The Petronas Towers are Kuala Lumpur

Even more than the Golden Gate Bridge and the pyramid building  of San Francisco or the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty of New York City, if you asked someone from anywhere in the world if they knew anything about Kuala Lumpur the vast majority would probably say something like, “isn’t that where those two connected twin towers are?” I wouldn’t have went to Kuala Lumpur to get my Thai Education visa if not for the Petronas Towers although I am a big fan of tall buildings.

Business & Pleasure

The Petronas Towers are first and foremost a business center.  One whole side is for the Malaysian oil & gas company for which its named while the other side is leased out to other major companies.  You will see thousands of suits going in and out of the Petronas Towers at any given moment during the work week. If you’re into shopping don’t worry, there is also a huge shopping mall in between and below the towers with high end shops such as Louis Vouitton and Ferigamo as well as normal stores.  To be honest I didn’t spend more than 5 minutes in the shopping mall but I could tell it was pretty big and had a wide variety of high end stores.

Warning/Tip

Listen up, if you want to be able to go up onto the skywalk you need to go and get a ticket EARLY.  I went once in the early afternoon and once in the late morning and the tickets had been sold out for a while.  This was also a Tuesday and Wednesday so if you want to be able to view the main attraction go early in the morning and wait as they limit the visitors to the skywalk to a couple thousand every day.

Photo Opportunities Galore

I love taking pictures.  My father used to be a pretty good photographer and I like to take pictures of ordinary things and try to make them extraordinary.  By no means are the Petronas Towers ordinary but you can get some extraordinary pictures day and night from all angles of the Petronas Towers. I could stay there a whole day and take pictures and if I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for an extra day I would have probably traveled around the city and found cool shots of the Petronas Towers.  There were numerous tourists with the same idea as taking tons of pictures of the towers at all hours of the day. The people who worked there and the security guards also had no problem of tourists taking pictures but you could get the idea that they thought you were silly for taking pictures.  It was one of those things where the main attraction in a town means nothing to the residents who see it every single day.

Overall Impression

The Petronas Towers are one of a kind and on the kind of grand scale which defines the country of Malaysia in the minds of many people across the world.  I would say that statement pretty much sums up how impressive these twin towers were during day and night.  Any visitor to Kuala Lumpur will immediately notice and be drawn towards the Petronas Towers regardless if that is in the plans and for a day or 2 nobody will be disappointed.

Touring Kuala Lumpur is as easy as 1-2, 3

Kuala Lumpur tower is the 2nd (or 3rd depending how you look at it) main attraction of the Kuala Lumpur skyline.  At night you will see a “space needle” looking structure a close distance from the Petronas Twin Towers.  It is brightly lit at night with sometimes changing colors and it just begs you to get to the top.

For those who already wonder about the Petronas Towers skybridge which is the highest the public is allowed to go in the building is only 557 feet high compared to the observation deck in LK tower, the 5th tallest tower in the world reaching 1,381 feet in all about 1,100 at the observation deck almost twice as high as the Petronas Towers skybridge.  For those of you who say, big deal, just another tall building with an overpriced revolving restaurant and observation deck you would be glad to know that there is more than just a view with KL tower.

More than Meets the Eye

I was at the Thai Embassy to get my Thai Education visa and walked about 20 minutes to look at the Petronas Towers.  I spent a good hour or so looking at and taking pictures of the Petronal Towers before I set off to view the 3rd superstar of the Kuala Lumpur skyline.  I started walking towards the tall structure with the notion that it would be easy to get there which never is with huge objects. Just like the huge hotels in Vegas, which look close but seem very far while walking in 100+ degree heat KL tower was the same.

I resisted the urge to get into a taxi and kept walking.  I came upon a giant intersection which I waited 2 cycles of traffic before I figured unless I risked my life and jaywalked I would be waiting forever.  I had a choice to make, I could go straight or right, there has to be more than a single street leading to this giant tower right?  Well, it was half right.  I took the right which lead away from the business district of skyscrapers and more to a residential-ish looking area.

I kept walking and the road was going in a circle around this seemingly big, dense jungle park with no way through.  I kept going until I came upon a school on the left but I saw an entrance to the park on the right along with some city workers snoozing on the park benches. There was a retaining wall on the left which I saw an animal which I thought was a monkey that I tailed and lost.  The city workers were laughing at me because I guess someone taking a picture of a monkey in the park is like someone taking a picture of a squirrel in any US park. I thought it was pretty cool that a 10 or so minute walk from one of the most famous buildings in the world there were monkeys playing in a park.

When I say park, I really mean mini-jungle as even though there were carved paths, there was thick vegetation everywhere with monkeys swinging in trees.  Word of advice:  Don’t stop if have shorts and short sleeves as I stopped for less than 5 minutes to take pictures of the monkeys and received about a dozen mosquito bites for my troubles.  I was in the park for 20-30 minutes and didn’t see another person. The monkeys seemed to be pretty comfortable with humans.

I didn’t antagonize them and some ignored me while another old looking one walked up to about 10 feet away from me.  I snapped a bunch of pictures, but unfortunately my camera settings were off and most came out blurry.  There was a few different trail options in the park but I was in transit to KL tower so I followed the signs where it finally popped out of the trees (below).  After this grass field with more monkey photo opportunities there is this suspension bridge which is only a few feet above the ground which leads up to the Tower.

At KL Tower

Once you get to the top of the suspension bridges you finally see some people along with typical outdoor SE Asian food stands which I found to have delicious Malaysian food which seemed Indian to me.   I got this stuff called roti canai which was roti (thin pancakes) which you dipped in this curry which had some fish, potatoes and other junk in it.  It was so good I had 3 of them which were astoundingly cheap although I don’t remember the price but we are talking less than 40 cents per order. Once I got filled up with roti canai I decided to head up to the Tower which I expected to be a long wait.  Surprisingly it turned out to be a very short wait.

I paid the fee, sorry I don’t remember how much it was and zoomed up to the observation deck.  The elevator had a timer which told you how long it took to get up.  Something I liked was there was no mandatory wait to get a photo which they try to get you to pay for which I hate. Once you get to the the observation deck it is pretty much a run-of-the-mill round area with telescopes, a couple of gift shops and of course the 360 degree view of Kuala Lumpur which you paid for.

There some nice tourists from all over the world which you can talk to and of course tons of photo opportunities.  You probably want to see the view from the towers but I’ll let you do it for yourself.  My pictures were all taken through a shroud of rain clouds and smog along with dirty windows which I assume they clean every few months. I’m sure they would let you volunteer to hop out 100 stories up and clean the windows if you want;) The only thing I didn’t like about the tower was the view of the Petronas Towers was from the side so you can really only see a single tower.  Unfortunate because the Petronas Towers are probably one of the most picturesque  buildings in the world.