Day 3: Batu Caves

Murugan - a big lad

Cheeky monkey

Last night was a slightly better night.  I fell asleep as soon as I turned the light off, but was woken up by an almost teary Tom who said his tummy felt bad and he was worried about waking us up through the night, and could he sleep with me.  He said it all so sincerely, that we couldn't deny it.  We re-arranged ourselves: Matt slept in Tom's bed and Tom and I slept in the big bed with the en-suite.  My tummy wasn't feeling too good at this point either!  Tom had an 'episode' and we spent until 3am trying to get him back to sleep.  He ended up getting back to sleep by putting his boney arms, legs and head on my back (oh joy!)  It worked though and I spent an agonising 30 mins wondering if he was asleep enough for me to move without waking him up, cause there was no way I was going to sleep like that!  I succeeded and think I got back to sleep around 3.30.  I woke up around 9.30 and Tom just after 10am.  We all had got enough sleep and everyone was looking much happier.

He still can't eat ice-cream properly!

Our plan today was to visit the Batu Caves which are just north of KL.  I don't think we left our apartment until almost 12, so we decided we would have lunch there.  We got the LRT to KL Sentral and then the KTM to Batu Caves.  Unfortunately the KRM line was having a bad day and we were heavily delayed on our way.  The trip should have been 30 minutes but was more like an hour.  When we got there we were hit by extreme heat - the sun had come out and it was hot hot hot.  So much so that none of us could contemplate lunch, so we had a drink with a Japanese rice cracker and called that lunch.

A big lad!

 We had basically been transported to Little India - all the vendors were Indian, there were lots of Indian statues about, cheeky monkeys ready to snatch any food from you, and even a slight whiff of India (if you get my drift).  We ran the gauntlet of vendors directly outside the train station and headed to a glint of gold we could see round the corner.  Wow!   We were confronted with an enormous golden statue of Murugan (I looked him up - he's a Hindu God of War, celebrated mainly by the Tamil people and is 42.7m high!)  He was quite impressive, almost as impressive as the huge long flights of stairs (272 steps) by the side of him leading to one of the caves.  We took a deep breath and made our way up them, and were nicely surprised that really it wasn't that hard at all. We were treated to a good view of KL and a huge, HUGE cave within which were various statues and shrines.  We were treated to a whiff of India again - although this time mainly incense!

Lord Rama

Lord Hamuman

We had a good look round and then descended back down.  We were going to go for a look around the Dark Cave which is full of limestone formations etc, but it was over an hour's wait and as we are going to a cave in Borneo, we decided to carry on heading down the stairs and look for a cafe doing  refreshments.  We found one which was selling good authentic looking Southern Indian food, but it was too hot to eat, so we settled on some ice-creams and cold drinks.  Matt got what he thought was an alcohol-free beer, but was actually a fruity soft drink in a typical 'beer' bottle that was produced in Dubai - was actually quite nice.  We then looked around the shops, I found a Malaysian patch and Matt bought a rather nice shirt.

We then went to the last cave: the Ramayana Cave, we were charged RM5 each and were rather pleased with what we got.  The cave was nicely lit up and full of statues telling the story of Lord Rama's life (basically he wanted to marry a girl, Sita, but everyone advised against it for various reasons, he was banished to a forest for 14 years, had to fight a war etc etc, but all came good in the end and they both lived happily ever after).   The statues were great, full of imagination and plenty of elephants which we all love.  And, of course it was lovely and cool in the caves.

Time lapse clip from an LRT train

Once done there, we decided to head back home so we could have a dip in the pool - Tom is desperate to use his snorkel and mask.  However, the train system once again conspired against us.  We arrived at the train station at 3.20, the next train was 3.45, it didn't go until 4.30, then it went slowly and then got stuck at one of the stations for 30 mins, so it took even longer to get back than it did to get there!  Very frustrating!  Oh hum, the pre-tea swim didn't happen, and we went all crumpled and smelly to the dim sum restaurant in Suria for a very lovely meal: 2 types of dim sum - lamb and prawn & chicken, some ebi fried rice and some sweet and sour chicken.  All very lovely.  We then headed back to the apartment, had a quick post-tea swim / snorkel and then to bed.

It's been a good day.

Tom invented a new joke today:

"Where can you find Koalas?" - we will leave you in suspense(?!) till tomorrow....