The city that never was

After Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore I wasn't particularly interested in what Kuala Lumpur had to offer - it was just another Asian city packed with skyscrapers and shopping malls as far as I could gather.

It does have the Petronas Towers, but after Tokyo's cityscape even they were a bit dull - especially when I found out you can't go to the top! I was content to photograph them from afar.

As I was only there for two days I challenged myself to see as little of the city as possible. Not too tricky as there isn't much in KL, but I gave it a crack.

At first I did pretty well staying in the Times Square shopping mall on the other side of the street from the hostel. And it was a pretty big place, so I was able to occupy myself fairly easily.

I even went to watch Terminator at the Imax they had inside in an effort to avoid the city.

But then just as I thought I was going to manage to see nothing of the city at all and fulfil my goal, Chris announced it was his 30th birthday. Bugger.

So off we set on the monorail to have a look at the towers and grab a celebratory dinner. And bugger me if they're not actually pretty bloody impressive at night.

I'm not sure what Chris is doing in the picture. I think he was trying to hold up the towers, but it just looks like he's complaining about how noisy they are.

We decided to walk back to the hostel rather than get public transport, further exposing me to the city I'd wanted to avoid, dammit.

I'm glad we did though, as we found a nice little expats pub. It didn't look much from the outside

but the owner was friendly, we met and chatted to a couple of expat businessmen and there wasn't another traveller in sight. Perfect.

There then followed a bit of an impromptu bar crawl to a locals' bar where the deafening wail of Chinese karaoking to Cantopop drove us out after one drink,

and to an English-style pub where the young Malay companions of the many middle-aged expats earned their drinks by the hour. If you know what I mean.

I'd come so close to seeing nothing of KL, but was foiled at the last. Nevermind, it was fun in the end!