Walk a canopy bridge through the last rainforest in the city centre
Gazetted 1906, nine hectares left
Bukit Nanas sits beneath the KL Tower, a short walk from the shopping streets. A canopy walkway of wood and steel runs through the upper storey of the forest.
Why it's unique
It was gazetted in 1906, which makes it the oldest permanent forest reserve in Malaysia, and it is the only tropical rainforest left in central Kuala Lumpur. This is not a planted park — it is a remnant of the lowland dipterocarp forest the city was cut out of.
It has also been losing ground the whole time. Seventeen and a half hectares at gazetting, roughly nine now, with the KL Tower taking its share in the 1990s. Walking the canopy bridge is the clearest illustration of that anywhere in the city: primary forest above, traffic audible below, and the tower that ate part of it directly overhead.
Before you go
Free, and the entrance is easy to miss — the trailhead off Jalan Raja Chulan looks like a service road.
Go early morning for the birds and before the heat. It rains hard most afternoons and the canopy walk closes when it does. Proper shoes: the ground trails are steep, root-bound and slick.