Kuala Lumpur is a city caught in a
metropolitan limbo. It aspires to be
Singapore, but at times feels more like
Bangkok. It is this tension between the clean, clinical efficiency of business-like Singapore, and the raffish rough edges of the Thai capital, that conjures up much of the Malaysian capital’s
undoubted charm.
In Kuala Lumpur, you can be skimming across town on the
monorail past the soaring, record-breaking,
Petronas Towers one minute and the next you are dumped at street level amongst the aromatic orgy of
hawker stands and the unwelcome
reality of
traffic chaos.
This is all a far cry from the city’s
low-key origins, when a huddle of
poor tin miners first crowded around the mosquito-ridden banks of the slimy Gombak and Klang rivers in 1857. Little could they have imagined that within a century and a half, Kuala Lumpur would have metamorphosed into one of Asia’s most
vibrant and
compelling cities.
Kuala Lumpur, meaning
‘muddy confluence’, has
grown with bewildering speed since these early days; a growth that accelerated during the 1980s and early 1990s as the
‘Asian Tiger’ economy propelled the ever-changing skyline.
The
speed of change has resulted in
old Chinese houses and
faded colonial mansions idling alongside huge
gleaming glass and
steel towers, while food
hawkers and traditional
fortune tellers share the streets with bustling
businessmen and guidebook toting
tourists.
The city is not so much a melting pot or clichéd contrast between old and new, but rather an ever-evolving
jungle of buildings, which seem to have sprouted organically from the sweaty vegetation and murky rivers that still snake through the heart of town.
One of the most admirable aspects of the city is the level of
tolerance displayed by its
cosmopolitan residents, with ethnic
Malays,
Chinese,
Indians and
Europeans all living and working together with few racial problems - certainly far less than those experienced in Western Europe or North America.
For many Malaysians, Kuala Lumpur is quite simply the
Ibukota (
‘Mother City’) and as such it is treated with great
reverence and abbreviated fondly to
‘KL’.
Over the last few years a whole swathe of
construction and
infrastructure projects have seen the city’s skyline become crowded with cranes and clanking machinery as entire neighborhoods have undergone redevelopment.
The emergence of
Putrajaya, the new administrative capital, and
Cyberjaya, the key section of the new Multimedia Super Corridor, are now steering Malaysia back towards the course set by former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad with the aim of becoming a
fully developed nation by 2020.
One relative constant in Kuala Lumpur is the climate, with
consistently warm daytime temperatures,
balmy evenings and
afternoons that are often punctuated by
thunderstorms, usually passing quickly to leave the
evenings cool and
rain free.
The Columbus World Travel Guide has been published for 26 years and is sold in over 90 countries worldwide.
Related Kuala Lumpur Content
Word Travels is a comprehensive travel guide covering hundreds of cities and holiday resorts in more than 125 countries.
Related Malaysia Content
The Columbus World Travel Guide has been published for 26 years and is sold in over 90 countries worldwide.
Word Travels is a comprehensive travel guide covering hundreds of cities and holiday resorts in more than 125 countries.
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