April 2024

One month in Kuala Lumpur

I rented an apartment on the 25th floor of a building in the Bukit Bintang district of Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. Looking outside the window my place felt dwarfed by the neighbor tower Merdeka 118, which, like the name suggests, is 118 floors high, plus an antenna spire that takes the whole thing to over 700 meters. It’s the second tallest building in the world, behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

I also visited the famous Petronas Towers, the world's tallest twin skyscrapers, which are very beautiful and offer a great view from the 88th floor and from the skybridge on the 42nd floor, which connects the two towers.

Kuala Lumpur means "muddy confluence”, not a very auspicious name, and it refers to the place where the Gombak and Klang rivers meet. Bukit Bintang means “star hill”. It’s a neighborhood full of shopping centers and hotels. Life inside those shopping centers feels radically different, not only because of the contrast between the strong air conditioning inside and the stuffy heat outside but also because of the westernized culture on offer, from the international luxury brands to the neatly presented restaurants.

Other places I visited in Kuala Lumpur were parks (KLCC Park, Titiwangsa Lake Park, Perdana Botanical Garden) and museums (National Art Gallery, Muzium Negara, Urban Museum, Aquaria).

Petronas Towers

Merdeka 118

Hijab sale

What about the food?

I ate lots of nasi goreng (fried rice with meat and vegetables), nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaf, served with meat and vegetables), and roast duck. I also ate lots of Japanese food, which is available everywhere. Each shopping center I visited had at least a dozen Japanese restaurants.

Nasi Goreng

Turmoil in Kuala Lumpur

(A long tale of nuisances besetting me while I was in Malaysia, and beyond.)

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on a Friday night. On Saturday, my laptop computer stopped working. I had to wait until Monday to have some technicians look at it, but nobody could fix it. So I went to the Apple website and ordered a nice new MacBook Pro with top configurations, to be delivered to me in Malaysia. After a week, I checked to see if there was already a delivery date and learned that the order had been cancelled, no reason given. I tried it again, and the next day Apple cancelled the order again. I asked a friend in the USA to make the purchase for me, but he wasn’t given the option to deliver the computer outside the country. I asked a friend in Brazil, but the prices there are exactly double the prices in other countries. While I was doing all that, my iPhone stopped working too. I could still use it with wifi, but cellular data was not available.

I finally resigned myself to get a computer with much lower specs than what I could get online, and went to a store to buy it. Then my Bank of America card got blocked when I tried to make the purchase. Calling the bank on the phone (which was also a problem because my iPhone was broken) didn’t help, they insisted they could only confirm my identity if I had a USA phone number or if I went in person to one of their branches. With no computer, no phone, and no access to my bank account, going to the USA was actually the only sensible thing to do.

That was a 30 hour trip: 1 hour taxi to the airport + 4 hour wait at the airport (because my plane was delayed) + 7.5 hour flight to Dubai + 2 hour wait at the airport + 14.5 hour flight to New York + 1 hour taxi to my friend’s house.

While in New York, I was able to solve some of the problems. My bank card got unfrozen (but it required a couple of phone calls and two trips to the bank). I bought a new computer (at the Apple store, with lower specs than I would have wished). The old computer is still in a coma, refusing to let me get all the data that’s in there. The iPhone needs to have parts replaced, but since I bought it in Spain that can only be done there because they don’t have those parts here. Fortunately, my next destination is going to be Barcelona, so I hope I can solve the remaining problems there.

New MacBook Pro

And now what?

Barcelona awaits me, I'll be there in a few days.
But that's a story for another time.
Parlem aviat! (That's "talk to you soon" in Catalan.)

Petronas Towers