Malaysia layover.
Wandering parts of Kuala Lumpur feels like navigating a series of connected and air-conditioned tube walkways between the city’s extensive shopping centers and food courts.
I know there is more to the place than this, 24 hours is never long enough however, only time for the greatest hits, so I headed to the tallest highlight in the city, the Petronas Twin Towers.
A good judge of a city is always in how well you can navigate around without a map or at the very least using public transport. Happily I was staying in the central area of Chow Kit, serviced by a frequent monorail line that weaved its way through central Kuala Lumpur. A short walk from the stop and I easily found my way to the towers, English on the signage is common here.
A couple of things I did learn whilst visiting the Petronas towers; Every morning they hand out just over 1500 free tickets for those eager enough to get there before 8am, I was also told that another great vantage of the towers was from the Sky bar in the Traders hotel opposite. The benefit of this is it’s free to go up and look & shoot a picture, also a great un-obscured view of the twins.
Another stop along the Monorail was the markets of China Town. The main market is a typically geared for tourists; selling all sorts of knock off designer gear and ‘genuine copies’, one trend I have noticed is for many of those Dr Dre ‘Beats’ headphones, not forgetting any DVD you could wish for, a pretty standard tourist trap.
I took a route between the main market streets, an alleyway, and that’s where the real deal was happening. Covered by sheets of corrugated metal, these alleys were buzzing with butchers, fishmongers, all kinds of fruit and veg, for the sole benefit of the Malay people, Not the images you generally find inside a guide-book. This was an everyday Kuala Lumpur, I was happy that in my short time I had found a small part of it.
View more from Kuala Lumpur:
Kuala Lumpur gallery | Instagram KL | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr
To commission this or any of my work, please feel free to email me at: philhill@philhillphotography.com
