
No shortage of bananas

Our stay coincided with the beginning of harvest season for mango and longan. In the blink of an eye we went from seeing a mango or two periodically to seeing overflowing piles of them. Mango rice was back on the menu as we bought a dozen or more. We also ate a ridiculous amount of longan, which I hadn’t really had much until KL. They are similar to lychees, with white juicy flesh surrounding a smooth brown pit, but not as perfumey or delicate. Multiple vendors had huge piles of freshly trimmed branches overflowing with these luscious pods. In fact, we bought and consumed 7 kilograms during our stay. That’s over 15 pounds!  About half of those were eaten immediately after purchase while strolling back from the market. It was certainly a tasty way to lighten the load during the walk home.

Now that’s a stack of longan
So much good stuff!

National Textile Museum And (A Lack Of) Batu Caves

We’ve been enthralled with all of the gorgeous batik fabrics that are abundant throughout Malaysia since we landed in Penang almost three months ago. We loved their Batik Painting Museum and spent a lot of time just browsing textile markets and viewing all of the wonderful patterns. Kuala Lumpur has a National Textile Museum that explores this even further, displaying the steps needed to create these beautiful fabrics. Our visit also coincided with a special exhibit that highlighted part of a personal collection from an arts professor who had dedicated his life to the study and propagation of the batik style. It was quite stunning and the best part of the visit.

The personal collection fabrics on display

Despite staying for a whole month, we somehow missed seeing the Batu Caves, which is probably the main tourist attraction. It consists of 272 colorful steps that ascend into a large mouthed cave that has a temple inside. There are other statues and temples in the immediate area as well. Sometimes I think we are the only people that could spend 30 days in a place and still miss the top thing to see. It’s entirely possible that we are the most boring globetrotters in the history of the world.

Here’s a flower cave instead
And these fun guys from somewhere in the botanical garden

Early in our stay, we had other priorities like exploring the city neighborhoods by foot and visiting the botanical garden and KL Bird Park. Those took precedence over taking two trains to the outskirts of the city. It always felt like we had plenty of time to make it up there. But we were lulled into a false sense of security by the wonderful weather we had for the first three weeks. It only rained all day one time. We would often get afternoon showers, but they were scattered and easy to work around. And then for our last week, it rained all day most days. It doesn’t seem like a place to visit in the rain because of all the steps that must be climbed to get there. Oh well! There’s always next time. At least we went to the parks.

A red dragonfly who chilled long enough for me to bust out a portrait mode pic
His golden cousin

Where We Stayed

We rented an excellent apartment in a high rise building only two blocks from the Twin Towers and the KLCC park. It had nice city views but we were high enough up that the traffic noise was muted. And the bed was one of the best we’ve had yet, so we slept well. Being located in the middle of downtown, we had easy access to everything we could need, including many shopping malls.

Our dining room and extra couch
Living room
Really comfy bed
Kitchen with strange orange microwave
Our heart of the city view

What We Spent

If you haven’t poked around the edges of this website lately, I somewhat recently added a few new features. There are new menu tabs that categorize posts based on location and I’ve also added a spending page so that it’s easier to keep track of exactly what it’s costing us to travel the world. Check it out. Or if you really want to follow along, sign up for the mailing list at the very bottom of this post and I’ll send you an email whenever I have a new post up. Don’t worry, I don’t write all that often so your inbox won’t be in any danger of excess clutter from Bonus Nachos posts.

Prices in downtown Kuala Lumpur were definitely more expensive than Penang or Malacca. But despite that, we didn’t spend much extra. The availability of the awesome markets meant that we didn’t eat out until the last day of our stay. And even though our rent was the highest, we only paid about $10 in transport costs to get to there from Malacca, so that also helped offset any higher costs. In total we spent $1546 for our 30 days there, which is $51.46 per day. Adding in our regular monthly bills like cell phones and Netflix still kept us under $1700 for the entire month.

We also continued to enjoy challenging each other to a spirited game of Cribbage periodically. During our 86 days in Malaysia we managed to squeeze in 78 games. Katie had a 10 game lead at one point, but I came roaring back. The ending score was 39-39. 

A nice flowering tree
I’m pretty sure this is the street art version of American Gothic

Despite being a major city, it seems like many people skip Kuala Lumpur on their travels due to a lack of tourist activities. I can understand that, as aside from some tall buildings and a few specialized museums, there aren’t a lot of star attractions. I’m guessing a fabric museum or a bird park is not high on the SE Asia priority list for most tourists when there are things like Angkor Wat in the relative vicinity. So while it’s probably not the greatest city to visit, it is a really nice place to live. We definitely enjoyed our time living there. There was no overdriving urge to see a bunch of stuff, and yet there was always something to do. It had the big city energy that we crave but still balanced it with lots of green space and nature. We would love to return someday. And maybe we’ll even visit the Batu Caves.

7 Comments

  1. Glenda lehman

    Another very interesting post and so many places to visit. I thought the bamboo playhouse was amazing and the market incredible, I can see why you were regulars. The gardens were awesome and one could certainly spend time there. Thanks for sharing the adventures and MERRY CHRISTMAS! Always good to remember the BABE OF BETHLEHEM!?

    • Eric

      Thanks Glenda! Merry Christmas to you as well.

  2. Skip

    KL looks like a really beautiful city and just a pleasant place to be, despite the lack of touristy attractions. That apartment looks beautiful as well. Very cool view to boot. How did you find such a nice place to stay?

    Love the blog. Keep up the good work.

    • Eric

      I hear people say that it’s boring, and to an extent, that’s probably true for a city of its size. But that also makes it livable. I just found the apartment through Airbnb. There are a number of them in high rises in the downtown area. (I can send you the exact link if you’re interested. Email me.)

      • Skip

        That would be great. Please do. How far in advance do you recommend booking?

  3. Chef

    This was an enjoyable read. I find your style a nice mix of approachable and just detailed enough. We were on the fence on KL as a tourist spot, but I like the idea of putting it on the slow travel list. We are, I’m guessing, five years behind you. So your travel is just the right advanced preparation for my planner tendencies. Love your blog!

    • Eric

      Thanks Chef! I aim to please 🙂

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