Carrom

The Weekend KL trip

Jacky and I caught a taxi to the coach terminal and got there ahead of everyone else, we talked to the locals and they told us about Carrom, it's kind of like air hockey with drahgts pieces and it's not as violent. I wont discuss the coach trip in, other than I slept through the crash site. We got in about 2 am I think, a few of the group were a bit dissapointed by the sight, but things did look brighter in the morning.

I started the morning with a cold shower, turns out ours was the room that wasn't ready for public use. No hot water, no fridge, no bin, no phone and halfway through the toilet stoped working too. Oh and lets not forget sleeping to paint fumes, our room had just been painted.

We jumped on the hop-on hop-off bus, these are very good and can be found in almost every city in the world. From there we chose what we would do for the day, we were fortunate to get one of the open air buses which are great for photos.

Old shack set up to resemble ancient living conditions.

Our first stop was the museums, there are two right next to each other, though the first one is rather small, it was still educational.   

Carveed poles

There were some cool looking things outside the museums, massive carved poles, a little man pole, a snake guy and a bird guy. I got my piccy taken with some birds, it was wicked!

Museum lobby

This is the foyer/lobby of the main museum, the building was much bigger and I looked at everything. Finally a gift shop that sells badges, I think I bought about five.

Reacting projection

Burial grave.

This is a reacting projection. It is on the floor and when you step on it, it reacts like water, causing ripples and the like.










I was in heaven in the museum, lots of bones and history, and a grave! AWESOME!!!

They had this wonderful moving display, computer grapics moving over a set up background, telling a story. Unfortunately it was in Malay so I couldn't understand it, but the concept was brilliant.

Me with the Portugese

One small step for Kel

Naturally I had to get my picture taken in the astronaught suit.

Jacky with the palace guard

After the museum we jumped back onto the bus and headed to the palace. It was big, alas the gate was shut to tourists. It was very pretty.

All of us with the guard

The Palace

After checking out the palace we got back on the bus and headed off to the bird sancuary. It was the most amazing bird park I have ever been to. The birds showed no fear desipe all the children running around terrorising them.

Park rules

We obeyed all the rules and saw all the pretty birds, many of which I had never seen before.

Moona making friends with the local wildlife

 Sorry if I spelt your name wrong Moona, I love this shot of you and the bird.

Scarlet Ibis

Australia's newest scavenger bird is the ibis, it's white with a black beak. They have them here too, but they also have the scarlet one, which is quite breathtaking.

Shirley and a peacock

On the way to the eagle show a peacock started following Shirley, it was very funny.

The birds really were very friendly, and we didn't even have any bird seed. I think I had four hanging off me at one point.

Moona with a rainbow lorikeet

I think we all had a bird hanging off us at one point or another, yet we all managed to get through the day without getting shit on, gotta love that.

Shirley and I behind the waterfall

This was an awesome little cave under the waterfall and it had a chair, by this point we all kind of needed one. It's a good thing we were on our way to the bird show, that would mean sitting down.

Abbey in the butterfly park

After the bird park we headed round the corner to the butterfly park, it wasn't a spectacular butterfly park, but the garden itself was quite lovely. At one point I found a gazebo and lied down for a bit on one of the benches.

The butterfly park

Petronis towers

After we finished there we all climbed back onto the bus, it was getting on in the afternoon and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we decided to ride the bus back to stop 8; Chinatown, however the traffic was chaotic and it took a very long time, I did get some nice shots along the way though.

The other tower.

Pretty lit up trees

Lights

Strangler tree

This is a strangler tree, it wraps itself around another tree and then slowly chokes it to death. The middle tree dies and leaves a hole in the centre. The completed process looks quite facinating. We eventually got back to the swiss hotel, met up with Sanjay and Allan, we all went out to dinner and then the girls and I went shopping. We eventually broke off into smaller groups and without arranging it properly, we all met up at the end of the night at the bar across the road from our hotel, where we had a few drinks to wind down the day.

 

The towers lit up at night.

After breakfast on sunday morning, Abbey, Sharwin and I said farewell to the rest of the seven and headed off for the Batu Caves via KL central. KL central reminds me a lot of Melbourne central; train hub under a shopping centre. The train system was easy to understand and in no time at all we were on a train to Batu Caves. They have two carriage on their trains that are 'ladies only,' no men, no children, just ladies. I'm not sure why they have them, but it was pretty cool, we however, sat in the normal section and rode it to the end of the line. They have some interesting train rules here, we were not the only tourists to find them amusing.

observe the third from the right. The writing says, "no conoodling" or something to that effect.

Sharwin sleeping

 Sharwin was wise to get some sleep in on the train, if we had known what awaited us, perhaps Abbey and I would have done the same.

Batu Caves entrance

I'm told it was 297 stairs to the top, I wasn't counting I was too busy trying to breath and trying not to fall. It did feel like a very long way, luckily we all had water with us.

 

Proof that we all made it to the top. When we got there we commented that it was a good thing Shirley never came with us because she never would have made it past that first set of stairs. Yes, you heard right, that big set was the first set.

This is a clip of what we found at the very top, there was also monkeys and a chicken up there, I get the monkeys being there, but the chicken? Lucky it moved fast cause I was getting hungry.

We then headed back down some stairs and back up some more to go to the dark caves. We left Sharwin to sit down while Abbey and I continued into the dark caves and took the educational tour.

this was on the tour, left from another time

 

 There were two chairs in the cave left from the days of distructive tours, alas they were not for us to sit on.

 After a lot of darkness and a very long walk, Abbey and I arrived at the shaft of light at the end of the cave tour, it was pretty and so out of place, lots of green. There were also bats all through the cave, but the smell of the guana was strongest near this shaft.

 When we exited and picked up Sharwin, we found some monkeys playing around on the sign, we had to walk directly under them to get out.

View from the top of the main set of stairs.

 We then began our trek back down the rest of those massive stairs.

 We found some monkeys on the side of the stairs on our way down, they were enjoying coconut, we also saw another one open a bottle of water. Clever little creatures.

Me and a god

Look at the scale of this thing, it's sooooo massive.

Central markets

After the caves we had lunch and then headed back to KL to check out the central markets, then we headed for the unofficial meeting place, the bar to meet up and head back to Penang.

 (EDIT: the video clip does not appear to work on this)