Interlude mk II (day 10-11)

Interlude MKII

Today we went to the Batu Caves, which I thought were just nice caves, but turned out somewhat different:

That is a really large statue. Next to a really large piece of rock. Which also has a forest on it, which is pretty snazzy. Not quite so appealing was:

That’s a really large number of stairs. Audrey was unimpressed, even when told that the people who are serious devotees here carry huge loads up those stairs. We had to beg entry with:

The local deity’s, I’m not sure who they are but I’m pretty sure that’s more heads than is strictly necessary, and of course, further we had to pass beneath:

I am reminded of the triple breasted whore of eroticon 6 (Hitch Hikers Guide), peacock tail and wings are a bonus? We totally made it though:

Not the best view, but pretty cool none the less. At the top we walked through a very large, dripping and spectacularly badly photographed tunnel:

Through the tunnel, there was a circular cave with a huge hole in the roof, and a number of crazy awesome temple structures, really quite a beautiful place. A lot of dripping:

The cave was packed with tourists and devotees, with a smattering of pigeons and quite a few monkeys. The monkeys were having a ball, chasing each other, stealing each others’ empty chip packets and then running away and licking them, yummo. Of course there were some more ‘old school’ monkeys though:

Finished off with a tasty delicious Nescafe.

Sigh.

Dinner here is quite an affair, here we ate some nice roti and naan with my back quite literally to the road, quite a busy road too.

These tables are all from one shop, and they stretched the entire length of the street, and then spilled over to other streets. The servers had no notepads or machines, the guy took food and drink orders for 10 people by memory, and got it all right. Then another guy looked at our table and told us how much we had to pay – 55 RM. 10 people, 5.5 RM per person, that’s less than $2.

Lucky for us the rats stayed on the other side of the road!

Tomorrow we are off to the luxury of the Cameron Highlands – I’m especially looking forward to the HIGHLANDER LOUNGE, cause that sounds awesome. Back on Thursday, then next week we are going to Penang for two nights (another 5 star hotel, however shall we survive?) for 3 days and two nights straight of PENANG CHAR KEUY TEOW!!!

PS:

I'm loving the language here, the 'singlish' in Singapore was completely beyond me, but the family here speaks a queer version of english that has a large amount added. A simple call for "Audrey" is simple no longer, here its "Audrely-la", for what reason I could not tell you. Even more common is "Audrey-laaaaaaa", and even more common than that is "Audrey-LAAAAAAHH". I'm doing my best to figure this out, further updates when an appropriate Rosetta Stone is dicovered.