Feb 23 - Kuala Lumpur

Woke up after a very sound nights sleep.   Bed was super comfortable and the "club level" is very very quiet (or sound proofed... or both)

Caught up on web posting from yesterday and did a quick stop by the club level for a mini-breakfast.   They offered quite a bit by way of things one could order

(all included in the lodging price) but I really wanted to try a locals breakfast place at the IMDB station so I limited myself to a glass of juice, a small bowl of dry cereal with

some blueberries and a small piece of banana nut bread.   But you can see the spread available as well as my plate below

Headed out to the monorail station and bought a 'chit' to take me back one station to the IMDB mall area.   Then started looking for the hawker stand area

I'd read about but totally failed to find it.   No one I talked to either understood what I was looking for or just wasn't friendly :-(   Too bad!   Eventually gave up

looking and just ate at a local place where there were a fair number of people eating.   I took a little risk and got food from a buffet (risk in that one doesn't know

how long it was sitting there for!)  but it was filling and tasted good!   I also got a large "milk tea" as I have become addicted to these things!

Right next door there was a guy making tandoori chicken (I think) but it wasn't ready yet.   But the 'oven' was cool so I took these pictures.

After breakfast I headed back to the monorail and bought another chit to take me back to the KL Sentral station so that I could switch to the 'red line' MRT and get to the Batu Caves.

Here's a picture of the monorail and the chit:

Got a ticket to the right train to Batu Caves and waited about 15 minutes for it to arrive, then about 35 minutes to get there on the train.

I should note that out of respect for the rules of the Batu Caves, which are a bit of a religious location, I wore my long pants (blue jeans) over my

normal shorts.    There is actually a rule saying they won't let you into the caves if you're in shorts, though I did see some other tourists who

did not respect that rule.   

Here's apicture at the platform while I waited and another of the cool "electronic sign" on the MRT that showed where you were and where the 

car was going, station by station on a "light up" board.

As we reached the end of the line, which is where the Batu Caves station was, you could see the giant limestone hillside out the window

Before going to the Batu caves main entrance I did a side trip to some pay caves near the giant statue next to the train station that you can see in the

right hand photo above.   Here's a closeup of that statue -- its enormous!

Inside the cave there were many more smaller statues and then one giant guy laying on his side.   I think he also went on 

a foodie trip and South East Asia and ATE TOO MUCH (so perhaps this is a sign of my own future -- to be passed out after

eating too much in a nice cool limestone cave?!)   

A panoramic photo from inside the caves.   The place is huge!

And some videos from inside the cave:

After this paid cave I walked over to the main (free) Batu Cave area.   This has a huge number of stairs that you have to climb up to get to the cave, then MORE stairs

you have to go down then back up inside the actual limestone cavern.    It's really hot and quite the workout -- I definitely do not need to do any "stair climber" workouts

at the fitness place today!    As an added feature there are live monkeys on the stairs and inside that love to come up to you and grab food or go after any open knapsacks.

I call this "in flight entertainment"

That's a real live monkey by the way!  Here's some videos of them coming up the stairs -- very cool from my point of view.

Once at the top of the stairs there was a landing area and then the entrance to the first large cave which had stairs and then back up!  Oh joy, more stairs!

In this first cavern there were live roosters!   Here is the view looking in, the view looking back out once down the stairs and some rooster pictures -- 

 one that was crowing, which in that echo chamber was quite something!

Up another small flight of stairs was the 'main cave' which had a little temple and a section of walls which led up high into ceiling caves and, at the very top, a huge

open skylight section with trees at the top.   Wow!   There was a huge colony of monkeys sifting though trash and food -- the sad thing being people had obviously just left

tons of trash around (and/or the monkeys were stealing the trash).  So the place wasn't all that clean of trash, but the monkeys were happy eating.  Here are more pics and

videos.

Headed back to many many stairs to make my way back to the base of the Batu Caves.   Saw more monkeys!

Headed back to the MRT which with a slight delay in waiting for the next MRT to leave took about 40 minutes.   Good thing was that the MRT is heavily air conditioned, because

I was totally soaked from climbing up and down those stairs.   As I noted earlier, NO NEED for any sort of stair climber exercise today!

Made it back to KL Sentral and headed for a rest room to strip off my long pants (I had my shorts on underneath).   That was a relief!   

Headed towards the monorail station, but spotted some dessert on the way.   I was good and only stopped to get a single cup cake!

Had my treat and headed back to the monorail station.   It was VERY crowded -- here's a picture of part of how crowded it got (frankly, it got even MORE

crowded!)    

Then I got off and headed directly to lunch (it was about 1pm).   Just went down into "Lot 10" hawker stand area again.

I looked around and decided to try a different stall serving a different seafood/meat stirfry.   Here is them preparing it for me

and the plate they produced.

After eating this I decided to try another "shaved ice dessert" like the one I had yesterday.   But sadly I forgot to take a picture of it!    But I did take a picture of the SIGN behind it.

Look at the name of their web site (family joke here!).  NO I DID NOT MAKE THIS UP!!!  REALLY!!!!

OH well, after that I decided I had time for another milk tea -- I remembered to take the photo:

Headed back to the hotel and started uploading pictures for the site.   However at 3pm I stopped because the hotel and put a note under my door that 

around 3pm they were having a special dragon dance to bless the hotel.   I headed down to the lobby area to watch.   While I waited (it was running about 15 minutes late)

I spoke to a nice couple from the UK who had visited this hotel many many times.   They knew the GM and were very helpful in explaining to me about this dragon dance 

blessing and gave some great advice as to where to stand to get some great videos of it.     Part of the deal is that they give out fruit as part of the ceremony and that the dragons and

the GM play a game of catch for said fruit -- its very bad luck if the GM drops any of the fruit (he didn't!)  and very good luck if he doesn't drop any of the fruit (he didn't!) -- so the hotel should

have good luck this year.

Around 6PM headed up to the "club" level to check out the evening food offering.  It is included in my room rate.   In deference to my sister I had SOME 

veggies (carrot stick, cucumber stick, hummus, olive dip) and some dragon fruit   I also had a small filled savory pastry (indian of some kind), some mango juice, several kinds of cheese

and a chicken satee stick.   Also a small piece of cake.  There were other things to choose from but I was trying to save some room for dinner.

I spoke again to the nice folks from the UK as well as the concierge for the club level and got directions to what they thought I'd like in terms of 

an evening food street.   From their description it sounded like outdoor hawkers or restaurants with street tables.    I should note that it had 

started to rain fairly hard, but the front desk at the hotel loaned me an umbrella so I stayed dry during my walk to this neighborhood.

I'm not sure if I did the walk entirely correctly (I started it right, but in going over a "sky bridge" (overhead walkway to skip some surface streets) there were

some choices to make and I likely got off the sky bridge a little early.   Not a big deal because at the point that I'd walked a fair distance and was thinking

about turning around I actually discovered that I had made it to the street that I was supposed to be on!

I walked down the street towards the famous "twin towers" but discovered that this wasn't actually what I was looking for.   Most of the restaurants were

pubs or bars and the food selection wasn't what I was looking for.   

I got all the way to the base of one of the twin towers and even checked out a huge mall inside that area, but the food choices in that mall were

very non-interesting and expensive.   Here's a picture of the giant tower (one of them).

Here are some pictures I took once I walked back the length of the street from the base of the twin towers:

So instead I headed back the way I came and through a mall area that houses an end-point for the sky bridge.   This time I got onto the bridge where

I was supposed to so when I exited I was in this mall zone.   I walked around the mall zone and found some interesting features.   In front it had a cool

fountain that I'd passed on the walk to the dining area -- it lights up in different colors...

Inside this 8 story mall building were many restaurants (bottom two floors and top floors).    One was "opening soon" and I got real laugh as

it's one of my mothers favorite burger restaurants:

Of the many other restaurants one was the great Xiao Long Bau place I'd gone to in Taipei -- Din Tai Fung.    I decided that this would be an easy default

for me as I didn't really want to go back to the same hawkers at Lot 10 and I really didn't have the desire to walk even more to find another hawker mall zone.

So I got in line and filled out my order form, but the wait was only a few minutes.   Here's what I had for dinner:

After finishing all of the above I headed back to the hotel and entered all of this onto the web site...  Time to go to bed!