I’ve been busy lately and I’m sure you’ve all guessed just as much, judging from the brevity of my recent posts. I was neck-deep in paperwork at the office, then I had to put in some overtime as part of mommy duty, helping OnlyGirl and RoundBoy with their Maths homework. I had no time for blogging. I couldn’t be bothered with vessel sinks. And the treadmill gathered a fine layer of dust the whole week last week.
So to make up for the long silence, let me take you on a mini tour around KL. Just so you all get a feel of what KL looks like.
First up, DBKL building.
DBKL stands for “Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur”. KL City Hall in English. They’ve got a nice fountain in front of the building but it wasn’t visible from where I was shooting it. I was in a moving car, from quite a distance.
Notice the trees on both sides of the road? That’s one of the things I love about KL and Malaysia, in general. It’s so green all around, even in the city. I solemnly swear that this was taken at the heart of the city of KL. Scout’s honour!
Moving on to the next photo, that’s an LRT station you see on the right.
It’s part of the STAR (acronym of the company name: Sistem Transit Aliran Ringan, which means ‘light rail transit system’) LRT network. The station’s name is ‘Bandaraya’, which means ’city’.
Behind it is Sogo Department Store, used to be part of Sogo Japan before it went bust in 2000, now privately owned. They used to have a huge indoor artificial waterfall, right next to the food court, but I’m not sure if it’s still there because I haven’t been there in ages.
Did you notice the overpass under the LRT track? This is the other end of that overpass.
This is for pedestrians to use to cross the road. I suppose it would be ”an example of Moorish architecture” from the Western point of view.
More trees by the roadside. In the background is a condominium (the white building) and a shopping centre (the brown-red building), which used to be THE place to be before KLCC and Petronas Twin Towers came into being.
From afar, you can see this building with a distinctive gold facade — Wisma Sime Darby, or Sime Darby Building. Sime Darby might be well-known for tires, but they’re also big in property. They’ve recently merged with a huge palm plantation company called Guthrie.
Driving in KL can be pretty tricky so you better pay attention to the road signs. As you can see, the road signs are in blue. Items in white boxes are landmarks, like PWTC (Putra World Trade Centre) and KLCC (KL City Centre, where the Petronas Twin Towers are). Items in green boxes indicate highways.
If you follow the center lane, you’ll eventually find yourself on the highway going to the town of Ipoh in the state of Perak. If you follow the right lane, it can lead you to the Ampang Elevated Highway. What the road signs don’t tell you is that you can also follow the left lane to go to the Ampang Elevated Highway by going through Jalan Tun Razak. I did warn you that driving in KL can be pretty tricky, didn’t I? Oh, and in case you’re wondering, ‘Jln’ is short form for ‘jalan’, which means ‘street’, very similar to the Cebuano ‘dalan’.
In our case, we took the leftmost lane to go into Jalan Tun Razak because the bridge going into Jalan Sultan Ismail (from the rightmost lane) looked congested at that time.
See those shrubs in the middle of the road? They’re unique because new leaves come out red, before turning green as they mature. They’re a very hardy species, very easy to care for, can be trimmed into a variety of shapes, and can grow into tall trees if left alone. I love those shrubs :)
To get into Jalan Tun Razak, we had to turn left because if we went straight ahead, we would have gone into Jalan Kuching (literally ‘Cat Street’). What we didn’t expect was that traffic into Jalan Tun Razak would be heavy, as well.
In Malaysia, people say ‘jam’ when they’re referring to ‘traffic jam’. In the Philippines, they say ‘matrapik’ or ‘traffic’. Indonesia is an altogether different story. They say ‘macet’ (pronounced as ma-chet).
See that road sign on the left? It means ‘Give way’.
Pics all taken at high noon, the skies were downcast because it was about to rain, so the colours in the pics look flat despite the editing. Sorry ’bout that.
At home, I only see streets dotted with trees in Makati and even there it’s bare compared to KL. One thing I noticed is they also adapt english words (sistem, transit) when there is no equivalent in the malay language.
how observant of you :) that’s right. ‘exhaust’ (‘tambutso’ in the philippines) becomes ‘ekzos’. ‘bag’ is ‘beg’. ‘jam’ is jem’.
I love the tour, it seems as if I traveled with you, more Mimi, please…
yup, imagine we’re in a car, driving along KL’s roads. you’re taking pics while i’m doing the commentary ;) part 2 coming up very soon.
lotsa greens indeed, and your traffic jams would pale beside manila’s. ^-^
It always amaze me how different a non-Malaysian views this country of mine.