The Batu Caves

The next morning, we woke up and ate breakfast in the hostel. We met a girl named Ally who organized missions for Operation Smile and had was taking a quick vacation after 6 weeks in Vietnam. The three of us chatted and she decided to join us when we headed to the Batu Caves.

We bought our 70 cent train tickets for the hour ride and were on our way!

Despite the extreme expense of the ticket, I was excited to see the caves. It was on my "must-do" list for Kuala Lumpur.

The caves are surprisingly new. When I see something like that, I would assume that it's this ancient monument, but it was in fact built in the 1890s.

It is a Hindu shrine and one of the most popular outside of India. There are 3 main caves.

I just learned there are fruit bats in the cave. My nightmare! I didn't see anything, luckily, since it would have resulted in me sprinting out of the cave like the girl in Jumanji.

I did, however, see a lot of monkeys. Macaques to be specific. The worst. They were rather threatening, but I've learned to expect that when traveling in Asia. There are always monkeys.

The day we went to the caves, it wasn't very crowded, which was pretty lucky.

We entered our first cave, which was decorated with people riding horses and a very large bellied man.

There were also various other shrines within the cave.

The horses were incredibly happy.

I would really like to know who the large bellied man is supposed to be!

We made the unfortunate discovery that the humidity and heat actually seeped into the caves. And it was extremely humid again. It started raining as we were leaving. And it was supposedly the dry season!

The caves were amazing though! The rock is primarily limestone.

We climbed up the steps of the first cave to look down upon the people and the shrines.

The view below.

The stairs were quite steep.

The view from the top was cool, but there wasn't anything at the top of the stairs.

We walked over to the other cave. We stared at the monkeys and their babies for a while, since the babies are adorable and nonviolent.

This statue is 50 feet tall! It was awesome.

There were pigeons. So. many. pigeons. Pigeons and poop everywhere.

And monkeys. They kept baring their teeth at everyone. Terrifying.

The view was interesting! A bit more industrial than can be seen from the center.

There are 272 steps up to the main caves. It was totally worth it, even though I felt like I was going to die from the humidity. It definitely felt like I'd lost all my liquids again.

The caves were quite majestic!

There was a small hole above the main temple inside the caves.

There were monkeys of course...

And some very loud chickens, which came as a surprise.

Notice my hair. It looks like it had been raining. It was not raining. That is from humidity. And, to be honest, excessive sweating.

There were tourists who thought it was a good idea to bare their teeth at the monkeys. The monkeys were aggressively baring their teeth back. The tourists thought it was funny. I was worried they'd get attacked and lose a nose.

They were fine. The monkeys ran away instead.

This was an...interesting statue...

That monkeys tail was extremely long.

Babies!

As we left the cave, the rain started, but by the time we were back to Kuala Lumpur it had stopped. Unfortunately, raining did not mean a release of humidity.

On the train, there was a ladies only car, a sign that said "No indecent behavior" with a picture of people kissing.

We got this famous dish for lunch, which involved chicken and rice.


The three of us also looked around the Central Market that day.

We also went to Little India in Brickfield, which was like entering another country. It was suddenly louder and more colorful. It was bustling! We ate delicious curry and garlic naan.

We wandered the Bukit Batang shopping area aimlessly until our feet got really tired.

We smashed our way onto the monorail, which was VERY crowded, and head back to the hostel.

The next morning, we headed to Malacca, which will be the next blog!