Chow Kit is a sub-district on Jalan Chow Kit (Chow Kit Road) in central Kuala Lumpur and is enclosed by the parallel streets of Jalan Raja Laut and Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. The name was bestowed upon this place by Loke Chow Kit, a tin miner and municipal councillor in the 19th century. The Chow Kit of today is now home to a number of budget and mid-range motels, a large Indonesian community and more recently, an influx of a small African community.

Chow Kit is recognised more as a commercial area and a tourist attraction than it is as a residential area. It has a daily wet market known as Bazaar Baru Chow Kit, which happens to be the largest wet market in the city. This huge section houses many hawker stalls and shops, selling everything from food items to non-perishable goods. There is also a night market known as Bundle Chow Kit located along Lorong Haji Taib. Common items sold at the night market are used clothes and accessories.

Over the years, however, Chow Kit attracted fame for all the wrong reasons: prostitution and a haven for drug addicts and petty thefts. Despite the negativity surrounding Chow Kit, a peaceful diversity exists in the form of the largest Sikh temple in Southeast Asia located right in the middle of the sub-district, known as the Gurdwara Tatt Khalsa Sikh temple, a spiritual home to KL’s 75,000 Sikhs. Also noticeable within its vicinity are a Chinese temple, a mosque, and a host of other religious places of worship.

Plans to transform Chow Kit stage-by-stage have been brought forward to be implemented by the Mayor of KL. A building will be turned into a shelter for the homeless, while the Urban Design Guidelines (UDG), which acts as a development control tool and checklist for future developments plan to give a facelift to four main areas in Chow Kit.

To get to Chow Kit, tourists and locals alike can board public buses B101 and B103 that run from Titiwangsa to Chow Kit. The option to hop on the KL-Chow Kit Monorail is plausible as the station is situated within the area, as well as the Ampang Line PWTC LRT station which is located nearby.