KL Finale

Our last day in Malaysia, we decided to go up in the KL Tower. It is the 5th largest tower in the world, after the CN Tower in Canada, a tower in Russia and one in Iran, sitting at 421 meters tall. It provides some pretty stellar views of the city, and so we decided we wanted to get to the tower early in the day before the usual afternoon thunderstorms hit. We actually could walk to the KL Tower from our hotel.

Once you arrive at the grounds of the tower, you have a very steep hill to take to the tower entrance, but they provide a little shuttle that goes back and forth, as with the heat and humidity, you would be wiped out before you even started. Once you enter the base of the tower, there are express elevators that take you to the observation floor. There is one floor above that, but it's a rotating restaurant, and you can only go there if you have reservations and it is pretty pricey. Outside the base of the tower, there is a reflecting pool/water fountain with the flags from all 14 states in Malaysia.

The shots were pretty amazing. I managed to get some good pictures of The Petronas Towers, the Batu Caves and our Hotel.

When we were done with the tower, we decided to head to the Butterfly Park. It sits within the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve, which is this huge expanse of land in the middle of the city, left natural. We took a series of cabs to the park. The first cab we got in was fine until about 5 minutes into the journey when the cab driver pulled over and made us get out because he claimed the cab was overheating (although we saw no sign of this). We hailed another cab, but he told us it would be 15 Ringits at which point I tried to be all know-it-all and said "Aren't you required to use the meter BY LAW?". So we bailed on that cab, the next one told us it would 20 Ringits, so we sent him on his way, and when the fourth cab pulled up and offered to take us for 15 Ringits, and we realized that was like less than five dollars, we decided the second cabbie wasn't so bad after all and took this guy up on his offer.

The Butterfly Park was pretty neat. It's an enclosed area, with a mesh roof, so it still gets sunlight and is outdoors, but it keeps the little butterflies from escaping. They also had a turtle pond and some big honking carp and I made sure I bought some fish food for 1 Ringit so I could feed them.

They estimate there are about 6,000 butterflies in the enclosure, with up to 120 varieties. The entire compound was heavy in various types of flora and fauna as well.

As you exited the enclosure they had an exhibit with more"exotic" bugs and insects, including some snakes and scorpions that looked so threatening, just their glaring at you made you want to scream. The most interesting thing I remembered was the Snake Head Moth exhibit they had. The wings of the moth really resembled a snake's head. It was kind of freaky.

When we left the Butterfly Park, we took another cab to the National Museum. This attraction was a great way to learn about Malaysian culture and it's history. There were a series of four halls (one was closed for renovation and smelled like lacquer which gave Marty a headache) that covered themes of archeology, sociology, and politics. I had always assumed that Malaysia was always a British colony, as I have traveled to Penang several times of the last few years when my friends Carla and Steven were living there and one of the things we did was visit a British garrison there. It turns out for most of the colonial period, Malaysia was a Portuguese colony, followed by Dutch occupation for about 100 years before the Brits took over in the mid 1700s. There was no photography allowed so I wasn't able to take any pictures inside, but managed a shot of the rather plain sign over the entrance.


After leaving the National Museum, and what felt like a full day of touring (which in reality was only about 4 hours), we headed back to the hotel. The heat really zaps your energy, and of course, the storms started rolling in as usual during the afternoon. We wanted to make sure we turned in early that night because our flight to Cambodia left at 7am the next day, and we needed to check in two hours before, and it took an hour to get to the airport, so we would be leaving the hotel at 4am.