Jun 108 min read

LATest e-bulletin June '24

In this issue: ① Quote of the month ② Metro Kuala Lumpur ③ LAT New Centralized Customer Service ④ The Sultan Abdul Samad Building ⑤ So Many Good Reasons to Work with LAT ⑥ Kuala Lumpur, the Fabolous 1990s ⑦ Malaysia Airport e-gates ⑧ The New Perhentian Marriott

"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little".

Sydney Smith

Metro Kuala Lumpur

Greater Kuala Lumpur is a geographical term defining the metropolitan boundaries of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While it is similar to the term "Klang Valley," there are notable differences between the two. Greater Kuala Lumpur covers 13,565.61 square kilometers and had a population of 8,816,000 in 2024, reflecting a 2.25% increase from 2023. It is the fastest-growing urban area in Southeast Asia.

Greater Kuala Lumpur aligns with the National Growth Conurbation, which spans the Klang Valley, western Negeri Sembilan to the south, and the mountainous western frontier of Pahang to the east. It encompasses 14 municipalities surrounding Kuala Lumpur as the central economic area, each governed by separate local authorities.

The rapid development began in the 1980s with new township developments. Large-scale industrialization led to the emergence and growth of townships around the capital. The North–South Expressway, an interstate expressway project, was initiated to connect Kuala Lumpur better to other states on the West Coast of the peninsula. The Kuala Lumpur–Seremban Expressway section, opened in 1982, includes new townships like Seri Kembangan and Bandar Baru Bangi and provides straightforward access between Kuala Lumpur and Negeri Sembilan's state capital, Seremban.

Shah Alam, originally a state administration center, now hosts industrial areas, including Malaysia's first automotive company Proton's headquarters and main production plant, operational since 1984. Port Klang Authority began privatizing its container terminal, and the North Klang Straits Bypass, the first privately operated toll road in the Klang Valley, was built to divert traffic to the main port area from the Federal Highway.

The 1990s saw major expansion in the metropolitan area of Kuala Lumpur with various megaprojects. New townships emerged, and significant infrastructure projects, such as the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang and the federal government administration center in Putrajaya, became operational between 1998 and 1999. The proximity of these megaprojects led to the establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a high-technology economic development area including Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Puchong, Serdang, and Nilai, as well as the new township of Cyberjaya.

Port Klang expanded with the establishment of a new cargo terminal, Westport, in Pulau Indah, and another terminal, Northport, opened in 2000 in the northern area of the Klang District.

LAT New Centralized Customer Service

We would like to remind of our new Customer Assistance Service which revolves around a single, easily accessible number for all our destinations introducing a Multilingual IVR Telephone System, a cutting-edge Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone system, now available in four languages to guide passengers through inquiries, ensuring language is never a barrier.

The new number for IVR Service, effective April 1, 2024, is: +62 21 508 896 86.

The new number for Text-Based IVR Service, which will be effective April 1, 2024, is: +62 811 390 390 88.

Be reminded that all other existing numbers have been disabled on April 30, 2024.

Should you have any questions or require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are dedicated to continuing our partnership and serving you with excellence.

Cordially,

The LAT Team

The Sultan Abdul Samad Building

The Sultan Abdul Samad Building is a late-19th century architectural marvel located along Jalan Raja, in front of Dataran Merdeka and the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Originally constructed to house the offices of the British colonial administration, it was initially known simply as Government Offices. In 1974, it was renamed in honor of Sultan Abdul Samad, the reigning sultan of Selangor when construction began.

Today, the building accommodates the offices of the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia and the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Malaysia. It previously housed the superior courts of the country: the Federal Court of Malaysia, the Court of Appeals, and the High Court of Malaya. These courts relocated in the early 2000s, with the Federal Court and the Court of Appeals moving to the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya, and the High Court of Malaya shifting to the Kuala Lumpur Courts Complex in 2007.

The building's original design by A.C. Norman and his assistant R.A.J. Bidwell was in a Classical Renaissance style. However, this design was not well-received by Charles Edwin Spooner, the state engineer, and the plans were subsequently reworked by Bidwell under Spooner's guidance into a style variously described as Indo-Saracenic, Neo-Mughal, or Moorish. A.B. Hubback, a senior draftsman who had recently begun working for the colonial government in Malaya, also contributed to the design. Although the building is formally credited to A.C. Norman (his name appears on the foundation stone as the architect) and his ground plan was retained, the final design is largely attributed to Bidwell, with notable input from Hubback.

The two-story building's floor plan is roughly shaped like the letter "F," with an extended top bar representing the frontage. The facade, facing the Padang, stretches over 137.2 meters (450 feet) along Jalan Raja, making it the largest building in Malaya at the time. It features 3.5-meter (11-foot) wide verandas on both floors. The central clock tower, standing at 41 meters (135 feet), is designed to echo Big Ben in an Indo-Saracenic style, flanked by two lower towers that each contain a staircase. These towers, influenced by the design of Muir Central College in Allahabad, India, are topped by copper-clad onion domes. The building's style, with its red bricks and white plastered arches and banding, is sometimes referred to as the "blood and bandages" style.

So Many Good Reasons to Work with LAT

Established in 1991

Independently owned and operated

Purely B2B with travel industry partners

Online booking engine with immediate

confirmation of hotels, tours and transfers

Skilful Contents Provider and Technology user

Knowledgeable and efficient reservations personnel

Long and proud association with the MICE industry in all Lotus destinations

Fully committed to Sustainability and CSR

Climate Contribution for all packages and services on offer

Extensive selection of scheduled group departures and innovative product lines

Direct access to a vast pool of local professional contributors

Owns small boutique island hotels strategically located

LAT Indochina subsidiary operating in Thailand and Vietnam

Multilingual guides in all destinations

Operations offices throughout its destinations

Centralised bookings and payments for multi destination tours

Assistance in language

TATTLER

Kuala Lumpur, The Fabulous 1990s

Kuala Lumpur was a fantastic event for all of us and for most of those who lived there during that period.

The days passed in constant movement and travel. Our work required continuous visits around Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, not only to know the places and produce new ideas and offers for leisure or corporate tourism but also to keep up with the unstoppable expansion of new structures and projects.

We had entered a huge stimulator of unparalleled senses and emotions, an accelerator of development processes never seen before in any other region of the world.

In the early nineties, Kuala Lumpur was still a small city, or perhaps better said a large village, very green and with seductive residential areas predominantly built in colonial style. The central parts, still of Chinese flavor with typical shop houses and arcades, except for Kampung Baru and Datuk Keramat, two distinctly Malay areas, with characteristic wooden houses on stilts to protect them from recurring floods caused by the overflow of the Klang River, whose confluence a little further south near the Friday Mosque with another river, the Gombak, gives the city its name.

In the morning, I would go running in the countryside surrounding my home in KL, often woken by the crowing of the rooster or the call to prayer from the mosque in the small cluster of wooden houses below. This was mostly inhabited by Javanese who worked on construction sites, building the new Kuala Lumpur. The women worked in the homes of the new bourgeoisie, including mine.

I alternated running with swimming in the pool and gym sessions to exercise those muscles that until then had functioned regularly thanks to mountaineering and climbing. But those repetitive, boring exercises practiced within walls without color and passion soon tired me.

On weekends, I would ride my motorcycle to the Batu Caves, a complex of several limestone cliffs and caves, just outside the city. Those exotic experiences of climbing and special encounters in an outdoor environment amidst rock and vegetation were a perfect alternative to the muscular boredom of the gyms.

Xan, Andrew, and occasionally Kit were my companions on these vertical rock escapades.

Xan had another given name, but that was of no relevance; he was Xan to everyone, friends and foes. The latter were very few, among them the telephone company that had never managed to get him to pay a single bill for his numerous phone numbers. To find Xan, one had to want it very much and hope that some form of metempsychosis would make him suddenly materialize. It was quite common that the last in the long series of phone numbers provided had already been disconnected by the telephone company. It was also likely that he no longer lived in the same house where he had last been visited.

He floated on a carpet on which Gabriele often embarked with joy, flying and floating effortlessly on the vapor of things. For Xan, telephone and home were relative concepts, and the last time Gabriele visited him, he was living in a hut made of wood taken from the foundation of the Lord Subramaniam temple, in a thicket around the stone caves.

He told stories of rats and king cobras that had fallen in love with him, enchanted by his smile.

Xan's flight was kept afloat by the currents and undercurrents of the world; his joy of living wrapped in a blanket of smiles and sheltered from the mercantile and narcissistic obsessions of human nature, which he did not need.

Good Andrew, tall, handsome, and in the service of the prodigious Malaysian airline, was always in flight, headed to some corner of the world, learning that when the trade winds brought him back to the group to scrape knees and knuckles on the rough rock, he was much happier than serving meals on board.

Caught by the annoyance of this realization, he could only get engaged to Sole, resign from the airline, and start flying on his own among the Malaysian mountain gorges.

Together we climbed impossible vertical forests, surrounded by macaques not happy with those territorial invasions.

Sometimes we had to wait motionless and for a long time sitting on some branch until the alpha male of the troop stopped baring his teeth and went to steal fruit from “some fat tourist after touching her butt and making her believe he was the tour guide she had fallen in love with from the first day of vacation in this wonderful tropical country, with so many wonderful people and exotic cuisine, while - with the cotton floral dress drenched in sweat sticking between her buttocks - she watched perplexed and a little disappointed as the macaque fled with the bananas, pineapples, and coconuts bought directly from a native person she had had the privilege of meeting and becoming friends with”.

Memories of Fabio Delisi

HIGHLIGHTS

Malaysia Airport e-gates

Beginning June 1, travelers from 36 additional countries will be able to use Malaysia's e-gate facility for immigration clearance, according to Home Ministry. This new inclusion adds to the existing list of travelers from 10 countries already benefiting from the facility. The new countries include members of the European Union, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, China, Canada, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The New Perhentian Marriott Resort & Spa

Nestled amid the Perhentian Island Marine Park on the island of Perhentian Kecil in Terengganu, the Perhentian Marriott Resort & Spa offers a serene getaway on Malaysia's East Coast. The resort is conveniently accessible by ferry from Kuala Besut Jetty, which is an hour's drive from Kota Bharu city. The resort boasts 200 deluxe rooms and 17 villas, providing luxurious and comfortable accommodations for all guests.

Our whole product for free and independent travellers, groups and MICE are based on a Climate Contribution programme. This means that part of the greenhouse gas emissions that will be generated are offset by projects in collaboration with Climate Partner, one of the leading climate protection solution providers for companies.

The arising emissions are being compensated by supporting a third-party certified geothermal energy project in Darajat, Java (Indonesia). The project helps to meet the growing demand for electricity in Indonesia. By increasing the share of renewable energy, the dependence on fossil fuel-based electricity decreases, and about 705,390 tonnes of CO2 emissions are saved per year.

For over thirty years, Lotus Asia Tours Group has provided services and assistance to travellers the world over, specialising in the design and implementation of corporate events, activities, incentive tours and motivational travel, targeted at FIT, GIT and MICE markets, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indochina. The group also operates four boutique island hotels in Indonesia, in Lombok, Bali, Sulawesi and Papua.

To learn more about our brand please head to our website, or contact us directly; we look forward to hearing how we could help make your next trip, tour or event memorable and successful.

Corporate Office D-5-4 Megan Avenue 1, 189 Jalan Tun Razak, 50400 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia T: +60 (0)3 21617075 · F: +60 (0)3 21617084 · E: latgroup@lotusasiatours.com

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