Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  -  March 2008

I was lucky enough to travel to KL for a teacher conference for a few days.  The conference itself was great, but even better was time to enjoy the friendship of two wonderful people I met in college.  David and I will be coming back to Malaysia for our spring break, so I'm sure I'll have a lot more to share at that time.  But on Friday night, I was able to visit the Petronas Towers.  When built, they were the tallest building in the world.  (Now a building in Taiwan is taller.)  The towers claim the title of tallest "twin towers" in the world.  For many of us, those two words, twin towers, have quite a significant meaning.  When I traveled to New York City in 1994 to visit one of these same friends, I was able to visit the observation deck of one of the twin towers there.  I remember the elevator ride that seemed to go on forever.  At some point on the ride up to 1000 feet, my ears popped.  The view from the top was obstructed by clouds, but I recall feeling like I was on top of the world.  Sadly, those twin towers are no longer around.  That said, the visit to the skybridge of the Petronas Towers was still pretty cool.  We didn't go all the way to the top.  The skybridge is only about 1/3 of the way to the top.  The picture here is from one end of the skybridge.  The tour guide gave this statistic:  The skybridge weighs 750 tons.  There aren't many things that make me feel like a lite-weight, but this worked pretty well.  (Click on the image to enlarge.)

After having dinner, on my way out I took my favorite picture of the towers, looking up into the sky at the reflecting stainless steel panels of tower number 2.