The highest floor that is opened to the public on the Petronas Twin Towers is at the 41st floor where the Skybridge is. The Petronas Twin Towers has a total of 88 floors. The Skybridge is a double deck connector between the two towers at 41st and 42nd floor.
Not many people, I reckon, know that the skybridge is opened to the public. It took me quite a while to find the reception to the Skybridge visit. It is tucked down a narrow escalator with a small sign pointing the way.
I got to the counter at about 11:30am and they were then issuing tickets for 3pm. That works out fine by me because I had planned to hang around the KLCC, do some shopping and check out the restaurants there. BTW, the tickets were free of charge.
I returned to the reception and waited to be called in. There is a room with interactive exhibits about the towers. Most of the exhibits were pretty tacky.
We were then issued with coloured tags. They guide each group by the colours issued at a time. We started off spending about 15 minutes watching a video of the towers. It was very informative and speaks to the genesis to the eventual completion of the buildings.
After the video, we were all subjected to strict security checks just like those you find in airports. Our bags were scanned and we had to pass through a metal detector. After that they asked everyone to hand them our bags. We can only bring along small stuff like a camera.
We were ushered into an elevator. It is more like a service elevator to me — very spartan. I can see the display panel with lights for each of the 88 floors.
The below makes sense. I mean, I can imagine how big the floor selection panel would be if it has 88 buttons. Floor selection is made by entering the floor number and the corresponding light on the large panel above tells which floors were selected. BTW, we were told that the elevators were double deckers.
The Skybridge is made famous by the movie Entrapment. This is where Sean Connery shot the action scenes.
The view from the 41st floor was interesting. You see how close the towers were to the busy intersection below. Rumour has it that the reason why the towers were built so close to the intersection rather than more in the middle of the KLCC is because this is the more stable spot. People said that there was a huge cavity in the middle of the KLCC. You think that’s true?
The KL Convention Centre is the long low-rise building below. It is the latest extension in the KLCC. You see how hazy the air was. The air got worse over the next few days. At one point it grew so bad that the air quality index exceeded the unhealthy level. Visibility got as bad as 2 km. The haze is blamed on open burning in Indonesia. Me thinks that Malaysia is equally to be blamed for the haze too.
As a Malaysian, I’m really sorry about the haze. We, Malaysians, are suffering from the haze by Indonesia for many years. It’s just like a season in Malaysia, as Indonesia’s Government won’t bother to control those who burn forests in Indonesia.
Hey Ben,
I like the pictures. Since it’s doubtful I’ll have the opportunity to visit Malaysia any time soon, I really enjoy your articles about some of the scenic highlights. Thanks for sharing the food and the scenery with us.
– Chubbypanda
Hi Vincent:
Well, one day all the forest will be all burnt away and there would not be haze anymore! 😉
Ben
Hi CP: Glad you enjoyed this series. I’ll do more on food in Malaysia going fwd.
Ben
I think it is interesting that all the floors appear on the same elevator panel. Very different that what we had in the World Trade Center, which had “skylobbies” where you would change elevators to get to the higher floors. The elevators from the lobby only went as high as the 44th Floor skylobby. If you wanted to go higher, you would switch to another bank of elevators and go up to the skylobby on 78. And if you wanted to go further up, you’d change to the final elevators, which went up to 110.
Hi Annulla: One thing I learnt was that the higher a building the more space it need to allocate for elevators, especially for the lower floors. I remember reading about the double decker elevators when the twins were being built. I was always curious of how the algorithm is programmed.