After 2 days in Singapore, it was time to move on to my next destination, another first – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia! After a busy panda-filled day at River Wonders, I took the bus+metro back to my hotel, collected my luggage and booked my Grab to the airport. It’s super speedy and I had plenty of time for my 9:20PM flight – being neighbours, it’s 1hr 10 minute flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and I made sure to have time to quickly check out the cool airport that is Changi!
Where to stay
With hindsight, a late PM arrival into Kuala Lumpur and a slightly later flight out of Kuala Lumpur than I’d originally planned (booked 00:30AM, it got cancelled so I swapped to a 2:40AM), I should have just booked a hotel at the airport and paid for 2 nights to get some rest before my departure. However, I stayed next to KL Sentral station where the airport express train goes to/from, so it was still convenient and the hotel was connected by a direct walkway from the station, so super easy to get to even late at night. I stayed in the Hilton Kuala Lumpur, with a bit of a discount from my Expedia points, and honestly it was such a luxurious and great experience – my only regret is only being there to sleep! I arrived around midnight, check-in was quick, and I headed to my room which was amazing, very spacious with an incredibly comfortable bed, a nice view, and a powerful shower. There was also a huge bathtub, would have loved to have taken advantage for some relaxing, but there just wasn’t enough time! Then I was up early around 7:30AM to pack up and check out before heading out to Zoo Negara Malaysia for the day.
Zoo Negara Malaysia
I spent almost the whole day visiting Zoo Negara Malaysia, specifically to see the giant pandas but of course also checking out the other animals that they have. The zoo is open from 9AM until 5PM, I got there around 9:30AM – it was a 30minute ride from the Hilton Kuala Lumpur to the zoo via Grab and cost me RM22.54 (approximately £3.90). I left the zoo around 3:30/3:45PM and took a Grab from there to the Petronas Towers – it was a bit of a longer wait as the zoo is further outside the main city, but the trip was only 20minutes and there wasn’t much traffic at all (this journey cost RM39.15). It was an incredibly hot day with very little cloud, and the zoo was quite exposed, otherwise I think I could have filled the remaining hour of the opening hours. For a non-Malaysian visitor, an adult ticket was RM93 and I bought this at the ticket counter on-site. The zoo is set out in quite a loop format, so it’s pretty easy to navigate – from the entrance I took a left and worked my way around clockwise (mostly as this looks the fastest route to the pandas XD) and I think I managed to see everything, or at least get to every area. I visited on a weekday and it still was pretty busy with lots of families, so maybe it was a holiday, but I had thought it might be quieter – there were some areas with a lot of visitors and I had to wait a bit to get a good spot.
Highlights: Overall the zoo has a very nice range of animals on show. I really liked the elephant space, although they weren’t making use of the whole yard when I saw them, it looked like a nice space for them. The tigers also had very nice spaces and I really like the multiple viewing options for them. The orangutans were also a highlight, I visited them at peak heat of the day, so that was my fault, but I liked the hillside spaces they had, it’s definitely unique and memorable. And the savannah also stood out, it had a beautiful backdrop of mountains and was a huge space, the animals were all very separate and had plenty of space to graze on their own – of course seeing a young giraffe here was particularly fantastic! There was also the best range of porcupines here, I saw some species that I’d never heard of before and they looked amazing. Also there is an orange cat living with the capybaras and I really love that (the cat is even included on the map)^
Lowlights: completely nothing to do with the animals, but the facilities weren’t the best – not sure if I just picked the ‘wrong’ toilets to use, but they weren’t very pleasant and there was no running water for either flushing or washing hands (there were both western and squat toilets available). I went to The Wild Restaurant for a lunch stop, and the food was pretty typical zoo food, nothing special, but it was quite small, so I can see on a weekend or Summers day that it would be packed (I was there a bit after lunchtime, so was ok to find a seat), and I did find that there were a lot of large flies flying around. There was a restaurant at the pandas, but this was super small and was very busy whenever I went past, so I decided not to stop there. The gift shops were also not great, quite small and packed, it was hard to see products and I was just missing some nice panda things that were specific to the pandas living here in Malaysia (lots of standard panda items, but things I’ve seen all the time in China).
Petronas Towers
After leaving the zoo there was enough daylight left to see one thing in the city – I headed to the Petronas Towers, the worlds tallest twin-skyscrapers, that are joined by a bridge on the 41st/42nd floors. They are a well known landmark in Kuala Lumpur and I decided to check them out. I contemplated going up, but it was getting very cloudy as can be seen in the photos and later there was a downpour of rain – had it been a blue sky and clear day still then I think I would have gone on up. However I’m not the biggest fan of heights, so I’m not sure how that would have gone! I also checked out the KLCC mall at the bottom of the towers, there were a range of shops here covering all budgets. There was a convenience store here, so I topped up my snack supply and picked up a sliced egg and cheese sandwich, which was great (I love both egg and cheese sandwiches separately, together is a great mix for me XD), plus a drink and enjoyed that outside with a view of the towers. I then headed over to the Bukit Bintang area to check out the shopping there – there is a handy covered walkway that goes most of the way between the two areas, which meant I didn’t get too wet once it started raining! From here, I took the metro back to Sentral, stopped off for a quick McDonalds, then collected my luggage from the hotel and took the train back to the airport. And that ended the speediest stay in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!
