The Trendy REXKL Bookstore

R mentioned that he’d come across a place called the REXKL mall, which appears to be near the Chinatown area and not that far from us. So, we decided to have a wander over to this place and see what it was like.

REXKL is located in the heart of Downtown Kuala Lumpur. It is a community and cultural hub that occupies the site of one of the country's first theatres, which was founded in 1947. Following a fire in 1972, the Rex Cinema was rebuilt as a state-of-the-art single-screen theatre with more than 1,000 seats. Then, in 2002, a second fire finally ended its glory days as a cinema. Seventeen years later, a group of creative entrepreneurs decided to re-activate this 60,000 sq ft. building as part of the mission to rejuvenate this forgotten part of Kuala Lumpur by injecting new businesses, cultural agenda and creative programs into this otherwise dilapidated hidden gem of a building.

The location of REXKL is parallel to the famous Jalan Petaling Street. It’s a major route, so the traffic is quite busy going into the road. From the outside, it doesn’t look like much, but it is quite an interesting place once you get inside. There are various stores, but the big attraction is the amazing ‘bookstore layout’, which attracts the young social media crowds. It’s not like any normal bookstore, and I doubt I could sit here reading a book for very long, as the crowds are too distracting (and slightly annoying!). I mean, I know we take a lot of photos of places that we visit, but our reason is mainly to remind ourselves of where we have been, when and what we saw for our ‘memory banks’ – not to post for social media content and likes! Yes, I write some stuff down in these blogs, but these are primarily for us, family and friends who might be interested.

Anyway, back to REXKL. It was pretty ‘cool’ (but not in the good air conditioning sense of cool), hot and had a very enjoyable vibe about it. There were some vintage type shops selling old toys, records, uniforms and all sorts of old bric-a-brac items, but we only looked at these from the outside as they were quite small, busy, and we were slightly afraid of accidentally bumping into something and causing a scene or disaster!

We didn’t stay in the bookstore area too long, as it was just too busy with people for us to enjoy properly. However, we did enjoy the food court area, where there were a lot of little food and drink sellers. This definitely had a hip feel about it, and I think it must be very busy and popular in the evenings with the young and party crowds. It is also one of the few places that we have seen with a wine bar and a general drinks bar area. I wasn’t feeling very hungry at this point, but R was, so he went for a smashed burger and chips, which I had to sample a little bit of – I can confirm it was very tasty,

After we left the REXL, we went for a walk along the street – popping into some shops along the way and admiring the street artworks. Then we headed over to the Kompleks Kota Raya shopping mall, but it was just a very small and old mall, which we didn’t stay in for very long. We then headed back to the apartment, stopping off in the GMBB mall for a cheeky wee coffee on our way.

Today's route:

Day 73: 5 February 2026

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia