Monday 24th November. Took a train into town today and wandered about.
The Old Railway Station, Kuala Lumpur
One thing struck me straight away. Wandering about is not what you do here! Firstly, it’s too hot and humid to be comfortable walking around outside. You get sticky and sweaty and find yourself looking for a shop with aircon to dive into just to cool off. Secondly, this city is very clearly built for cars, not pedestrians. It’s full of flyovers and slip roads and concrete structures of all kinds. If you’re walking, you have to find your way around all of these things. Often there’s no pavement, and sometimes no way through at all.
But during the wandering I did while I was learning this valuable lesson, I did see some interesting things. One of the prettiest is the old Kuala Lumpur railway station, built by the British, and considerably prettier than King’s Cross. It is no longer the main railway station, having been replaced by a new one called “KL Sentral”. Given it’s location, I can only suppose that Sentral must be the Malay word for “about three quarters of a mile further away from the city centre.”
The KL monorail in front of the huge Berjaya Times Square complex
To be fair, though, KL Sentral is a good, modern transport hub, linking the international rail services with the train to the airport and the local rapid transit commuter trains as well as the space-age-looking monorail, pictured here.
