Today we wandered off to the Batu Caves, a Hindu temple north of Kuala Lumpur. At the station waiting for the train, we met a Sri Lankan man who was in Malaysia for a Hillsong Conference, as he’s training to be a Priest. We spent the journey chatting to him on the way to the Caves, then ended up travelling back to KL Sentral with him.
The temple was interesting, beautiful and oh god the stairs. It was also hot and very humid so I quickly soaked all my clothes. We climbed and climbed and climbed and eventually made it to the top of the stairs.
The cave complex was absolutely amazing. Monkeys everywhere being a nuisance, pigeons being pigeons (including crapping on me) and gods and shrines aplenty.
I took plenty of photos, which are in my Malaysian set of photos.
After we’d finished descending all the steps, we hurried off to the station to go and sit in an air conditioned train and to attempt to dry out a bit.
On return to the hotel Scot looked through his photos and then I fell asleep. I woke up when he returned from the pool saying that it was raining and there was a thunderstorm.
We waited out the thunderstorm in the hotel lounge with a high afternoon tea (and didn’t have any dinner as a result), and then decided to wander off to Central Market, a tourist market of arts and crafts.
I picked up a couple of things for me, and a couple of gifts for other people and then we returned again to our room.
On the way to the Central Market we had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver about the interconnectedness of religions and how all religions were essentially one. Scott forgot that answering the “Are you a Christian” question with “yes” was far easier than explaining “no, actually I’m an atheist”. So we talked about the similarities between Hinduism and Islam, and how Christians fast (or not) versus Ramadan for Muslims. He was a nice guy, and very chatty.
Tomorrow is my last full day in Kuala Lumpur. I can’t quite decide whether I go and explore more of the places I only saw bits of, or whether I lounge around at the pool all day and just relax before I return home. Decisions decisions.