Travelogue
Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
BookMost guides sort the city by district. This one sorts it by how much time you have, because that is the question you are actually asking, and because everything below is something the hostel already does on a fixed day at a fixed time.
Every day and time below comes off the hostel’s own board. The activities page has the full week and how joining works.
You landed today and you are not going far.
Jalan Alor is a short walk from the front door and needs no planning at all: the group takes one long table and everybody orders from whichever stall they like. The towers are worth the trip out if you have the energy for it, and if you would rather not move at all, games start on the roof at nine.
Out early, back for lunch.
Batu Caves runs twice a week, leaves at nine and is back at a table by lunch, which makes it the one that fits into a day you have other plans for. Chinatown is on foot once you are there, three or four streets of market, murals and temples, and the group eats at a local place before coming home.
No tour on the board, or you fancy your own company.
Pavilion Kuala Lumpur and Berjaya Times Square are both in the district and both are indoors, which matters more than it sounds in the middle of the afternoon. Thean Hou Temple is worth timing for dusk whether you go with the group or on your own, because the lanterns come on and the hill puts the whole city below you.
Three days or three weeks, work through the board.
Everything above runs on rotation and all of it is free to join. Read the board beside reception, turn up in the common area a few minutes before the time on it, and you will have done most of Kuala Lumpur by the end of the week without booking a single thing or planning an itinerary. People who stay three weeks tend to end up leading them.
Three places the board does not go, near enough to do on an afternoon off, and none of them needing anybody else.
Nine hectares of rainforest left standing in the middle of the city, next to the KL Tower. The canopy walk is 200 metres of bridge 21 metres up. Foreign visitors pay RM40, and it closes on Fridays and in a thunderstorm.
The colonial square, the clock tower opposite it, and Masjid Jamek a few minutes away at the meeting of the Klang and the Gombak. That muddy confluence is what Kuala Lumpur is named after. Costs nothing.
A Malay village the British set aside in 1899 and the city then grew around rather than over. Wooden houses, nasi lemak, and the Petronas Twin Towers directly behind them. The Saloma Link bridge lands here.
The hostel is on a rail line and two bus terminals reach the rest of the country from it. Nothing below needs booking through us.
Bukit Bintang has a monorail station and an MRT station. They sit beside each other, they are not the same system and one ticket is not the other. The monorail runs KL Sentral to Titiwangsa and its entrance is between Sungei Wang and Lot 10; the MRT is the Kajang line.
If you miss the group trip, it is a KTM Komuter train from KL Sentral and about half an hour. The caves are free to walk into.
Buses leave from Terminal Bersepadu Selatan and take about two hours each way, which leaves enough of a day at the other end to be worth the early start.
About an hour by bus from Terminal Bersepadu Selatan, or the bus to Awana and the cable car up the last of it. It is a thousand metres up, so it is the one trip where you want a jacket.
Grab, which is what everybody here uses and what the front desk will tell you to use. Cheaper than a metered taxi and it settles the fare before you get in.
Straight off the hostel’s own posters. Joining is always free; what you pay for is transport and your own food.
Bed prices are not listed anywhere on this site. They differ between the booking sites, so the booking page is the only place a live price comes from.
The half of Kuala Lumpur that needs no plan at all, because it is on the street the hostel is on or one street off it. None of this is on a schedule, none of it needs anybody else, and it is what most guests do on the day they arrive while they work out what the rest of the week looks like.
What is around the hostel
