Aquaria@KLCC

My wife and I visited the newly opened KLCC Convention Centre last Sunday. We managed to visit one of the main attractions - AQUARIA@KLCC, located on the concourse level.

Under a separate management, the AQUARIA@KLCC is a world-class aquarium housing 5,000 varieties of tropical fishes and offers a unique underwater "edu-tainment" experience. It is designed by a New Zealand company. AQUARIA@KLCC Discovery Zone is the first in the world to make extensive use of multimedia technologies to combine education with entertainment. Based on the statistics, it is bigger than Singapore's Sentosa Underwater World. Similar to Sentosa Underwater World, AQUARIA@KLCC also has an underwater tunnel with a length of 90m, making it the biggest in South East Asia. All corals in the aquarium are fake, as is the reproduction of the Royal Nanhai shipwreck.

The admission fee was temporarily priced at RM20 per person for adults. The fee will increase to RM28 for Malaysians with MyCard and RM38 for others upon the arrival of all the 150 marine life species at the aquarium. At the moment there are more than 100 species available.

The AQUARIA@KLCC is pretty much the same as Sentosa Underwater World except for the many touch-screen information kiosks available at various parts of the aquarium.

Among the creatures I have seen are - exotic frogs, insects, scorpion, spiders, giant tortoises, seahorses, giant garoupas, great white sharks, tiger sharks, rays, giant arapaimas and clown fish. I noticed that the number of marine life available in the underground tunnel is still quite small. Hopefully in due course the aquarium will be enriched with more marine species.

AQUARIA@KLCC is yet another jewel to KLCC as the most visible large-scale urban project and the most well-conceived thus far in terms of connectivity and integration with surroundings.