Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

After Malacca I headed to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. This was the third city of the trip and the third time I stayed in Chinatown....it's THE place to be. Good, cheap street food, a huge market and a lot of hustle and bustle.

Kuala Lumpur is this weird mishmash of rich and not rich. There are lots of shiny, new, flashy skyscrapers popping up in the city and a huge mall selling expensive Marc Jacobs, Salvatore Ferragamo and Gucci goods all of which are surrounded by shabby, run down buildings. The city is much grittier than Singapore and feels more alive.

Of course I had to see these bad boys:

And since they went from charging 0MYR to 80MYR ($26) to go up the Petronas Towers, we went up the Menara Kuala Lumpur Tower instead. It's one of the world's tallest communication towers coming in at 421m tall, just shy of the 452m Petronas Towers.

The view from the top:

Those are the Petronas Towers on the left.

And a little Christmas spirit from KL: