Back to Reality: Walking in Kuala Lumpur

Hitting the streets in KL

Transitioning from Singapore’s Order to KL’s Chaos

A word of advice: three days in Melaka is not enough time to make a comfortable transition from the immaculate order and cleanliness of Singapore to the grime, poverty, and chaos of Kuala Lumpur (KL). You need more time to decompress. To get the fantasyland city of Singapore out of your system and get ready for reality. Or rather, reality, but super sized.

Especially if you, like us, are headed into the heart of Chinatown (rather than the glitzy, more modern part of KL).

Stepping off the KMT Komuter train at Kuala Lumpur Station (the closest to Chinatown), we immediately walked by several beggars (some in dire condition), piles of garbage, and run-down buildings. All of these things can be seen to a lesser extent in Melaka. None are seen in Singapore.

Don’t Step in Poo

Oh yeah, and in her first five minutes in KL, my wife stepped directly in a pile of poo.

Human poo!

She was wearing her Chaco sandals at the time. The great thing about Chacos is that they have wonderfully deep tread that gives traction on almost any surface. The bad thing about Chacos is that they have horribly deep tread that makes it extremely difficult to clean human feces out of. Pro travel tip: DON’T STEP IN POO!!!

Walking in Kuala Lumpur

Spoiler alert: walking in Kuala Lumpur is not easy.

Once we finally got to our hotel and dropped off all our bags, we set out to explore. Our hotel was not far from the national mosque, and I thought that would be a nice introduction to KL. I used Google Maps to plot our walking route.

The mosque was just a half a kilometer or so to the east of us. But instead of plotting a more or less straight line from our hotel to the mosque, Google Maps had us walk about a kilometer south, then swing east, then trace that same kilometer back north.

Google’s directions said something like this:

• Exit the hotel and turn right

• Walk past three bad smells and four good ones

• Turn left and jump the fence that is directly in front of you

• If you are feeling lucky, cross the street… if you are not feeling lucky, turn back now

• Make your way across the series of freeway off-ramps where cars will hurl around the corner at you and your children at 60 kilometers per hour. Most drivers consider it a bonus to their day if they run a pedestrian down

• If you made it across the off-ramps (congratulations!), hop into the nearest 7-11 to cool off in the air conditioning. Try not to think about the fact that later you will have to go back across those off-ramps to get back to the hotel

• Turn north and walk in the road, as there is no sidewalk here (cars are now going 70 kilometers per hour and still trying to run you down)

• Dodge some poo. Remember: DON’T STEP IN POO!!!

• Fight the Black Knight

• Google is not sure what comes next. We suggest you sit down and wait until you can hear the call to prayer and walk toward the sound

• Good luck!

“That can’t be the best route,” I thought.

So I took my phone to the front desk of our hotel and asked if the route marked was really the one we should take. I figured that the desk clerk would take one look at the map and laugh and laugh about how stupid Google is. She would tell me to just walk east, and I would find the mosque easily.

But instead, she grabbed the phone, studied it closely for a minute, and said, “Yes, that is the way.”

Oh. Um… OK.

The daughters in KL

KL Frogger: Terror (and Poo) on the Open Road

But she was wrong. That wasn’t really the way. We tried to follow the route, but it turns out it is basically impossible to walk from KL Chinatown to the National Mosque.

And not only is it impossible, it is dangerous to try. Crossing the street in KL is a nightmare. In many parts of KL there are very few stoplights or crosswalks. You are on your own to make it across the street. And the traffic is constant. There was never a point in time where we easily crossed a major road. You simply have to weave your way into the flow of traffic.

Vietnam is famous for crazy street crossings, but we found it easy there. You just walk out into the traffic, which is 80% motorbikes, and everyone simply goes around you. You could literally do it blindfolded.

In KL, motorbikes make up more like 20% of the traffic, and instead of swerving around you, KL drivers will cut across six lanes of traffic for the chance to run down a pedestrian.

And don’t forget that while you are playing a game of human Frogger — dodging maniac drivers while you pray your way across each street — you also need to be careful that when you finally make it to the far side and leap gleefully to safety, you do not land in a pile of human feces. DON’T STEP IN POO!!! We saw quite a few piles peppering the sidewalk.

So we figured we would skip walking and just use public transportation. In Singapore, Google Maps knew what the public transportation system was doing down to the minute, but it is a little hazy on KL. We tended to get where we wanted to go following Google Maps, but the time estimates it gave were way off. Google thinks taking the metro train two stops takes an hour and a half. It doesn’t.

In general, we got where we were going in about 60% of the time Google Maps estimated.

And while Singapore had almost made me change my opinion on public buses, KL reaffirmed to me that buses suck. Well, actually they stink. Bad. I am not fussy about a little stink, but a couple of the buses we used in KL made me gag a little. I am gagging right now remembering.

Gag. Awkkk.

We failed to get to the national mosque on our first try. It took two more tries before we made it. That first day we gave up on the mosque and instead went to the Central Market. It is pretty touristy, but:

1. I don’t really mind “touristy” in smallish doses

2. It had air conditioning!

So our first afternoon wasn’t a complete failure. We headed back to the hotel with the commitment to take a short rest and come out again, ready to conquer KL in all of its crazy-driving, grime-loving, feces-stepping glory.

We were determined to figure the city out. We had a goal. But because travel, we ended up learning that it is just better to take a taxi (or these days, a Grab) in KL.