Malaysian melting pot

Kuala Lumpur is a city of energy, whose capital-city vibe blends with business can-do attitudes and youthful enthusiasm. And while it may be small city, it has a heady, cosmopolitan mix of Malay, Indian, Chinese and expat influences. The result is a more varied and buzzing nightlife than you might suppose. Evenings can be enjoyed under the glow of neon lights, on pavements raucous with outdoor cafés, in chic restaurants and nightclubs where music thumps long into the sultry tropical night. Whether you want to kick back or get dancing, Kuala Lumpur has the venue for you.

You might make a start on Jalan Bukit Bintang, which is one of the epicentres of bar life. You can turn Japanese in a karaoke bar, quaff cocktails in a Polynesian-style bar, get funky, go into a trance, or live the vita loca at La Boca Latino Bar (laboca.com.my), whose multi-coloured décor might induce a headache even if the lurid piña coladas don’t. For the best Latin-themed evening though, head to the loft-like Mr Chew’s Latino Bar (mr-chew.com), which has playful pan-Asian food made for sharing, and a six-course dessert tasting menu featuring Malaysian sweets and pastries. Cocktails are fun and inventive too, featuring the likes of gin with guava and pink peppercorn, and white wine infused with tonka bean. You’ll find the bar atop Wolo Bukit Bintag hotel, where it’s worth stopping in at funky Wine & Cigar Lounge (thewolo.com), which features colourful murals and lamps hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Running across Jalan Bukit Bintang is Changkat Bukit Bintang. The street has some charm thanks to its colonial-era shop houses, now converted to restaurants, bars, suave cocktail lounges and pubs. In a city where the nightlife scene is often quickly changing, the street has remained one of Kuala Lumpur’s ‘it’ destinations for years. The whole street is jumping at weekends, when revellers wander up and down the pavements checking out which venue to visit next on their long bar-crawling odysseys – interspersed, perhaps, with a stop at a stand-up comedy store or cinema hosting a foreign film night.

Changkat Bukit Bintang is especially good for speciality bars, such as Taps Beer Bar (tapsbeerbar.my) which rotates through any of 800 mostly craft beers. Some are aged in wooden barrels, such as an imperial stout which gets a rich, chocolatey flavour from Wild Turkey bourbon barrels. The classy Whiskey Bar (thewhiskybarkl.com) offers more than 700 whiskeys, including very aged and rare varieties, and has sample flights of eight single blends. As for the Pisco Bar (piscobarkl.com), with its industrial décor of exposed brick and metal buckets used as light shades, it features tapas and live music accompanied by the Peruvian pisco sour, the classic South American cocktail of brandy and citrus juice invented in the 1920s. 

The Rabbit Hole (rabbithole.com.my), is a warren of rooms where you’ll find yourself alternatively wandering among graffiti or a bamboo forest. If you want to hit the dance floor, then you’ll hardly be alone at Twenty-One Kitchen (facebook.com/twentyonekitchenbar/), packed by midnight with a well shod, somewhat older crowd who’ve already tucked into its international comfort food, such as lamb shanks or fish-and-chips. (Remarkable that a nightclub gets such persistently good reviews for food.) Or join the salsa party on Friday nights at Havana Bar (havanakl.com), whose bartenders whip up a fine mojito, and where you can try premium rums such as molasses-based Jamaican, or handcrafted rum aged in oak casks.

The young, fashionable and middle-class should hit Asian Heritage Row, another street (Jalan Doraisam) of renovated colonial-era buildings that has become a hangout of the hip. Another great nightlife street is Jalan P Ramlee, where backpackers, jacket-discarded businesspeople and locals alike collide. It’s more eccentric and small-scale than Changkat Bukit Bintang, offering bar choices from Hawaiian-inspired clubs to smooth music lounges, all rather unpretentious. 

If you’re after the full-on nightclub experience, the huge multi-venue Zouk Club (zoukclub.com.my) has long been the ultimate party place for seasoned clubbers, but other venues such as neon-glowing Play Club (theroof.com.my) are hot behind, with top-notch international DJs making regular appearances.

Don’t discount the hotel scene in Kuala Lumpur, since its luxury hotels have some of the city’s best bars, such as masculine bolthole Bentley’s Pub at the InterContinental Hotel (kualalumpur.intercontinental.com) and Sky Bar at Traders Hotel (shangri-la.com), with its swimming pool and huge windows that gaze out on the silver-illuminated Petronas twin towers. But they’re all beaten by Kyo at the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur (mandarinoriental.com), an outpost of Singapore’s well-known Kyo club. The basement venue has a superlative sound system, a good mix of European and Asian music and an energetic vibe, all the more unusual for being in a top-rank hotel.

There’s also a whole spate of cool, high-altitude hotel haunts these days from which to gaze over the ever-changing, light-twinkled landscape of the Malaysian capital. One of the first was al fresco Luna Bar at Pacific Regency Hotel Suites (pacific-regency.com), where you can kick back on daybeds around the pool and gaze at the silver-lit Petronas Towers. At View at G Tower Hotel (view.com.my), outdoor deck meets ultra-contemporary champagne room, while Mai Bar at Aloft Hotel (marriott.com) presents cutting-edge music and playful cocktails. Quite enough to give Kuala Lumpur the toast it deserves.