Batu, Menara KL, Monkeys And Mosquitos

Up early as we agreed to have breakfast with the boys today, and after yesterday’s ribbing, it was not worth blowing them out, so up we were at 0830 to get to them by 0930 – and we were on time, unlike the other three - something that I was naturally smug about.

After breakfast, we head off to the Batu Caves, which I must admit I was not really that fussed about (seeing I have been there a few times now), but if you have never seen them, they are quite something.

Somewhat tacky, very smelly, totally touristy...

As a new addition, however, they have now opened up the caves to the side, rather unimaginatively called "Dark Caves": it’s a guided tour into the underground caverns and it was pretty good, only spoiled by the fact our torches were crap and often plunged us into darkness. The tour was pretty good actually, even if the guide spent a lot of time explaining things that were a bit obvious, in that typical guide tour sort of way: “actually, ” followed by a tightening of the lips, raising of the eyebrows and a nodding of the head furiously.

So, after exploring the caves (highlight being the chink of light that shone down and lit up the place brilliantly; low light was shining my torch on the cave floor and seeing it alive with cockroaches, which sent a shiver up my spine) we resumed our climb up the steps to the temple at the top, via a film crew that were filming a scene for some movie that was probably going to be a load of shit, judging by the acting I observed!

Anyway, it’s not the most inspiring place, so we headed back down and home for a freshen up, before going back into town to the KL Tower, just to get a decent panoramic view of the city. The place is really tacky these days, and expensive, so we tried to make the most of our tickets by visiting the zoo after and  a wander around Bukit Nanas (the Jungle in the City under the Tower), only to find that about 2 minutes into the 'trek', we were surrounded by mosquitoes, so we headed back to the car and to safety.... That suited me fine, as to be honest I was hot and wanted to head back to freshen up before meeting the others later: it was a good thing that we’d got a chance to get changed.