Batu Caves

We took a day trip from Kuala Lumpur to the Batu Caves, just outside of the city to the north.  This is a huge Hindu cave temple complex.  It is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India.  The first cave we saw, the Ramayana Cave, is full of painted statues of Hindu Gods.  The second, and more famous, is the actual Batu Cave.  This is the site of the yearly Thaipusam festival, where people perform self mutilation rituals.

There are also many macaque monkeys that live in the caves, fed by tourists.  They look cute, but we were warned they bite.  One even came up to Caryl and tried to grab his water bottle!  I have indicated where the monkeys are climbing the rocks with red arrows - helps show just how large this cave is!

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful city.  There's so much to do and see, people are really nice and genuinely want to help, the food's amazing, and there are about 400 shopping malls (I made that number up, but there are a lot)!  Some even have roller coasters and there's even a whole mall dedicated to electronics!  It's like they thought of Caryl when they built it.  :) We also checked out the National Museum (Muzium Negara, complete with a helicopter and canon shaped like a dragon).  It gave some overview of Malaysia's complicated history and their fight for independence from first the Portuguese and later the the British imperialists.  Malaysia has a very interesting ethnic breakdown - about 50% of the country is Malay, 40% Chinese, and 10% Indian.  After Malaysia declared independence on August 31, 1957, there was some initial racial tensions (and the breaking away of the predominantly Chinese Singapore), but ultimately, things settled down, and Malaysia seems to handle the heterogeneity pretty effectively.  The museum talked about the intermarriage between the Malays and Chinese, though I'm not sure if the Indians intermarry as well.  Nervelessness, we were thrilled to have the choice between Indian, Chinese, or Malay food for every meal.  :)

Pictures 1 & 2: National Museum
Pictures 3-5: Shopping!
Picture 6: Tech mall
Picture 7: Amusement park in the Times Square mall (where clothes are very cheap, but you're not allowed to try anything on and nothing has labels with sizes or materials used.  I assume everything is made in China)
Picture 8: Petaling street, the center of Chinatown
Pictures 9 & 10: Apartment buildings in KL
Picture 11: Cool street art
Picture 12: Caryl's favorite building
Picture 13: The gate to the old prison that was recently torn down to make room for more buildings downtown
Pictures 14-16: Masjid Jamek - mosque built in 1909, the oldest surviving mosque in KL
Pictures 17-22: Dataran Merdeka - the main square in KL.  The flag pole is one of the tallest in the world, and it's the location where they raised the Malay flag for the first time in 1957.

Kuala Lumpur and the Petronas Towers!!!

So, after three long months in Madagascar, we finally made it to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  We found an awesome hotel online with themed rooms.  We stayed on the "Mission to Mars" room, which was very well done and really felt like we were the crew of a spaceship.  We spent the first few days enjoying being in a major city again - eating Asian food and checking out the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world.  Interestingly, we also learned that, by law, Muslims are not allowed to purchase alcohol in Malaysia.  Interesting.