After a nice day yesterday, we had a quick breakfast at our hotel and waited in the lobby to be picked up for the Kuala Lumpur city tour. When the driver arrived, we recognized him as being the one who drove us from Genting and we also met the couple from Mumbai who were also on the city tour with us. Our first stop was the Istana Negara (or National Palace).

We then proceeded to the ASEAN Sculpture Garden and National Monument. The ASEAN Sculpture Garden had a nice collection of prize-winning sculptures by some of the finest artists in the ASEAN region.

The National Monument (also known as Tugu Negara) is a sculpture that commemorates those who died in Malaysia’s struggle for freedom.

After spending some time there we were taken to the Batik Factory, Handicraft Store and Leather Factory which were mandatory items for all tours to include. The goods at all these places were terribly expensive and most of us just quickly walked past everything to get this over with.

Our next stop was the beautiful Menara KL. Having visited the CN Tower in Toronto we were really looking forward to seeing the Menara KL which was said to be the tallest of its kind in Asia.

We bought tickets for the observation deck and waited in the queue to take the elevator. Just before the entrance of the elevators, the ceiling had a huge faceted glass dome which looked really brilliant, like a huge jewel.

Once we reached the top we took the audio tour which explained what we could see as we went around the observation deck. Some of the things we could see — and which caught our attention — were: our hotel Grand Continental, the National Art Gallery and Eye on Malaysia at Lake Titiwangsa, Batu Caves, the National Palace, Malaysia Telecom building, the National Mosque and of course the Petronas Towers.

After spending time at the observation deck we returned to the base and were picked up by our driver. We asked him to drop us off at the Masjid Jamek area so we could walk around a bit and get a feel of the city and of course shop a bit if we found good stuff. We saw a Hawker Centre there and had noodle soup and fried fish to start with. We then had lunch at a small local eatery there and walked around the market picking up a few small things we liked. After that we took the LRT from Masjid Jamek station to Sultan Ismail station to get back to our hotel for a while.

That evening we planned to visit the The International WaterSky Spectacular at Lake Titiwangsa. From our hotel we could take either the Monorail or the LRT to Titiwangsa station. Since we were already familiar with the LRT we decided to take that option. We waited for our friend who was supposed to join us at the station there and then took a taxi to Lake Titiwangsa. We queued up for the tickets for the Eye on Malaysia, which is the tallest portable observation wheel in South-East Asia. The view of the Kuala Lumpur skyline in the evening was just fantastic as we went up and down and round and round many times.

Once we were done with that, we found a nice place to sit on the shores of the lake for Theatre of The Waters which was a brilliant laser show open to the public as a part of the Visit Malaysia Year 2007 celebrations. It featured images of Malaysia, the people, their culture and history on screens of water. It was extremely enjoyable and definitely well worth the visit. After that we bid farewell to our friend since we were scheduled to leave Kuala Lumpur the next day.

We took the LRT to KL Sentral which is the main railway station of Kuala Lumpur. I had planned our travel from Butterworth to Bangkok on the International Express IE\36 as mentioned on seat61.com. I had made the reservation by email and we had to pick up our train tickets from KL Sentral. We reached the ticket counters, took a token and waited for our turn. After making the payment and collecting the tickets, we headed back to our hotel by LRT. We wanted to find a place for dinner close to our hotel and so we settled on Hamid’s since we had liked it before. After a quick bite there we called it a day and went back to our hotel to pack for travel the next day.

🛏️ Hotel Grand Continental
🚇 Masjid Jamek to Sultan Ismail
🚇 Sultan Ismail to Titiwangsa
🚇 Titiwangsa to KL Sentral via Masjid Jamek
🚇 KL Sentral to KL Sultan Ismail via Masjid Jamek