Day 40 - Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur
So it was another early morning and we were up and out of the hotel within an hour. Chiang Mai airport is virtually in the centre of the city so it was only a ten minute taxi drive.
Landing in Malaysia the scenery did not give anything away, the drive was about forty minuets to our hotel right in the centre of town.
The journey along the modern motorway was quite bizzarre. At the side of the road housing estates that resembled “Knots Landing” all american housing estates that you expected the kids to be playing basketball against garage doors, this was not the immediate vision we had of Malaysia.
The closer and closer we got to the city centre new office blocks loomed on both sides, all were empty like the housing estates that we had passed. It was though
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Trevor & Jonathan’s World Trip 2010
Malaysia was waiting for an influx of people from somewhere. It is one of the Malaysian Governments goals that Kuala Lumpur becomes a world city by 2020, still ten years to go. It is secretly well known that what they really want to do is dispose Singapore as the financial centre for Asia.
So back to Kuala Lumpur, arriving in the city one thing is clear, theres a lot of glass and shiny surfaces and its very very very tall. From leaving Thailand where everything had been an eclectic mix of architecture new and old Kuala Lumpur looked like Gotham City!
Our hotel is a monster tall building, god knows how many rooms it has but again it has a distinctly american flavour. Our first task was to find something to eat , in the rain!! We headed out to a mall at the bottom of the road and to say it was like a christmas eve is an understatement, it was so busy! The other startling odd observation was that everyone seemed to be under 25, everyone was so young, there was no older people anywhere!
Due to the rain we headed from mall to mall, we had been told that there was a lot of shopping to do in Kuala Lumpur and they were not wrong, in that respect it is very much like Singapore.
The rain stopped and we headed off by foot to explore. The Petronas Towers, once the worlds tallest building loomed large over the skyline so using them as our beacon we followed their direction.
Once at the Petronas Towers you can’t help but be impressed by the scale and authority that they impose on the skyline. All shiny and silver very much like the rest of Kuala Lumpur that we have seen so far. Unfortunately you can’t scale their magnificence a real shame, why build such a thing just for offices. The towers represented Malaysia stamping a mark on the world and declaring look at us and how wonderful we can be.
Now after our early morning and having been out every night for the best part of five weeks we were tired so it was our first early night since India. Tomorrow we plan to hit the sites and the city, hopefully we have seen the last of the rain.