Putrajaya lake

Lovely walk this morning around the enormous man made lake that meanders through the city.

Construction of the lake began in 1998 by damming two rivers, and it was four years before the 650 hectare lake was complete.

To help sustain the water quality and to act as a coolant, approximately 12 million saplings of 70 tree species were planted in stages to create the Putrajaya wetlands. This included some on man made islands in the lake.

These islands have been completely taken over by large storks and herons, and we stopped to watch them gather twigs for new nests and glide gracefully over the water.

Two final interesting Putrajaya facts

1 - it was built on the sites of former rubber and oil plantations and was developed as a 'garden city'.

2 - an estimated 100 million trees are due to be planted in the Greater Putrajaya area.

After that quiet relaxing morning we caught a taxi to Kuala Lumpur city centre and are staying very close to the Petronas Towers. They were at one time the tallest buildings in the world, but have since slipped down to about 20th place now.

This is part of the view from our hotel balcony and it shows the children's small paddling pool.

This afternoon we went for a dip in the main pool and floated around looking up at three separate buildings that are each in the top 150 or so buildings in the world.

Quite a change of scenery in a distance of about 20 miles.