Kuala Lumpur Audio Tours

Kuala Lumpur means 'muddy confluence' in Malay, a name given to the meeting point of the Klang and Gombak rivers where Chinese tin miners set up camp in the 1850s. The original settlement was a chaotic trading post; what grew from it is a city of startling contrasts. The Petronas Twin Towers still catch you off-guard even if you've seen a hundred photographs, while five minutes away the Masjid Jamek mosque sits at the original confluence, its Mughal arches rising where the first settlers landed.

KL rewards the walker who is willing to shift registers quickly.

Petaling Street in Chinatown gives you incense smoke, hawker stalls and imitation goods in a single block. Brickfields (Little India) smells of jasmine garlands and sambar before 9am. Kampung Baru is a Malay village that somehow survived in the shadow of the city centre, its wooden houses with corrugated roofs sitting directly beneath glass towers. The food -- roti canai with curry dhal at breakfast, curry laksa at lunch, nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaf -- is reason enough to come.