One month in KL

This morning the roaring sounds of accelerating Formula 1 cars were added to the usual construction noise that serves as my wake-up call at my new apartment at the edge of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre area. For the first time, KLCC has been turned into a racing track for three days, with all the hassle and excitement such an event entails. The process of conversion of roads into racing tracks with all the required barriers makes it more difficult to get around in an already quite hectic traffic situation. Hopefully, once the race is over, I am able to also see the city streets without the barricades that are there now.

The city race is pretty exciting thing, but being in KL you almost think that it is normal that these kind of big things happen. Just in the past two weeks, the city hosted the International Olympic Committee to choose Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. The last week saw the ASEAN foreign ministers summit with related meetings, with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini attending. Last week British PM David Cameron held a state visit. Something extraordinary is always happening at KL.

Construction everywhere

At the same time the city moves ahead in its own rhythm: there is a lot of construction going on everywhere you go. The Klang Valley metropolitan area, the centre of which is Kuala Lumpur, is expected to have 10 million residents by 2020, compared to less than 7 million living in the area now. This sets special requirements for transportation and feeds the hunger for new high-rise condominiums, each trying to trump the other with even more extravagant architecture, even greater heights, or even more luxurious amenities.

The multicultural aspects of buildings at KL mean that many hotels and new high-rises lack floor numbers containing the number 4, due to Chinese superstitions related to similarity between the word ‘four’ and death. I probably would not want to live on floor ‘death’ either. In some hotels the Western superstition for avoiding the number 13 is also taken account, but in my high-rise for example there are two 13th floors, 13 and 13A (which is the 14th floor renamed). In the same way, there is no apartment units 4 or 14, just 3A and 13A.

New condos, some of which are far from KLCC, require also new, bigger malls for people to shop, eat, and entertain themselves. The KLCC area is already saturated by different kind of malls, each with a very different look and feel: there are the older, a not so nice ones, and there are shiny new ones. All newer bigger malls have at least a multiplex cinema in them, the Berjaya Times Square shopping mall also has an amusement park with a rollercoaster and a totally sickening Top Spin ride which seemed to never end.

It is difficult to avoid going to malls, because they offer both a refuge from the heat outside, and are also connected to each other so that they offer usually the most direct path from one point to another. Sometimes they are connected to public transport, but many times also not.

Public transport

Malaysia, being one of the more car-centric countries of the world, has been investing a lot in public transportation do combat the increasinlgy frustrating traffic jams. The Monorail line and two light rail transit (LRT) lines are part of RapidKL system. Both of the LRT lines are both fully automated driverless lines and they are being extended, while the Monorail line will also be extended in the future. In addition, a totally new 51km metro rail transit (MRT) line is being constructed with stage one opening the end of next year.

Additionally there are the two KTM Komuter lines which connect to the suburban areas around KL, as well as the KLIA Transit and KLIA Express lines which connect KL with Kuala Lumpur International Airport that is located 45 kilometres away near the shore. In addition, there are a number of bus lines, including free-of-charge GoKL lines going around the KLCC area (which also have WiFi) and a number of other regular bus lines some of which look really old.

Moving to other areas of Malaysia is usually done by intercity buses, which are comfortable, cheap and reasonably fast means of transport. High speed intercity trains are being introduced as well, with the first one to Penang and the Thai border just opened a few weeks ago, while the construction of a similar link from KL to Johor Bahru and Singapore is expected to start this year. For really faraway places, such as East Malaysia, you have to take the plane.