19th March 2010
KL has some very big malls, full of the latest designer gear and some of our UK high street shops. In a change of pace, today we visited the Suria KLCC mall below the Petronas Twin Towers (having tried and failed again to get up to the skybridge).
It turned out to be a day of cool air-conditioning, away from the punishing humidity of KL. We took a wander around the mall. One name stood out, so we simply had to go and take a look in Marks and Spencer. It was just like being at home, albeit a lot quieter and with a different type of clientele. While we were there I was able to pick up a pair of light trousers. I’ve been looking for a pair since Oz with no luck, so to be able to pick up a pair for the same price as the UK and in a short length suited me and I can finally stop the ‘great trouser hunt’!
While we were walking past all the familiar designer windows we stumbled upon the Galeri Petronas. This art gallery was established in Kuala Lumpur in 1993 to provide an avenue for artists, both Malaysian and foreign, to display their works with the aim of meeting and nurturing the growing interest of the Malaysian public in visual arts. The gallery is currently hosting the highly-anticipated Sony World Photography Awards 2009/10 Global Tour exhibition. This exhibition showcases photographs by the winners and finalists of the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards, spanning a variety of genres including fashion, architecture, advertising, sport and music, from across the world.
Another lucky find in this mall of malls was one of the juice bars we had been fans of in Australia and didn’t hope to see again so soon, so we could’t pass up an opportunity for a drink from the ‘Boost’ bar (our love affair continues!). Unfortunately for us, the Petronas Towers are subject to a very high level of security, so we have no photographs of the mall or the exhibition for copyright reasons.
We headed to the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (or the Petronas Philharmonic Hall). This is Malaysia’s first purpose built concert hall for classical music by Malaysia’s oil company, Petronas and home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. It is strategically located between the Petronas Twin Towers. The strikingly beautiful concert hall is an 885-seat jewel box shaped room featuring warm, natural wood with a beautiful gold and white coloured dome above the stage. I did ask if I could take a photo just of the room, but due to security and copyright I was denied again :(.
We were there for an Open Rehersal of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra for its upcoming performance featuring Ten Chinese Folk and Art Songs, conducted by Kevin Field with Shu-Cheen, soprano. This was a unique (and cheap) opportunity for us to visit this lovely concert hall and gain some insight on pre-performance preparation for an orchestra.
The rehearsal lasted for about an hour during which time we were entertained with a range of traditional Chinese songs from upbeat, jaunty songs, to lyrical, plaintive ones, some using instruments such as sleigh bells, while others featured the traditional Chinese instruments, the Erhu and Dizi.
After the rehearsal we took the monorail (which leans disconcertingly when you go around corners) to another of the city’s malls. The Pavillion Mall was a quiet, calm haven in comparison to the manic, busyness of the Suria Mall, perhaps because it was further from the Petronas Towers.
Here we spent a pleasant few hours relaxing at the cinema. We saw Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone which was based on a BBC mini-series of the same name. Good movie.
Darkness had fallen by the time the movie finished, so we returned to the Petronas Towers like moths to a flame for some photographs of these megastructures by night. Lit up like the preverbial Christmas tree, eclipsing all the surrounding buildings with their brilliance, they even reflected light back from the clouds above them. We just managed to get a few shots before the heavens opened and unlike previous evenings, tonight the rain was going to fall for longer than 5 minutes so we ducked down the nearest underground and headed back to the hotel.
We emerged from the station the other end to the haunting sound of the call to prayer from the nearby Mosque. This was soon drowned out by the sound of approaching police sirens, escorting a security convoy through the city, all against the backdrop of the continual drone of traffic and klaxon of horns that is the soundtrack to this city.
When we got back to our room we found that the hotel staff had hung an air freshener over the air-conditioning vent in an effort to stop the smoke smell from other rooms permeating ours. It has to be said that even with all the hassles, they’ve been extremely efficient and always with a smile. I’m not sure we would have had the same level of service in a 2 star hotel back home.