Travel Guides: All Countries / Asia / Malaysia / Kuala Lumpur
 |  | Travel Reviews : Kuala Lumpur |
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| | | | Kuala Lumpur goes up in the world
From the Mail on Sunday
Kuala Lumpur, or KL, as everyone seems to call it nowadays, has exploded over the past decade. Gone is that old provincial town slowly stirring from colonialism, with its cosy cricket ground, old clubhouse, Betjeman railway station, old mosque and elegant racecourse.
Malaysia's capital now loudly boasts the tallest building in the world. It has transmogrified its centre - called, of course, KLCC - by using the old racecourse. It's as if two or three Hyde Parks have been relandscaped and developed.
On top of all this, Malaysia has embarked on building from scratch - and a pretty scratch, too, of rolling hills, woods, river and oil palm forests - an entirely new administrative city.
It has a swishly new airport looking even better designed than our best, Stansted, with a monorail out to the gates. A new railway line is being completed to the city. So it should. For it is nearly 50 miles out of town. There must be some singularly bold long-range planners out in Malaysia, compared with our 20 years of nattering about a possible Terminal Five at Heathrow.
Over the airport my Malaysia Airlines flight banked under the bangs and flashes of thunderstorms. I remember an earlier trip, years ago, when I arrived by road, driving for hours northwards to KL from hygienic, efficient, obedient Singapore, passing rubber plantations all with British names.
Orchards of exotic fruits have been pushed back by the city's expansion, yet they still hang on. So do the worshippers trudging to the sacred cave in the mountains. Devotees, imperious to pain, drag weights through pins fixed through their flesh. But where were all the rubber plantations?
'All gone - no money in rubber any more!' Those thousands of rolling, green acres, spreading below the flight path and lining 40 miles of road to the city's outskirts, neatly lined, brightly gleaming, were something else. 'Palm oil plantations - Malaysia's biggest export.'
Travel guide: Kuala Lumpur
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| | | | Dining Mandarin-style
Some hotel groups, like Mandarin Oriental, almost guarantee comfort and style. I've long loved the old Mandarin in Hong Kong and the Oriental in Bangkok. I'm closely observing their Hyde Park in London and thought I'd examine the new one in KL.
There, looking small and elegant at the feet of the 88-storey 1,483ft high Twin Towers, the world's tallest building, stands the Mandarin, arms wide in welcome. Despite being dwarfed, it is 32 storeys high, has 643 guest rooms and the spreading notion of Club floors and a Club lounge (on the 24th) reserved for the specially favoured travellers.
The Twin Towers by day are OTT. But by night, magically lit like tinselled rockets, they really make you goggle. One Twin Tower, sternly guarded, belongs to the state oil company Petronas, which has financed the grand, new, wood-panelled 900-seater concert hall - 'the Malaysia Philharmonic are on next week'.
All this activity flourishes within a green 50 acres of what was once the Turf Club and is now a public park of lakes with orchestrated fountains all designed by a Brazilian landscape artist. Old trees have been moved from the racecourse into what is overall a 100-acre development. This includes a beautiful mosque, delicately carved, which glows by night like a jewel with a prayer hall for 2,500 and an overflow for a further 3,500.
The Pacifica restaurant in the Mandarin looks out on waving greenery. It provided a meal ranking among the top five of my five-week tour of the Antipodes. It has an Australian chef and a Scots executive chef. They provide a delicious fusion of Thai, Chinese and Japanese cuisine. Yum. We ate Oriental-style, dipping into each other's portions. Yum Yum. The restaurant buzzed not only with businessman clinching better bottom lines. Attractive young local couples could clutch one another.
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| | | | Getting married the Malay way
There's also a pretty good Chinese restaurant the Lai Po Heen. It is designed to resemble a rich merchant's mansion in the old Malaysia of the early 20th century. It offers Cantonese cuisine which, save for lunchtime dim sum, I find too bland. But the whirling Chinese chefs in the open kitchen whizzing sizzling woks around are stirring sights.
The old Central Market used to be a sprightly place. But its two floors now, except for a few shops selling cloth, antiques or stimulating Chinese foodstuffs, are given over to turistenkrap. Groups of bemused Americans, breaking their global journeys, gawked uneasily. 'Is this Korea?' one honked. If you want cries and squash and banter and loads of CDs, mobile phones, cameras and such like, probably fallen off the backs of rickshaws, try the bedlam of the night street markets in Chinatown.
I went reluctantly to dinner and a 'floor show' at the Seri Melayu. These often tourist-geared fakes I find as offensive as animals being made to dance in circuses. But the audience, spread around the tables and helping themselves to an intriguing buffet, some delicious, some not but all strictly Malay, included hardly two foreign faces. The performers produced an elegant, pleasing and brief reproduction of an old-time Malay wedding.
The Malays intrigued me. For though a great majority look absolutely Chinese or Indian and have Indian or Chinese names, all will tell you proudly: 'No, we're Malay.' I drove out to see the new city in the making at Putrajaya. This extraordinary lavish expansion lies about 20 miles from both KL and the new airport. I haven't seen anything like it since the start of Brasilia.
Here are a huge lake, a river, the Prime Minister's colossal office block, more imposing than all Whitehall, and his extraordinary official residence, half-Versailles, half-Hollywood. We were allowed humbly to tour the latter.
There's an immense new rosy-red mosque overlooking the lake and opposite, across the water, grades of houses for the country's ministers and civil servants. Sunningdales for the upper ranks (yachts already bobbed at their garden's edges) and blocks of Croydon and Ealing to satisfy the lower grades. Begun only in 1997, it will be complete, full and in thrumming action by 2010, when the whole of astonishing Malaysia will be run from there.
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| | Available rental properties in Kuala Lumpur |
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| |  | | YTL The Tamarind @ Sentul East
The unit is on the 19th flr fully furnished. Full condo facilities. Internet 24hrs Streamyx, Satellite TV. BOFI kitchen.
|  | | Sarang Galloway Self Catering Home
Ideally located in the city centre. Walking distance to all major attractions. Suitable for groups of up to 12 or those with young children and aged
|  | | Sarang Galloway, Kuala Lumpur
Ideally located in Kuala Lumpur city centre. Suitable for those travelling in groups of up to 12 or those with young children and aged parents.
|  | | Embassy Row Apartment
Luxury 2 bed 2 bathroom fully furnished, fully aircondioned, city centre apartment overlooking KLCC + Petronas Towers. Located in Embassy Enclave,
|  | | Kuala Lumpur Condominium
3 bedrooms condo; Perfect for family, friends, group stay. Escaping the high costs of hotels while enjoying the convenience of a home.
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Holiday Rentals in Kuala Lumpur |
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