One Week Became a Month: Falling in Love with Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur on 4 March 2026 expecting to stay for about a week. It Zwibble, our campervan and home, was on its way to Malaysia by ship, and once it cleared customs at Port Klang we could finally begin the overland part of our journey through Southeast Asia.

We got It Zwibble back on 1 April.

There was plenty happening behind the scenes during those four weeks, and the story of getting our van back eventually became a video of its own. But when we look back at Kuala Lumpur, the customs delays aren’t really what we remember. What stands out instead is how differently we experienced the city because a stay we expected to last a week gradually stretched into almost a month.

For that first week, we did exactly what we’d planned to do: we went sightseeing.

We thought we had a week in Kuala Lumpur

We’d just come from India and the contrast was significant. Kuala Lumpur felt developed, organised and incredibly easy to navigate. We had an Airbnb at Infinitum, air conditioning, good public transport, excellent food and what we thought was a week to see the city while someone else dealt with moving our home through customs.

We started as we often do in a new city, with a walking tour. In fact, during that first week we did two with Hakim through GuruWalk: his KL Day Tour: The Malaysian Experience and his KL Night Tour: Food, Drinks, Sightseeing and Nightlife.

We’ve taken walking tours in cities all over the world, and Hakim remains one of the best guides we’ve encountered. He knew an enormous amount about Malaysia, but what really made him stand out was his interest in the people on his tours. He asked genuinely probing questions, could discuss the politics and current affairs of the countries represented, including New Zealand, and even counted us off in the different languages spoken within the group. His tours took us through places including Merdeka Square, the River of Life, Chinatown and Central Market, while giving us a much better introduction to Malaysia than we’d have got simply walking around them ourselves.

We also made our way out to Batu Caves, catching a Grab there and the train back. We climbed the colourful staircase and visited the free temple inside the cave, both of which were fantastic. The number of adults encouraging their children to touch the monkeys was rather more surprising, and we were quite happy to admire those from a distance.

The Petronas Twin Towers were another obvious priority. We explored around KLCC and the towers, although this was somewhere we’d return to several times during our month rather than tick off once.

Chinatown was the same. After seeing it with Hakim, we went back independently and eventually discovered Cookie Crumb cookies, which we’d happily recommend. On one particularly hot visit, Central Market also proved extremely useful because we knew it had air conditioning.

We also walked up towards Merdeka 118 to see it properly from close up. By the end of that first week, we’d covered a good chunk of what had been highest on our Kuala Lumpur list.

We were making good use of the week we thought we had.

Then the week ended, and we were still there.

When a week became a month

Our booking at Infinitum came to an end, It Zwibble still wasn’t ready, and we moved into a second Airbnb at Majestic Residence. The kitchen was somewhat lacking, but otherwise we loved it. We had a gym and swimming pool, Quill City Mall nearby, easy access to the monorail and a great central location.

Moving apartments was probably the point when we accepted that we needed to approach Kuala Lumpur differently. We’d already seen many of the places highest on our list, and if we continued sightseeing at the same pace, we were going to spend the next few weeks desperately searching for attractions just to give ourselves something to do.

So we slowed down.

As the days stretched into weeks, we didn’t stop exploring. We just stopped being in a hurry. There was no longer any need to fit several things into a day, and not every outing needed to involve one of Kuala Lumpur’s major sights.

That changed the kinds of days we had. We could visit REXKL largely because we wanted to see its impressive bookstore (bookxcess), then find a café nearby and wander through a part of the city we hadn’t explored properly before. We could head back towards KLCC one evening just to watch the light show in the rain, or go for a nighttime walk to see the illuminated Saloma Link.

Sometimes the destination was food. We went into Kampung Baru with a mission to find great nasi lemak, rather than because there was a particular attraction we needed to visit.

Other days contained very little conventional sightseeing at all.

When travelling starts to look like daily life

Once we knew we weren’t leaving imminently, Kuala Lumpur also started to feel less like a stop on a trip and more like somewhere we temporarily lived.

Our mornings increasingly involved checking for updates about It Zwibble, talking to our customs clearing agent, working and dealing with normal life admin. Megan had The Peterson Odyssey and her contract work to do, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Starbucks at Quill City became useful places to work with decent coffee, reliable internet and, importantly, air conditioning.

We went to the gym, did laundry and sometimes spent an afternoon at the pool.

Megan got her hair and nails done. We walked an enormous amount and used the monorail so often that it simply became our normal way of getting around central KL, with Grab filling the gaps when we wanted to go further.

Quill City became our local mall and NSK our local supermarket. We also tried Jaya Grocer, AEON and Cold Storage when we were looking for different or more familiar imported foods. We’d generally sort ourselves out for breakfast, lunch and snacks, then go somewhere for dinner, often doing the supermarket shopping after dark.

These aren’t the things we’d normally write home about after a week in a city. Over a month, though, they became part of our Kuala Lumpur experience. We knew where to work, where to shop, which transport to take and where to go when we wanted coffee or air conditioning. We had routines.

And because sightseeing no longer had to fill every day, we started coming up with different ways to explore.

Having time changed how we explored

One of the unexpected advantages of having so much time in Kuala Lumpur was that not everything we did had to qualify as a “must-do”. We could follow an idea simply because it sounded fun.

We hired HelloRide bikes through the app and gave ourselves an unplanned bike tour of the city. Starting near Pavilion apartment complex, we rode around the Petronas Twin Towers, headed towards Chinatown and eventually made our way back towards Quill City. There was no carefully researched route or list of things we needed to see. We just got on the bikes and went exploring, and it was so much fun.

Food became another excuse to make up little challenges. Alongside our nasi lemak mission in Kampung Baru, we decided that one evening we were going to have dessert for dinner around Bukit Bintang and Jalan Alor.

Another evening we went to Berjaya Times Square because there was an amusement park inside the mall. The mall itself felt a little dated and we didn’t love the food, but the indoor theme park had some genuinely good rides and was certainly a different way to spend an evening.

Having time also encouraged us to venture further from central Kuala Lumpur. We caught the train down to Putrajaya and then, somewhat ambitiously given the heat, walked from the station. We couldn’t go inside the pink Putra Mosque that day, but enjoyed walking around the lake and exploring somewhere that felt completely different from central KL. We’d happily go back, although we’d probably rethink the walk from the station next time!

And when we really wanted a change, we escaped the heat altogether and went to Genting Highlands. We headed to KL Sentral intending to catch a bus, only to discover that there weren’t tickets available for ages, so we jumped in a Grab instead and made our own way there before catching the cable car up into the highlands.

It was about 20 degrees. After weeks in Kuala Lumpur, being able to put on a jumper felt wonderful.

We spent the day at Genting SkyWorlds, riding as much as we could. Our favourite was the Terraform Tower Challenge at Andromeda Base, a space-themed drop ride that reminded us of Disney’s Tower of Terror, and we also really enjoyed the Ice Age area. Afterwards we wandered around the outlet mall before heading back to KL.

None of these things replaced conventional sightseeing. We were still returning to places like KLCC, Chinatown and Bukit Bintang throughout the month. What had changed was the pressure to make every outing count. We had enough time to spend a day wandering around a bookstore and cafés, ride bikes without much of a plan, travel to another city for a walk around a lake or go to a theme park simply because it sounded like fun.

Ramadan and Hari Raya in Kuala Lumpur

Running through almost our entire stay was Ramadan, and experiencing it became one of the most special parts of our month in Kuala Lumpur.

Ramadan bazaars appeared around the city, and we went to quite a few of them for dinner. It took us longer than it probably should have to work out the timing. We’d arrive ready to eat, only to discover that everyone else had already bagsed the seats and was sitting patiently with food in front of them, waiting for sunset so they could break their fast.

The outdoor bazaars often worked better for us than trying to eat at the malls. Around iftar, restaurants and food courts could be incredibly busy or already booked out, while at the bazaars we could wander around and try different things. Nasi lemak and char kway teow became particular favourites.

Being in KL for so long meant Ramadan wasn’t simply something we noticed happening around us. We experienced its rhythm over several weeks, including the fireworks that became increasingly memorable from our apartment on the 25th floor. Some nights they seemed almost level with our windows.

Then came Hari Raya Aidilfitri, marking the end of Ramadan. Kuala Lumpur suddenly became remarkably quiet as people left the city to celebrate with their families, although the fireworks certainly didn’t stop.

We hadn’t planned our visit around Ramadan or Hari Raya. We’d simply ended up in Kuala Lumpur at exactly the right time to experience them, and we’re very glad we did.

Four weeks later

By the end of March, we knew Kuala Lumpur surprisingly well. We’d arrived wanting to see the major sights and had spent our first week doing exactly that. But the extra three weeks gave us something quite different.

Having four weeks rather than one didn’t mean we saw four times as many attractions. We slowed down, revisited places, developed routines and explored parts of the city that probably wouldn’t have made the cut on a shorter trip. We had time for major sights, but also for night walks, cafés, supermarkets, food missions, bike rides and days when we didn’t really do very much at all.

On 1 April, 28 days after we’d arrived expecting to stay for about a week, we finally went to Port Klang and collected It Zwibble.

We never expected to love KL. But our prolonged stay allowed us to fall in love with it. We returned twice more – once for van repairs, and once to collect the van to continue our overland journey towards Europe after travelling without her for two months.

And both times, it felt like coming home.