May 12, 2026

May 12, 2026

Singapore is a very nice wealthy city. Aimee loves the cleanliness. But we are not finding the city to be too walkable. Sometimes we struggled to find a crosswalk on major avenues. The city is designed for cars and subway riders. And important to me, there is a stiff alcohol tax making beer expensive. So this morning we checked out of our hotel and took Grab to the airport. We are early, so after checking our luggage, we took the Skytrain to T1 and crossed under to the Jewel. This is a circular multi-level shopping mall with the largest indoor waterfall in the center. After taking some photos of the Rain Vortex, I follow Aimee around as she window shops. Eventually we get hungry and we stop at a Chinese restaurant for a Dim Sum lunch. We get a sampler of their dumplings with some cooked greens for Aimee. Yummy!

On our way back to our terminal, we run into a Laderach shop. That is the Swiss chocolate that we brought back in bulk from Zurich in 2024. I buy all I can with the last of my Singapore dollars.

At 1:40 our Malaysia Air flight departs. Interestingly the flight path goes southwest over the Singapore Strait. There are ships as far as I can see. The narrow passage is littered with hundreds of islands forcing ships into a narrow channel less than 2 miles wide. This strait is as important to world commerce as the Strait of Hormuz. One half of all oil and one fourth of all the world's freight passes through here.

After crossing the strait, our flight veers back north to the Malay Peninsula and we land in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. I see vast fields of Palm Trees. Plantations like these now cover much of Malaysia and Indonesia to produce Palm Oil.

We head straight to border control and find a zoo of humanity waiting in long lines. Aimee says “We are not in Singapore anymore, Toto”. Fortunately our driver was very patient waiting for us. The airport is far from the city, so it takes us an hour to get to our hotel.

After settling in, we head out for an early dinner. Or at least we tried to. We called a Grab car, but it took quite a while for it to reach our hotel. KL rush hour traffic seems worse than Chicago. It takes another twenty minutes to creep the mile to the Traders Hotel. Shockingly the taxi fare was a pittance. This driver is making almost no money. We recently read that Malaysia is a great place to retire because it is friendly and extraordinarily inexpensive (except alcohol).

We take the elevator to the hotel SkyBar on the 33rd floor. We are reasonably early so we get a nice booth with the best view in town of the Petronas Towers. While the view is stupendous, the seating location next to the indoor pool is kind of weird. We ordered another Satay dish along with Tempura Cauliflower. I was disappointed to discover that Malaysia has an even higher alcohol tax than Singapore.

At sunset we leave and walk towards Petronas Towers. Shockingly there are hundreds of joggers on the hiking paths through the downtown area. Who knew Malaysians were so into exercise. As we cross the KLCC park at the base we see lots of people sitting by Symphony Lake watching the lighted fountain show. The Islamic-inspired Art Deco view of Petronas looking up is very cool.