I had not been to Kuala Lumpur in four years and the last time I took a bus up from Singapore. Although it is farther from Singapore than Manila is from Baguio, the trip takes just over three hours by car via the super-smooth Malaysian North-South expressway. This time however, my travel mode was by air and we arrived at the relatively new Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Designed by internationally-renowned architect Kisho Kurokawa. KLIA has been operational since 2000. It is ultra modern with a capacity for more than the 15 million target for tourists the city and the country hope to attract. The airport was built the same time as our new NAIA III, the main difference is that it was completed on time and it has been operation since.
Another difference between the KLIA and NAIA is that, like most modern airports, it is six times farther that the NAIA is from the center of the city. The KLIA, like many of these international terminals, is located farther from city and residential districts for reasons of noise pollution, safety from terrorism, availability and proximity to manufacturing centers. The KLIA was also sited to connect it to Putrajaya, Malaysia’s new federal administrative center. This new "capital" adjoins another new satellite city called "Cyberjaya" – a new IT-oriented cluster. Both new satellites are ringed with low- and medium-density housing districts interspersed with neighborhood parks. The two are also separated from the main urban areas of Kuala Lumpur by greenbelts in the manner of London and its suburbs. Growth and thereby size, traffic, not to mention blight and pollution, is mitigated.
We stayed in downtown KL, on Jalan Bukit Bintang – KL’s version of J. Nakpil street in Malate – only bigger, longer and more pedestrian friendly. Sidewalks are wide and full of amenities – cafes, kiosks, street lighting, and connections to the city’s new monorail and transit stops. The night life on Bintang Walk (as the strip is more commercially known) is as vibrant as Manila. The choice of food is staggering but we opted to eat Malaysian on a hawker street one block parallel to Jalan Bukit Bintang. We gorged on buttered sotong (calamari), oyster omelet, and various other ikan (fish) dishes awashed in chili paste and washed down with copious amounts of beer. Sedap! (sarap!)
The next day we took a tour of the city that was prepping up for Chinese New Year. The mood metro-wide was festive. I have been traveling regularly to KL since the ‘80s but mostly for business and have never been on an organized tour. What struck me also because I had not seen the city in a while was the amount of building and urban design improvements being undertaken at every corner. KL is now as spic and span as cosmopolitan Hong Kong and Singapore but with far fewer people. Crowds are few and every corner of the city seems immersed in green foliage or bedecked in colorful Malaysian décor.
Malaysians take a lot of pride in their heritage and national monuments. We visited several of them and some parks, too. Tourist access to all of these sights is easy and amenities like toilets and souvenir shops are clean, well-maintained and delightfully designed – Malaysian architectural motifs have been updated without being baduy – a reflection of the talent of local architects, urban designers and landscape architects – some of whom, like Ken Yeang and Hijas Kasturi are internationally recognized and sought after.
In the afternoon, to celebrate the coming of the Year of the Rooster, we ventured into KL’s Chinatown. The main street was a bustling flea market, with Divisoria prices, and protected from the sun and rain by a large overhead canopy. There were bargains a-plenty in fashion, watches, shoes, bags and electronics, many of which are manufactured locally.
On our final day we toured KLCC – the Kuala Lumpur City Center, where the Petronas Towers are located. The duo, until recently the world’s tallest, has become the city’s most recognizable icon and one with a distinctive Malaysian silhouette (although designed by a foreigner, Cesar Pelli). What most tourists do not know is that the towers are just part of the larger KLCC complex, a cluster of medium to high-rise and mixed-use buildings arranged around a central garden (actually a park), which provides aesthetic and environmental relief to all the concrete and glass.
The Taman KLCC or city garden is huge at 20 hectares (10 times the size of Greenbelt park!). City planning authorities realized that open green space was a prime commodity in an urban area and would actually increase the value of the property and surrounding blocks. The designer was the late famous Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. It was his last major work. He was famous for the design of the sea front promenade in Rio de Janeiro and numerous parks and gardens in South America.
The main focus of the park is its central Symphony Lake. One hectare in size, the water connects one end of the park to the other and features active fountains, children’s wading areas, waterfalls, cascades and bridges. Adjacent to this is a large children’s playground shaded by thousands of trees and provided with numerous toilets, kiosks and drinking fountains. An undulating and extensive promenade and jogging network surround these as well as connect to the building complexes on the park’s perimeter.
Getting around Kuala Lumpur is a breeze. The monorail and bus systems are coordinated. Taxis are plentiful (although always insist on meters being turned on) and walking is comfortable on good sidewalks and elevated pedestrian systems built before any infrastructure is planned (unlike here where pedestrians are treated as last priority in the planning process – if there is any). The city is connected to other districts and the airport by a rail system inherited from the British and extensively upgraded by a progressive government. A high-speed train connects the city to the airport in 28 minutes flat. All these rail systems and interstate buses and the interface with the city’s other modes of transport (monorail, local feeder bus and taxi) is to be integrated soon in a modern central transport terminal complex that already houses two 5-star hotels and soon many more facilities. (We dream about a bus and rail transport but KL already has one about to open!)
In this Year of the Rooster, Kuala Lumpur has much to crow about. Metro Manila is now just about the last city in the pecking order of Asia’s metropolises. No wonder we do not get foreign investors. Our city is the pits in terms of open space, traffic, pollution, sidewalks and blight. When will it be our year? Nevertheless, Gong Xi Fa Cai!