Waiting For Darkness – Lake Symphony – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Yesterday was a travel day, taking us from the Malaysian state of Sabah to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. We actually had a 36 hour layover in KL on our way to Sabah, but we made that a low key pool day, knowing that we’d have some time coming up to explore the city.

The airport is a solid hour outside of the city center, which gave us a long ride with a chatty taxi driver. He was a friendly older Indian man who’s lived in KL his entire life, and he was more than happy to share his knowledge of the city with us – which is great, because we’d done minimal research prior to landing. As usual, the conversation drifted towards food, and we were happy to learn that KL’s ethnic culture is on par with Singapore. Meaning, there’s some seriously good Indian food in our near future, thanks to a few recommendations!

He also mentioned that there was a solar eclipse coming up, and that Malaysia was close enough to the action that it would be a near total eclipse. Some quick internet detective work by Christine determined that the peak coverage locally would be at 8:23am. This seemed like a perfect thing to do on our first morning back in the city, so we checked in to the hotel, set our alarm clock (or not…Kevin still wakes up at 5am every day) and got some sleep.

Our hotel room happens to face the east, so Christine watched the eclipse from bed, while Kevin ventured out for a morning run to explore the city. There’s a park right in front of the Petronas Towers that made for a perfect viewing point. Just as soon as the sun rose above the tree line, it started to be covered up by the moon. Things seemed to actually get brighter as the eclipse progressed, until finally at peak coverage (it wasn’t a total eclipse, but it got pretty close) the city turned a few shades darker for a minute, at most. And then it was over!