As I booked the cheapest available flights to get to Dublin and back to KL and then on to Sydney I had another long stopover in KL. This time 10 hours.
Not a problem though, since I had to tick one more thing off my Bucket list: A visit to the Petronas Towers.
Last time I was there with Basti, we didn't book online and they had no tickets available at the counter in the evening.
This time I had pre-booked over the internet and should be able to get to the top.
Immigration was all pretty relaxed, I picked up my backpack and brought it to the luggage locker station and boarded a train to KL Sentral.
From there I took another train (underground) to a station near the two towers and once at the surface orientation wasn't a problem any more since these two magnificent Giants could be spotted right away when I exited the station.
It was still a good walk to the fountain in front of them.
This was also the first time I got hit again by the heat and Humidity just 3 degrees north of the equator. This was quite a change from when I was last time at the fresh air in Dublin.
I had booked my visit for 5pm and still had an hour or so to walk around the mall in the lowest four or five floors of the complex.
It was just like any other mall anywhere, with the same shops and nearly the same restaurants. So I got a coffee to use the internet (which didn't work) and waited a while.
Just before the tour should start I got my ticket from the counter and went through the security check, handed in my bag and waited for the group that would join me on my way to the top.
First stop was the Skybridge at 170m the highest in the world. It connects the two towers at the 42nd floor. We had a 15 minutes or so to walk around and have a look and take some pictures and then had to join the group again to go up to the 86th floor (out of 88) at 370m.
From here (we visited the north eastern tower) we had a good 330 degree view around Kuala Lumpur (about 30 degrees were blocked by the only thing as tall as us - the south west tower :-)).
The Petronas Twin towers were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 when they were surpassed by 101 Taipei. However, they are still the talles twin towers at 451.90 m.
It was time to slowly get back to the Airport already, so after our tour was over I had one final view from the base and took the train back to KL Sentral where I found a little food place and got some cheap curry and a very large glass of Orange juice. And this time (not like in Nepal, Thailand or Vietnam) the Juice was great, fresh and really lovely.
I had to stop in KLIA 1 (the general KL airport) to pick up my backpack and then jump on the train again to get to KLIA 2. An entirly new Airport (with it's own landing strip and most services separate from KLIA 1) just 3 km down the road, dedicated for low cost airlines, specifically AirAsia who have their Hub here (Yesterday (at the time of writing this), AirAsia Flight QZ8501 went missing).
I was very positively surprised by the check-in procedure if AirAsia, much better and more friendly than Ryanair.
All went well, I tried unsuccessfully to spend my last Ringgit and got on the plane to Sydney.
It was nearly midnight again when we pushed back and took off.
Unbelievably I had again two seats empty next to me and looked forward to use them for sleeping, but at the fasten seatbelt sign still lit from take off and I nipped off leaning against the window.
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