How to Get Back to Nature Without Ever Leaving Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur's Bukit Nanas looks like a verdant island from the air, a speck of green in an urban sea of grays and browns. But even then, it's easy to miscalculate the sheer density of the forest. The place just looks so compact, so tiny, that it seems like little more than a typical urban park.

On the street, it's even harder to get your head about the whole picture. Standing on Jalan Ampang, the forest just looks like a mess of trees rising up from the roadside. Sure, the trees look healthy enough, but there's no real way to see exactly how deep the entire thing is.

But Bukit Nanas (now called "KL Forest Eco Park") is actually pretty massive. This plot of land is a rainforest right in the middle of the Malaysian capital that's big enough to wander in and feel lost. The whole thing covers nearly 9.4 hectares. Trek deep enough inside the park and it can feel like you've gone back in time—as long as you can ignore the KL Tower rising above the trees and the rope bridge skywalk.

Back in the day, most of Kuala Lumpur looked like Bukit Nanas. One of the earliest images of Kuala Lumpur, taken back in the 1800s when the city was little more than a jungle village, shows a thick forest in the distance.

In those early days of KL, the hill was an important location in the wars between rival kingdoms and settlements. One of the highest points in what was then all forest, Bukit Nanas was an ideal place for a fortress. During the Klang War, locals who lived around a palace atop the hill—called the Godang Palace—even dug elaborate escape tunnels to flee from an attack.

So what is it today? A welcome respite from the hectic urban center KL has become. Here's a short guide to getting the most out of a visit to Bukit Nanas.

Bukit Nanas might be in the city, but it's still a rainforest. That means that it's full of bugs, especially in the rainy season. Make sure you wear plenty of mosquito repellant before you wander into the forest.

Sure, the canopy walk (pictured above) is, for many visitors, a highlight of the park, but there is so much more to see as long as you know where to look. Bukit Nanas is home to more than 200 species of trees, some 25 species of birds, and a dozen or so different kinds of animals—although one of them is the rat, so maybe keep an eye out for that one for a different reason.

The monkeys who live in Bukit Nanas are not afraid of humans. They are also pretty big—about the size of a small dog—and will walk right up to you. Most people say they are better behaved than the monkeys living in Ubud, Bali, but I still wouldn't press my luck unless a trip to the doctor is your ideal way to spend what was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday in nature.

When you can get shots like this right in the middle of the city, you're definitely going to want one. So grab your Canon camera and snap away.

With some prior planning you can actually spend the night in Bukit Nanas. The campsite is on th edge of the forest and it includes benches, picnic tables, and a gorgeous view of a bamboo tree forest. Plus, all the amenities of the city are only a short walk away. Where else can you spend a night camping, then wake up and walk to a coffee shop for breakfast?

I guess there's more than a few pluses to being in a rainforest this small.

We teamed up with Uber and Canon because we know that even when the desire for foreign adventure is strong, it's so hard to break from the familiar back home. Uber's passenger data showed that young urbanites revisit the same places over and over again.

So what happens when you break out of this rut and head out for a photowalk? That's exactly what we were interested in finding out. Check out our stories behind some of the best, but least visited, spots in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.