Most of our time in KL was spent running errands – getting visas, buying bike parts, and buying malaria meds. We also enjoyed visiting our friends – Scott’s schoolmate Jon, his wife Chin Chiun, son Philip, and mother Nancy. We are very grateful for our private tour guide, Nancy, who ferried us to the various embassies and bike shops around KL and JB, as well as to many of the temples and shrines we visited. Nancy facilitates the application process for the Malaysia My Second Home Visa, which allows people to get a 10 year multiple-entry, unlimited time, visa for Malaysia. If this sounds interesting, please contact us and we’ll put you in contact with her!
Between embassy visits, we snuck in a visit to the Petronas Towers Skybridge. The Skybridge hovers at the 41st floor between the two towers, providing an additional emergency exit for the towers and allows employees in the towers to move across without having to go all the way to the bottom. The Skybridge tour is free, but you must go in the morning to get a ticket, for a show sometime during the day. One person can collect as many as five tickets, so Nancy acquired our tickets while we were going through the visa process at the USA embassy.
The tour begins with a 7-minute video presentation about Petronas and the towers. The video uses polarized 3D technology, which is poorly done. The video would be much better if they gave up on the 3D and just did a reasonable quality production. It also was mostly an advertisement for Petronas, and only contained a short bit about the construction of the tower.
The view from the sky bridge is pretty decent. It struck us that Kuala Lumpur is a city where the various sky scrapers are rather spread out. It does not seem nearly as built up as Singapore. One observation is that the sky scrapers vary in shape and design, which makes the skyline much more interesting than many western cities.
We also enjoyed many great meals. Our hosts like to show us the different food options available in Malaysia, so we are experiencing and loving a great variety of food – more on that later!
