Batu Caves

We took one day to travel up to Batu Caves north of Kuala Lumpur.  On the train ride up, we ran into two girls that we shared a dorm with in Singapore, then bumped into getting dinner in Ubud, and later would also see on our plane over to Borneo. We’re starting to think they’re following us!

The caves start with a long set of stairs past a giant statue of Lord Murugan.  There are a couple of macaques that hang out along the stairwell and will lunge at anyone carrying a water bottle.  Once to the top, it opens up into a large room with various statues and a small temple inside where a family seemed to be doing some version of a baptism or blessing for their child.

We purchased a few postcards on our way out and then headed partway back down to do a tour of the main cave which was filled with bats!  As we made our way in, we stopped briefly to chat with some folks coming out and a very aggressive monkey leapt onto Rachel and stole the bag of post cards.  She took them to the top of a tree and chewed through the bag to get at them. Then realizing they weren’t food dropped them.  We tried to run for them, but 3 more adolescent monkeys beat us to them. They snatched up the ones that had monkeys on them and left only the 2 that were of the temple.  We were hoping they’d realize they weren’t food and discard them, but instead they tore them to shreds!

The caves were interesting. We didn’t see any of the cave racer snakes which feed on bats by climbing all the way to the ceiling, waiting for a bat to come close and then lunging out at them.  However, we did get to see a couple bats and heard a ton more and also found several gigantic spiders.