Chinese New Year: Kuala Lumpur

I started the year of the rabbit in Kuala Lumpur. The official date in 2023 of Chinese New Year year was January 22. That day, while important, was not too different from Singapore. Parts of the city were closed. Other parts were decorated for the upcoming holiday. On NYE we (myself and two other exchange students) wandered around town, including Chinatown. The city was decorated, but not much was going on. It seemed like a regular day. But we didn't expect much of the action to start till later. Towards 6 pm we started hearing pops around the city as fireworks went off. While fireworks are officially banned within the capital state of Kuala Lumpur due to fire concerns in the densely, cheaply built city. However, unlike Singapore, the police did little to find or prosecute any perpetrators.

Street Market in KL. There were only a couple rats running around

As the sky started to get dark, we headed to a beautiful temple called Thean Hou Temple (UPDATE: This temple was in the top three temples that I saw in my travels). The entire temple was covered in thousands of paper lamps. And as night settles in, they all lit up, providing an ethereal red glow throughout the entire temple. Standing in the courtyard with hundreds of burning candles in the temple around me and thousands of red lights overhead was magical. The atmosphere was perfect. Outside the temple it also felt like a holiday. Street sellers were selling everything from fried nuts to various animal parts that I could not identify. As we wandered through the temple, we found some brilliant views as different towers and levels allowed us to see different lamps in different ways. Even small alcoves were full of lamps.

Thean Hou Temple in the day

Temple at Night

Temple from the outside

At Midnight we headed downtown hoping to catch some sort of event. Talking to others, we had heard events might be going on near Merdeka Square near the old seat of power. However, not much happened downtown. There were a couple fireworks that were set off. There was a scooter race track where people were racing the rental scooters around a course on the street. We did run into some other exchange students who are also traveling to Kuala Lumpur. There were a lot of exchange students in KL as on Thursday, two days before the new year, we had all gotten our student passes that allowed us to leave Singapore. So everyone booked tickets on variety of buses, heading out of to KL, which is an easy place to reach from Singapore. The celebrations also continued through the night as I was able to see fireworks set off around the city from our 38th story balcony. This felt like a new year celebration in the US. While there is not much going on downtown, there were a lot of groups wandering around finding different activities and enjoying each other's company.

Merdeka Square

New Year's Day at the Petronas Towers