In Reply to: taxis posted by Angela on Thursday, 3. February 2005 at 18:30 Bali Time:
On short trips, no matter where you are going, the driver will say it costs ten ringgits. Even for a two ringgit trip.
And, yeh, I know it's only about four bucks, but they do add up. And I'd rather get an honest taxi driver and give him a big tip. There are so few rip-offs in KL that the taxi rip-off feels very insulting, even after enduring Bali and the scammers at Jakarta Airport. And I really hope that when men travel in taxis with their families, they don't get the same offers that single men get.
Malaysia in general has fantastic mosques. KL is no exception. The architecture is a mish-mash of Arabic, Malay, Dutch, British colonial, chinese, Indian... it's a great city to just wander around and gawk. But that's for a single traveller. I have no idea what to do with kids. For young kids, there's a park in the shadow of the Petronas Towers that is mega-huge and has a play area the size of a small farm. The only problem is that there are ants everywhere in the grass... big buggers, too -- bitey ones, so don't sit down for long. But the play area has soft rubber everywhere so the kids don't smash their skulls. It might get pretty warm, though. Which might be why there's a convenient shallow pool.
Basically, everything you can do at home, you can do in KL, except it's (usually) cheaper and the food is better. Keep the kids off the road, for God's sake, and avoid them yourself, where possible. they all drive like Balinese, except they don't do the "beep beep" thing or bother to slow down or swerve.
I don't shop much, but prices seem to be around the same as Bali (more expensive than the rest of Indonesia)... maybe slightly higher but a much bigger range available. Chinatown market might be the cheapest place to shop if you're not claustrophobic.
You can't go on the walkway between the Petronas Towers anymore because of the terrorist threat. And it's kinda weird, coz I don't often look up at buildings... they don't look that big from the outside because there's nothing behind them to give you a sense of scale. Nice design, though.
You should ride the monorail, just because the music makes you feel like you're in a video game. And you should watch the TV station that IS a video game that people at home play via SMS... just so you can go home and say to people, "What the hell...?"
Golf is a bit cheaper than Bali, not as cheap as Thailand, about twice as expensive as Jakarta, and about 3-4 times as expensive as Yogyakarta. In case you were wondering.
The city centre is mainly shopping malls. It is built for convenient living, but isn't really a tourist destination per se. There is a lot more character in the older chinese and Indian areas of the city.
Oh, and every now and again there's just a patch of jungle. Like, right in the middle of high-rise buildings and concrete. It's a freaky head trip, man.