After spending a month in four different countries of my beloved Southeast Asia, I still don’t understand how people deal with left-hand traffic, and why they call it right. My first venture onto the street from Novotel Kuala Lumpur City Centre was immediately challenged by the speeding taxi cabs and bumper-to-bumper SUVs of the petrol-happy capital of Malaysia. 
Sensing my ordeal, the hotel doorman left his post, extended his hand into my direction, and not touching me took me across the street, signaling to the drivers to give way to a little lady. I did feel like a [well taken care of] little lady most of the time while my husband was working on a two-day business trip to KL. He went to work directly from the airport, and I decided to check into our hotel and explore a little on my own. 
A smiley hotel clerk told me that when my mister is back from work they would ask him for a credit card. I replied that I have my own credit card and proudly produced it to more smiles. When another clerk was taking me to the elevator, everyone who worked at the Novotel reception desk at the moment pressed his or her hand to their hearts and bowed to me. Same heartfelt bows and smiles greeted me in the morning, when I headed for breakfast at The Square, open-kitchen restaurant in the hotel lobby, where energetic cooks made Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese dishes to order, in addition to all-American omelets with all the trimmings. The bows followed me every time I crossed the lobby. Actually, all visitors were greeted the same way, so by day 2 I kind of got used to it. When I had a solitary dim sum lunch at Qing Zhen on the first floor of the hotel, a polite restaurant manager, dressed in suit and tie asked me what kind of tea I preferred, and personally poured it for me. After several rides on a fast, clean, and cheap monorail train – the main public transportation in KL, I also got used to waiving “no” to young men who tried to jump up offering me a seat. All taxi drivers were helpful, happy to serve, and glad to recite the history and stats of their country. I felt I could go on with this kind of environment indefinitely. Alas, the trip was short, but we managed to visit the most important attractions. Located in the so called Golden Triangle, Novotel Kuala Lumpur City Centre is a short walk away from Petronas Twin Towers, built in 1996 by Argentinean architects for Petronas Petroliam – national petroleum corporation. To get to the observation skybridge between the towers, we had to take an early-morning walk to the box office that distributes free tickets, and inevitably runs out of them by 9 am. The crowd of tourists lining up for the tix in 98-degree weather ranged from half-bare Singaporean Chinese girls in fashionable treads to fully veiled in the layers of impenetrable black Saudi females, wearing black stockings, shoes, and gloves, next to their bearded husbands in Ts and shorts. 
The view from the top revealed a diverse modern metropolis, where people of different races and creeds peacefully coexist, and where the construction of new infrastructures never stops. 
At night, we visited the telecommunications tower, Menara Kuala Lumpur, the symbol of the city. Built in 1990, KL Tower grants a 380-view of the capital from its observation deck equipped with telescopes, information kiosks, and souvenir shops. At the bottom of the tower there is a decorative “Malay village” with huts and furnishings of the bygone era; a batik shop, and a stage where professional dancers perform Malay folk dances every hour.Before leaving the worm and friendly KL, we took a taxi ride to Batu Caves, located 13 km from the city by the Batu River.
Batu Malai Sri Subramaniam Temple is built within a limestone hill with numerous caves naturally adorned with stalactites and stalagmites. The caves are said to be about 400 million years old. 
There are actually several cave temples there, dedicated to various Hindu deities, but the gilded statue of Murugan, the god of war and procreation, also considered the god of Tamil people, towers 132 feet high over the 272 steps leading to the caves. 
Small grey Macaque monkeys that populate the caves are, perhaps, the only primates in KL not familiar with a concept of polite behavior. They groom in public, make threatening noises, beg for a snack, and if begging fails, can just take it from a careless visitor. More information at: www.tourism.gov.my and www.novotel.com/asia.
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