Today was the primary reason we didn’t get off the Sapphire Princess and stay in Singapore for this short cruise. We really wanted to go to the top of the Petronas Towers. But we had also wanted to see all the sights we visited the last time we were here, on The Best of Kuala Lumpur excursion. So two visits were required, and we had booked tickets to go to the Sky Bridge and the top of one of the towers today. We knew that, in combination with the Kuala Lumpur on Your Own excursion, which drops passengers off at the shopping mall at the base of the Petronas Towers, we’d be all set. And we were. It was a fantastic day.
It was nice that we didn’t arrive until 9am today. That was also the meeting time for our excursion, so we had a leisurely start to our day that including running out to an open deck when we spotted a beautiful sunrise on the ship’s bridge cam. We ate breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet, gathered up our things for the day and met in the Wheelhouse Bar to get our tour stickers.
Port Kelsng, Malaysia
Where in the world are we?
Today’s beautiful sunrise
I haven’t really talked about how that’s done on this ship. Sometimes, such as in Bangkok last cruise, there are so many tours leaving at the same time that the Explorers Lounge is also used, but for most ports, we first go to the Wheelhouse to get the stickers that are placed on our T-shirts to allocate passengers to the different buses and and then walk right through to the Princess Theater to wait for our group to be called. The Wheelhouse Bar on the Sapphire Princess is huge, and there is plenty of seating area for people to wait until their entire family or group has arrived so they can get tickets to be on the same bus. It works very well.
Today, Destination Expert Narelle Froude was helping to get people to the correct place in the Princess Theater, and her husband, retired Princess Captain Andy Froude is on board with her for the holidays, so he was pressed into service, too. I had not yet met him, but G had (no surprise there) and I introduced myself to him. When I called him Captain Froude, he said to just call him Andy. And when he started leading groups out of the theater to the gangway, I told G that was quite a change, from captain to tour escort, and G said he thinks he loves it. All the fun with none of the responsibility. I can see that.
Also funny this morning…our photo was on the Patter today. And Patters are being prepared in both English and Chinese on this cruise. So G went down to Guest Services to pick up a couple this morning and grabbed the Chinese one by mistake first. He realized his error and picked up two English Patters but kept the Chinese one as a souvenir. It’s quite funny to see all these Chinese characters but in the midst of them see our names and home in English.
So we soon found ourselves on yet another bus to a large Asian city. Since we had already been to Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as it is known locally), we knew the bus ride was not going to offer the excitement of the ride to Ho Chi Minh City or even Bangkok. KL is a well developed city, and it doesn’t look significantly different than most major US cities (and it looks quite a bit better than most rust belt cities). Luckily, this is the shortest ride we’ve had in one of these ports, less than 90 minutes.
We were dropped of at the KLCC Mall, given directions on where and when to meet later (3:45pm) and pointed in the various directions we wanted to go. A few people on our tour were also interested in going to the top of the Petronas Towers but found out there were no tickets still available in a timeframe that would allow them to return by 3:45pm. We had tickets for 12:15pm, and went directly to the check in point. We were allowed to go up with the very next group, which was at noon.
The wildest thing was the briefing video we were shown at the beginning of our tour. It was projected on fog, so it just appeared out of nowhere. I had never seen that before (maybe I do live in an cave). We first rode an elevator up to the lower level of the Sky Bridge, 41 floors high. It was a spectacular weather day, and we had great views in both directions off the bridge. Although we couldn’t see it ourselves, when we took photos of the view with our iPhones, we could very clearly see on the photos the shadow the towers and Sky Bridge was casting on the ground below.
An introductory video displayed on a fog
Unreal!
Petronas Tower Sky Bridge
I loved the shadow of the building on the ground.
This gap is the space between a tower and the Sky Bridge that allows the towers to sway in the wind. They are not firmly connected.
The botanic park, fountains and splash pool area
Our next stop was the 83rd floor where we changed to a final elevator up to the 86th floor. From here we could clearly see the intricate pattern of the cladding on the other tower, and the KL Tower that we visited two weeks ago behind it. We returned to the 83rd floor where we purchased and mailed post cards and bought a souvenir, then returned to the ground floor.
And checked another building off our list. :-
Model of the building on the 86th floor
A vertical panorama of the other tower
KL skyline in just one direction
A model of the KL skyline with the Petronas Towers on the right
A detailed look at the cladding
With the KL Tower in the background
We had seen the beautiful botanic gardens, fountain and splash pool behind the Petronas Towers when we were up in it, and headed there next. We weren’t hungry enough for a full lunch (plus the food court at the mall was packed today, what with kids off school and Christmas shoppers), so we ate the protein bars we’d packed sitting in the shade in the park and enjoyed watching the kids playing in the splash pool (which actually featured two cool waterfalls. I would have loved that as a kid!).
View from the botanical gardens
The splash pool and waterfalls, only for under 12s. :-(
The fountain area
The KL Tower where we lunched two cruises ago
Jackfruit. Cold Storage supermarket in the mall had samples. We think we like it.
Eventually we wandered back into the mall, which featured every store found at home and several very high end ones too. It was fully decorated for Christmas and carols were playing in English and, looking at the Bath and Body Works store, I could have believed I was at my local mall…except for all the women in hijabs and people in shorts and flip flops. G found high speed WiFi at a cellular store and we spent 30 minutes updating apps and paying bills and uploading photos to this post five at a time!!! Using cellular data I upload one at a time and it still takes twice as long. And then it was 3:45pm and we were returning to the bus for the ride back to the ship.
It was 5:30pm when we arrived back on the Sapphire Princess, and we took the quickest showers on record and were sitting down to dinner in the Vivaldi Dining Room at 6pm. Then it was production show Bravo performed to a 2/3 full Princess Theater (these passengers don’t know what they’re missing). The movie Crazy Rich Asians is playing on MUTS right now (and that is the perfect movie to show), and I would love to be out there but we have a full day in Singapore tomorrow (I’m finally well enough to do that) and need our sleep.
We’re entering the home stretch of the second segment of our season of travel. Must. Finish. Strong.