Had a fabulously long day at KL. Woke up at 630am and had a hostel breakfast of toast before catching a taxi with our little group of 4 people to find this train entrence I read about on one blog to a waterfall. Of course, the taxi driver said he knew were it was when we got in, but when we got around the area he started calling the taxi people on the radio for directions. He was nice enough to turn off the meter when we got lost for about 15 minutes. We were all cracking up in the back of the car as we would continuously go back and forth down the same roads and he was on the cell and radio trying to figure out where he was going. Finally, he figured it out (the first way we went) and it was like 5km down this dirt road literally in the middle of the jungle.
The jungle here was like nothing I thought; it was mainly bamboo and other types of trees I haven't seen; not many flowers or anything, probably becuase it wasn't a rain forest. Anyway, we enjoyed getting a tad lost among trails following this bloggers informative directions. Heard all sorts of monkey's hollering to each other but didn't spot any. Finally, we came to the trail to the waterfall! It was about 50ft tall, coming down from smooth rock around a corner surrounded by bolders. Of course, we all took our shoes off and got in! Alma immediatly got attacked by a leech, Maria soon after. We wandered around, it was beautiful, we were on the edge of a complete unknown wilderness and you could really tell.
We had ran into a couple locals who ran an ATV-tour through the jungle (why do people insist of destroying jungles with 4wheelers?) and they told us, as well as our taxi driver, that there was no way we would find a taxi back. We were told to stop by the ATV main HQ and they could help us get a ride home. After walking around for about 4 hours, we finally got to the ATV main HQ, which was a roofed patio (with cold water luckly) and a beautiful pool. It had rocks and boulders at the bottom and was fed using mountain water. We sat with our feet in, and luckly, some Europeans showed up so we used thei taxis to make our way to Batu Caves.
Batu caves are one of the most famous things in KL. On the outskirts of the city, there are small mountains. A Hindi temple was built inside two a joining caves, one covered and one opened up on the top. You clumb about 280 stairs to get into the temple. There are other temples around at the ground, and bad monkeys looking for tourist food everywhere! We went to eat, and since Chin May was with us (He's Indian), he ordered a mixture of Southern Indian food to try. We tehn climbed up the stairs and into the caves, it was beautiful! There were peacock statues and feathers everywhere; Chin May told us that each Hindi God had its animal that he travelled with, and the god which this temple was dedicated to rode a peacock. There was also this very provocative statue of a cox with breasts and a woman's face; this symbolized that the God was first married to a cow, before he married his wife who was a human. Interesting...
We decided after to head into a local craft market, but it was closed for Chinese New Year (CNY). The place is near what is known as the Golden Triangle, which is an area of the city full of "the main city", economy and tourism. It was much cleaner, nicer everything. After seeing this, I realized that we lived in the "average" part of town, hence why garbage wasn't necessarily picked up regularly or completely like it was here. Anyway, we couldn't decide which over prices resteraunt to eat in, so we went to TGI Fridays because it had happy hour (free drinks for ladies at 8) and it was the same price at home with the exchange rate, even a little less. Stayed for about 3 hours, drank and had a great time on the deck overlooking the main city which was still beautifully decorated from CNY. We then attempted to meet up with some other NTU kids at one of the coolest bars I've ever been called SkyBar. It was on the top floor of a hotel located about 3 blocks from the Petronas Towers. 3 of the 4 walls of the bar were complete windows, so you could see the towers, which were lit up RIGHT There and have a drink. It also had pools and hot tubs. We only lasted for about an hour, after complaining about how everything was important from Europe and the US so there was nothing under 100$ US to order....
It was a lovely day with great weather. Can't complain :)
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