An urban hike through the 2 sides of Kuala Lumpur

KUALA LUMPUR — Not many people would consider Kuala Lumpur pedestrian-friendly, but Seattleites are used to walking, so when Marlene Zefferys describes herself as an "urban hiker," I'm intrigued.

She and her husband, Nick, a business consultant, have been living in Kuala Lumpur for 15 years. A mutual acquaintance in Seattle introduced us via e-mail, and she's offered to show us around.

There are two sides to Kuala Lumpur, and Marlene seems equally enthusiastic about both.

Visible from my hotel-room window is the ultramodern city of high-rise hotels, malls and bank buildings in an area called the Golden Triangle.

The centerpiece is KLCC Suria, a six-story shopping mall at the base of the 88-story steel and glass Petronas Twin Towers, headquarters to the Petronas national oil company.

With a slight nod to modern Islamic fashion, the scene here could be played out anywhere.

Women glide by in business suits or silky tunic and pants ensembles with matching headscarves.

On the patio at Starbucks, a boy with spiked black hair and a young woman in a long-sleeve T-shirt and black-and-white basketball shoes share coffee and work at a laptop.

Two doors down at Santini, the Malaysian version of an Outback Steak House, customers don't wait for service. They press a button on their table labeled "water," "bill" or "waiter."

With Marlene, a jewelry designer and writer who until recently worked for the U.S. State Department, we delve a little deeper.

There's a city behind the city, with a colorful mix of ethnic Malay, Chinese and Indian neighborhoods that make Kuala Lumpur one of the most culturally diverse cities in Asia.

"We'll pick you up at 7:30 a.m.," she told me on the phone. "We'll go first to the wet market and then to my favorite Indian place for breakfast."

Within a mile of the shopping malls and high-rises surrounding our hotel we found Marlene's favorite shopping area, the outdoor Imbi Market.

The stalls here open early for the "wet" sales — just-killed chickens and fresh fish.

Marlene suggests we stop for a pre-breakfast appetizer of nasi lemak, a Malay breakfast dish of rice cooked in coconut milk and topped with dried anchovies, cucumbers and spicy sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf or piece of newspaper.

"In Malaysia, you eat with a fork and a spoon," not chopsticks, she explains. The spoon can be used to cut and the fork as a shovel.

We drink cham, tea and coffee combined into one drink, sweetened with condensed milk.

Breakfast is still to come, and we find it a few miles away at Lakshmi Vilas, a vegetarian restaurant near Little India.

We wash our hands at a sink in back of the restaurant. A waiter spreads out a banana leaf in front of each of us. On top he places containers of coconut chutney and cooked lentils, then we dig in with our hands, scooping up the sauces with dosai, paper-thin crepes in the shape of a cone, and a flat bread called roti canai.

To walk all this off, we explore the shops of Little India, picking up packages of loose tea and 30-cent bars of herbal soap.

Then, before meeting Nick for a vegetarian lunch at a Chinese temple, it's back to the future for a look inside the Marriott Hotel and the glitzy Starhill Gallery mall with Louis Vuitton, Gucci and eight restaurants.

Most guidebooks advise budgeting just a day in Kuala Lumpur, but there's much here to explore.

Petronas Towers gives away 1,700 free tickets per day for visitors to view the city from a skybridge that connects the two buildings on the 41st floor.

The Islamic Arts Museum is one of the best in the world. There's decent shopping and a lively night market in Chinatown.

More prosperous than Bangkok, more diverse than Shanghai or Beijing, less conservative than Singapore, Kuala Lumpur is a hidden secret.

"When you go back to the States, and they say, 'Where's Malaysia?' and you say, 'near Singapore,' then they know," Marlene says. "Otherwise, they don't know."

Now you do.