I visited Kuala Lumpur about ten years ago. It was only a very brief visit. I was on my way into and out of Cambodia, but my tickets had me going though Kuala Lumpur. On my in, I had only overnight, enough time to get to my transit hotel, check-in, sleep, get up and go to the airport for my onward flight. But on my way back home, I had about 18 hours and I was able to spend a few hours in the city. I went in and spent some time around the Petronas Towers, at one time the tallest building in the world. I was awed. I was impressed. I was happy to be in Kuala Lumpur and I have had good memories of the city.
From Yogyakarta, I headed early to the airport to catch my flight. I had forgotten what an airport in a smaller, touristy area is like, even if it is called an 'international' airport. This airport was more of a domestic, small area airport with international functions added on. In one room. Off to the side of the domestic portion. That can only handle one flight at a time.
So, my great rush to be at the airport in plenty of time proved to be a bit of a mistake. I had gotten up at 5:30, and had been on a bus at 6:00 in order to be at the airport 2 hours before my flight. Because it was so early, I ended up being there 2 and half hours early. I was able to check in, but I couldn't go through immigration and security until about an hour before the flight was scheduled to depart. Hmmm... Good thing I had a book. And despite having to wait before getting to clear customs and all of that, it's still better to have been early than to have to rebook because I was late.
Eventually, I headed off into the wild blue yonder and headed to Malaysia for my second visit to that country. This time I was headed to the peninsular part of Malaysia, starting in Kuala Lumpur for my second visit, as already mentioned.
On the way, we passed over Jakarta. It is really quite neat when I pass over somewhere I have stayed in long enough to be able to pick out landmarks from the air. For instance, I was able to find the Independence Monument as we passed over the north part of Jakarta.
I arrived and found a place to stay, then I headed off to find out if Harry Potter was still playing. I have watched almost all of the movies in the theater, and I wanted to see this one in the theater as well, but Indonesia has been having a problem. There was some issue of fees that Hollywood had to pay to have their films in Indonesian theaters. Hollywood fought back by not showing their movies in Indonesia. Since January, there have been no blockbuster movies shown. They have had to make do with second run movies and second-rate movies from other countries. (Apparently this included a lot of Thai horror films that were the subject of lots of talk on internet discussion sites.) This was finally resolved just as I was about to leave Indonesia, and Harry Potter was one of the first movies that was to be screened in Indonesia following the resolution of the dispute. Unfortunately, this was going to mean that there would be huge line-ups to see the movie. I didn't want to deal with that, so I decided to wait until Malaysia and hope it was still playing. It was, but I had arrived too late to catch a screening at a good time. So I hung around the Petronas Twin Towers for a while to see them at night.
I really like how they light them up, even though I do realize that it is a terrible waste of energy.
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