Where Is Calderon?

Ronny and Marisa (two long time friends of mine) just left Singapore a few days ago.  They came to visit Ronna and I for about 2 weeks.  For those 2 weeks I was very busy shoeing them around.  We saw lots of things and ate lots of food.  We did not do anything new in Singapore that I haven't blogged about before so I am just going to focus on the 2 side trips we took.  The first side trip was a day trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia.  I have been to KL a few times, but it has been about 10 years since I have spent any real time there.  I was only taking Ronny and Marisa for the day so I had to plan accordingly.  Unfortunately Ronna had to work so she was not able to join us.  :(  Anyways, we got a 6:30am flight to KL.  The flight was only an hour so we got in around 7:30am.  My only plans for the day was to see Batu Caves (a Hindu religious site) and Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) as this is where the Petronas Twin Towers are located along with the Menara or KL Tower.  So first thing we did was catch a train to Batu Caves from the airport.  Actually we took a train to the city and then changed trains to Batu Caves.  This was all new for me as 10 years ago there was no train to Batu Caves.  It only took 30 to 45 mins to reach Batu Caves.  Batu Caves is a a cave system that has some Hindu temples and shrines inside of it.  To reach the cave entrance you need to climb the steps.

 

It is not as bad as it looks.  The hardest part of the steps is avoiding the monkeys.  The monkeys are like little punks.  You need to be careful of them as they can be very nasty at times.  We saw one monkey push a lady as it ran by, another one stole a water bottle, and one even hissed and threatened Marisa.  But they sure do look cute.

  

Like I said earlier the inside of the cave has Hindu temples and shrines.

  

As you can see the cave looks very empty.  That is because it was.  10 years ago the cave walls were lined with statues and scenes out of the Hindu religion with a few temples for prayer scattered throughout.  Now there is almost nothing inside.  There was one scene and two prayer shrines.  I don't know what happened to everything else.  I have to admit it kind of sucked especially since I know how wonderful it was before.  I don't know if things were removed temporarily or forever, but I left there very disappointed.  In fact I have no desire to ever visit Batu Caves again and that is sad because last time I was so amazed by the place.  The only good thing about Batu Caves was the monkeys and the view of KLCC.

 

On the left you can see the Petronas Twin Towers (once the tallest buildlings in the world and made famous by the movie Entrapment with Catherine Zeta Jones) and on the right is Menara or KL Tower.  Petronas is taller, but Menara is built on a hill so it is higher.  Petronas is very hard to go up because they limit the number of visitors so we went to Menara which gives a better view anyways since it is higher.  It was a fun day, but we were so tired from getting up very early and not sleeping much the night before.  In fact we were all constantly falling asleep throughout the day.  Anytime we sat down we would drift in and out of sleep.  So we opted to catch an early flight home even though we had to pay a penalty for changing our flight.  It was well worth it to get home 3 hours earlier.  So like I said it was a fun day, but so tiring especially when you start out super tired.