Day 10 - KL Tower

The 2 things that were planned for today were the KLCC Aquarium and KL Tower, the rest of the day was left to relax. To add to the more slow-paced day, before we went down to get our breakfast, we brought our swimming gear so after we ate we could get straight into the pool.

We had a bit of a splash around and discussed the plan for the day. After a lot of walking yesterday, my foot hurt quite a bit, but then later that night when we were relaxing by the pool, it seemed to do it some good, so I decided that because I had already seen the KLCC Aquarium last time I was here, and we saw the Aquarium in Singapore that I would stay back at the hotel while Anthony and Amy went to check it out.

While they spent some time at the Aquarium and got some lunch before coming back to the hotel to pick me up, I relaxed for a bit longer, had a shave and a shower, took some photos from our room and played with my new wide-angle converter, wrote some blogs and ordered room service. Was a nice relaxing morning.

The view from our hotel room

After that I ended up meeting them at KLCC and they showed me that they had bought a nice caricature and it was cheaper that at the markets. From here we made our way to KL Tower.

KL Tower

KL Tower started out as a communication tower and has since become a tourist attraction due to the fantastic 360 degree views of the city. Tickets are fairly cheap and they include admission to one of a few additional attractions, including a F1 driving simulator, an animal center or a pony ride.

When you reach the observation deck of the tower you are greeted by staff who hand out little video units with headphones to hang around your neck. This gives you your own personal tour guide. The outlooking windows are numbered and the video guide explains what to look out for from each window and gives you some history.

Anthony using the KL Tower video guide

As you make your way around the tower, the views are nice and even if you dont use the video guide and just enjoy the sceanery, each window has a labeled printout of the sights too. In the middle part of the observation deck there are lots of little souvenir shops - as expected.

The view of The Petronas Towers from KL Tower

As you walk out of the lift at the base of the tower, there are shops and more people selling stuff. We didn't buy anything but we did get to take a photo with an Iguana.

An Iguana

For our extra attraction, we picked the animal center, but just like last time I came here, its not the best zoo. The animals are kept in pretty small cages it seems a bit cheap and little cruel.

An attempt to chew a way out

In here you can get your photo taken with some animals too, but instead of providing a photographer and print outs, you have to use your own camera, and they charge you 5 Ringgits. We did end up holding the snake to take some snaps though.

Me holding a snake

The other interesting part of this mini-zoo was their collection of spiders. We must have got there just after they had been fed because each of the enclosures had what looked like a baby mouse in them. We actually watched the fairly brutal display of one spider injecting a mouse with so much venom we could see it dripping out.

Spider about to get its lunch

Deadly venom injection!

From here we made our way back to KLCC and got some Haagen Dazs. Anthony usually has a reaction to certain foods and we assumed dairy was a key contributor so naturally we were all expecting consequences, but surprisingly he was fine. That's great news because our desserts were pretty awesome!

Haagen Dazs!

We headed back to the hotel and waited for Sarma to arrive. Today Sarma brought some clothes and was going to spend the weekend with us. When we arrived we all went down to the restaurant by the pool and had a swim and ordered some dinner from the restaurant there.

Dinner at the restaurant by the pool at our hotel

After dinner and a swim we showered, changed and headed out to take photos of The Petronas Towers by night. We used Amy's camera, with Sarma's wide-angle lens on my tripod with special photographic directing from Anthony - it was a team effort.

Setting up for some night shots of The Petronas Towers

After fiddling with the configuration for a while we got some nice photos. We did get a few strange looks from others, because most people needed to stand quite far back to get the towers in a shot, but thanks to Sarma's wide-angle we were able to stand quite close. The funny looks didn't stop there either, with this lens we were standing so close to the camera, it looked like we were blocking it, but it turned out well.

Our group in front of The Petronas Towers

As we were having a bit of fun with different poses, etc. we attracted the attention of a couple of people passing by. One of them was a friendly Turkish bloke who found our antics pretty funny and took a peek at how our photos were turning out. He seemed really impressed, so Amy offered to take one of him.
He was rapped and we emailed him the shot that night. We were joking that we should have set up a sign and made some profit from this!