Jul 292011
 

Nearly every day this week I’ve gone to bed thinking, “Tomorrow I’ll head up the Petronas Towers so I can finally start making my way South from Kuala Lumpur.”

Well, despite having been kept up until 4 by the bedbugs yet again, this time, I really was gonna do it! So with only 3 hours of sleep I crawled out of bed and dragged myself to the RapidKL across town.

Each day, the folks at the Petronas Corporation distribute a limited number of tickets – either to the skybridge that joins the two towers (for 10 ringgit) or to the very top (for 40). Ignore anything you might read which claims the trip is free; it used to be, but not anymore.

The process goes something like this:

1) You get in line
2) You wait anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours
3) If any tickets are left when you get to the front, you’re given the next available timeslot and go home happy. Otherwise, you try again tomorrow.

Fortunately I did get a ticket. Unfortunately it took 2 hours – and by that time there were none left to the top. Oh well, I guess the skybridge would have to do.

But as my “appointment” wasn’t until 1:40pm, with ticket-in-hand I hurried back home to sleep for an hour and a half longer.

…And to recharge my phone, because I pretty much killed the battery listening to Pandora and remoting into my PC while standing around for 120 minutes 😛

The trip to the skybridge began with a short video about the Petronas Corporation. OK, so honestly, this was such a blatant load of corporate propaganda-laden filth I could barely believe my eyes; it felt almost akin to a North Korean documentary about Kim Jong Il. The script might just as well have been rewritten as “Petronas is great, Petronas is powerful, all hail Petronas.” I really wish I’d filmed it to post a clip here…if only I’d known.

I found security to be just a little bit strange as well – everyone had to go through airport-style X-Ray machines, and an armed guard escorted us every step of the way. Even the shopping mall at the base of the towers was plastered with signs forbidding photography. In a shopping mall.

Honestly, what’s up with this company?

The view from the skybridge was admittedly quite nice, but in my opinion still not worth three hours of my life. Perhaps if it’d been sunny out, or had only required an hour of waiting.

Ah well, at least I can cross that one off my list 😉

By the time I left the towers it had started to rain, so although I’d planned to explore a nearby residential neighborhood I decided to call it off. Instead, I headed to a small gym that Michael told me he found just outside of town.

It turned out to be WAY outside of town – at the very end of the train line, and then another 15 minutes on foot. And of course it poured only during the exact 15 minutes I was walking 😐

Ah well again.

At least it was a nice opportunity to catch a glimpse beyond the city center – and although pretty mediocre, the gym was cheap as hell. 6 ringgit ($2), the least I’ve paid yet.

…Plus, at long last, after more than a week – I was finally ready to get out of Kuala Lumpur and start heading South! 🙂

Note: These posts are behind realtime; the above took place on Wednesday, January 26th.

  21 Responses to “The Petronas Skybridge”

  1. Way to be right in the middle of the towers 😉

  2. Cool movie reference and elevator pic 🙂 I never bothered the wait 😛

  3. …and yeah, weird about the mall-photo restriction. I guess it serves basically to hinder normal people from getting their memories, whereas the bad guys will get their photos anyway. Baka…

  4. @Rachel: HAH! Ur amazing <3

    @Peder: Yeah, pretty much like the effectiveness of most of anti-terror laws IMO... "NO BIG TUBES OF TOOTHPASTE ON AIRPLANES! Oh, you have ten separate 3ml bottles of unknown liquid? Well, alright, as long as no single bottle is over 3ml 😛

  5. hahaha (to ur previous comment about the toothpaste)

  6. lol -rofl- love it- I haven’t seen these in so long…. this may be one of my fav’s-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuOuxRD1Bc

    I want the best o f Ali G reel.

  7. HAHA yeah, that’s def. one of my favorites too 😆

  8. That is really lame about a 2 hour wait for a ticket!!!! Glad you made it up though….that is a really cool building.

    Ali G is AWESOME!

  9. …And whenever it comes on, I’m still reminded of that time at your place when the three of us watched like every episode ever made back-to-back 😉

  10. and juiced a pizza? 😉

  11. LOL! I almost forgot about that 😉

  12. wow, really?! hahaha And broke that pot outside?? I have pictures…if only there was video too!! good times

  13. AWESOME!!!! I didn’t even know you were gone already! NICE PICS 🙂

  14. @Rachel: Oh, I guess I meant to say “I didn’t even think about that” – of course I DO remember it well 😉

    @VV: I am gone! But not in Malaysia – this post is from 6 months ago. I’m on a layover in Budapest now, hehe 😀

  15. On the first December 2011. I was the firstone who visit the petronas twintower.
    It was a great moment. The tower was closed for tree months. Every employe want it on the photo with me. I had a special tour with the manager.He told me the story of the tower.
    And at last they i had a special precent.
    Thank you MR Hunch.

  16. Wow, cool!! How’d you get that hooked up? 😀

  17. Well I saw more than one time on tv how ddo they built it.
    And i think by myself sometime i want go to see it real and i want climb it.
    My last vacantion in Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur I had the chance to do it.
    But the taxi driver from airport to hotel told me the tower is cloced for 3 months.
    So I go to the tower, and there they say its tomorow the 1e december and then it gets open.
    I go early in the morning at 5.45 and I was the first one there.
    And Mister Hunch give me a tour to the bridge and the top.
    So I was the lucky man thad day.
    I wil sent later photo,s.

  18. Ah, gotcha…so just really lucky timing. Nice! 🙂

  19. haha Rachel’s first comment was my first thought too! We’re going to have to coin a new meaning for Petronas Towers and add it to urbandictionary.

    nice photography as usual.

  20. Haha it’s people like you who have bloated UD well beyond the limits of actual usability 😛

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