Walking in Kuala Lumpur
The Lonely Planet said KL isn’t a pedestrian-friendly city but we’d spent enough time in Asia to understand what that means – no gutters, slippery surfaces and uneven pathways with motorbikes parked over them – so we felt pretty confident about whizzing through a walking tour in the morning. We did want to get a feel for the city beyond its shopping centres after all.
We probably walked 2kms without seeing anything of note (except the tourist info booth which we found once and then had to backtrack to find again because it had moved). We could’ve handled pedestrian-unfriendly streets, but these streets were more like freeways of the most pedestrian-unfriendly variety. We’d be walking along a road from the station following the map to our next destination when suddently we’d find ourselves needing to cross a freeway exit. Sure, that’s not so hard, but after crossing the exit we realised the footpath was no more – we were standing on the edge of a few flyovers with our destination glimmering at us in the distance. We could cross one freeway without too much hassle, but multiple flyovers would take a real MacGyver and some mountain-climbing gear. So we backtracked again. And again and again.
We were getting so frustrated that upon finding a station we thought we’d just catch a train to the next point in the walking tour. Luckily enough some locals took pity on us and gave us an introduction to being a pedestrian in KL. Turns out we just needed to go through tunnels, up stairs, over freeways and occasionally underground in unmarked pedestrian tunnels. It’s all about tunnels, but it’d help if there were some friendly signs.
The highlight of the walking tour was definitely the National Mosque where we dressed in full robes and headscarfs and spoke about Islam to a very friendly and helpful woman. The building’s architecture is amazing and beautiful.
The low point of the walking tour would be where the two rivers meet. OK, maybe our hope of grand rushing rivers powerfully converging in the middle of a busy city was never going to be accurate, but this looked nothing more than two sewerage ducts meeting without fanfare or even a riverside cafe.