Petronas Towers and Petrosains

The most famous landmark in all of Malaysia is arguably the Petronas Towers, which was the tallest building in the world from 1998-2004 before being surpassed by the Taipei 101 skyscraper. It’s still the tallest twin buildings in the world, though, and we went to see them several times while in Kuala Lumpur, and even enjoyed seeing them from our apartment window each day.

At the base of the towers is a 5-story shopping mall including a fantastic and fun science museum called Petrosains. We really enjoyed the museum, which starts with a short Disneyland-like ride and leads you through dozens of interactive and educational exhibits. Because the museum was funded by a petroleum company, there were a lot of exhibits about oil, fossil fuels, drilling for oil, uses for oil, etc. Personally, those weren’t my favorite exhibits, and I did appreciate that they had some exhibits on solar power and the future of energy. It took us about three hours to get through everything, and we had a great time.

Even though we visited the towers several times, we never went up in them to the bridge. You can’t go all the up to the top unless you work there, but the bridge connecting the towers is still very high. Our main reason for not going up was simply because we never got there early enough (8:00 AM) to get the tickets (which are free). We’ve been late risers and lived a good distance from the towers. But we’ll see if we can do it next time we’re in KL.

Behind the towers is a beautiful strolling park with an extremely large playground area for younger children, and a nice wading pool and waterfall to cool off in. There is also a fun fountain show to watch as it gets dark (usually around 7:30 PM).

Here I am with the kids in the pool. Even just getting our feet wet helped cool us off a lot on a hot day, and felt great.

Check out more pictures and videos below.