I am on a mission in Kuala Lumpur. Instead of chasing experiences, I want to look for routines I could build. Can I imagine myself coming back and having an everyday life here? Not because I want to settle down, but if I am going to keep travelling in the long term, I will need a few bases.

The City from the Streets

From my hostel in Bukit Bintang, I step straight into downtown Kuala Lumpur. Skyscrapers stretch as far as the eye can see. On foot, I pass a long line of shops: small convenience stores, Chinese restaurants, souvenir shops and the occasional service business, such as a laundrette.

Overall, Bukit Bintang is fairly focused on tourists and travellers. The streets contain a healthy mix of businesspeople and international families. Many of the large towers and building complexes conceal enormous shopping centres. The area offers a wealth of possibilities, but it is clearly geared towards the upper middle class and above.

Between the large buildings, I would expect to find small, half-hidden cafés offering cheaper food and drinks. In Kuala Lumpur, however, you are more likely to find service entrances, rubbish and rats. In Medan, almost any random side street would contain at least two or three small food carts, cafés or restaurants. Admittedly, they would be outdoors, with plastic chairs and questionable food hygiene, but they were there. Kuala Lumpur does not offer quite the same opportunity to go out and acquire food poisoning voluntarily.

Of the cafés I visit, few seem designed for longer stays. Then again, if the goal is to maximise the number of customers passing through each day, padded chairs are probably not an advantage. As a result, my days have taken me far and wide rather than keeping me inside cafés. I have seen a considerable amount of the inner city. Besides Bukit Bintang, I have visited Chinatown, Chow Kit, KLCC and TRX—more or less the central districts of Kuala Lumpur.

The City from Inside Its Libraries

Some days, I want to find somewhere quiet where I can sit with my projects for several hours. So, when I needed a peaceful place to work on my computer, I searched for libraries and other quiet spaces.

My search brought me to a small room on the third floor, reached through a narrow stairwell running up the side of a fairly nondescript building. On the first floor, I could meet a Malaysian designer. On the second, I could have my fortune told. On the third was what turned out to be one of several small Malaysian-Chinese libraries scattered around Kuala Lumpur and maintained by volunteers.

The volunteers are typically students, and the libraries appear to function primarily as small study clubs, with the occasional board-game evening mixed in. A perfectly good place for quiet concentration and possibly even meeting a few new people.

The City from Inside Its Skyscrapers

In my mind, central Kuala Lumpur is gradually becoming a city made up of shopping centres. Enormous shopping centres containing every brand imaginable and seemingly endless restaurant areas. They are also extremely busy.

Compared with shopping centres across Denmark and the many I have encountered around Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, those in Kuala Lumpur are both the largest and the most heavily used. Some feel less like places where people go shopping and more like the city’s public spaces—places where friends hang out and families spend their evenings.

It is not only major brands that have shops in the centres. You can also find ordinary supermarkets, pharmacies and bakeries. If I simply wanted an easy life, with everything within reach and even at reasonably affordable prices, I could practically live in one of Kuala Lumpur’s shopping centres.

One day, I was walking around KLCC when it began to rain. I took shelter inside the nearby convention centre, which has an aquarium in the basement and a small restaurant level above it.

I discovered that I could take the lift to the fourth floor, where there were meeting rooms, comfortable chairs, tables with power sockets, free internet and a view of the Petronas Twin Towers. It was also incredibly peaceful, as hardly anyone other than conference attendees came up to that floor. Food and drinks were only a lift ride away.

The perfect workplace.

The City from Inside the Hostel

At my hostel, I started talking to a middle-aged man from New Zealand—a Kiwi. He has been living on next to nothing for the past few years while working on his startup.

After we bonded a little over living without a stable income, he offered to put me in touch with a developer he knew who was working on something similar. Before I knew it, I had been introduced to an Indian entrepreneur. I doubt anything major will come of the conversation from a business perspective, but it was an interesting experience and proof that networking is always possible while travelling.

I am moving hostels. After five days in Bukit Bintang, I will spend four days in Chinatown. It is an area I have already visited, and the hostel seems more socially oriented, with day trips, pub crawls and other activities.

It is not that I am particularly desperate to go out and have a beer with someone, but perhaps it will lead to some more interesting discoveries around the city.

Goldilocks

So, am I ready to use Kuala Lumpur as a base?

During the week I have spent here, I have felt like I have been playing Goldilocks. A small, quiet library club with the possibility of playing board games—but is that the kind of social club I am looking for? Opportunities and convenience in abundance—but do I want to visit a shopping centre every day? An exceptionally good workspace inside the convention centre—but do I want to sit in a conference foyer every day?

On the surface, Kuala Lumpur has ticked everything I would consider essential on my checklist. Apart from being somewhat more expensive than many of the other cities where I have stayed over the past few months, Kuala Lumpur has few obvious drawbacks.

But I do not think I have found the city’s identity yet. The library probably comes closest. Beyond that, it is “just” a major city.

Kuala Lumpur has not disappointed me, but it has not convinced me either.

Yet.

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