After finally waking up early afternoon and realizing just what getting hit by a truck feels like, I rushed to make the most of what was left of the day. Fortunately, Ian hadn’t completely waited for me and had done a bit of exploring so I didn’t feel completely awful.
On the way out, admired the view of very dark KL from the hotel elevator lobby. It definitely looked like rain was on the way…
Of course, the first stop was Starbucks to get some caffeine to try and undo the haze from 12+ hours of sleep. Can someone please explain to me why you’d want to add cheese to a glazed donut?!
Caffeinated, we grabbed a grab to the Batu Caves. Ian had never been to Malaysia before, and this is one of my favourite sites, so I decided if we had time to go “see” one thing, this should be it.
Of course, the minute we stepped out the door to get our Grab, the skies opened up and heavy rains came down. The hotel doorman suggested maybe this wasn’t a good idea because “it will probably rain for a long time” but the radar didn’t look too bad to me, so off we went. It would be a 30 minute drive, so hopefully the rain would at least let up a bit….
The Batu Caves are a Hindu shrine dedicated to Lord Murugan in this predominantly Muslim country, and are over 100 years old. They had done a lot of work, maintenance, and painting since my last visit. and things were extremely colourful now. The 42+ meter tall statue of Murugan was also looking resplendent with a fresh golden painting:
Feeling like death from oversleeping, I wasn’t looking forward to climbing the 272 colourful steps to the top in the heat and humidity, but the rain had mostly stopped and was just a very light mist now, and the temperature had really dropped. It was only around 22C now, and actually almost cool and pleasant! What luck! Finally inside the caves, lots of the individual shrines had also been brightly repainted:
Loved how the bright green of this peacock contrast with the rest of the shrine it was next to:
It looked even more brilliant against the rainbow-coloured shrine:
From my first visit, I remember hundreds of begging monkeys everywhere. Some effort had clearly been made to get rid of many of them, but there were still a couple dozen hanging about begging for bananas:
Love the gesture I caught this one in…seems to be saying “what do you expect from me? She gave me a banana!”
Looking back down towards the city from the caves:
Nom nom nom, banana! …and post-banana carb coma face:
After the caves we had a fairly difficult time getting a Grab, with the app repeatedly saying none were available due to metering. I guess the local taxi mafia managed to get caps put on how many Grabs could be on the road and being rush hour there weren’t enough to go around. We finally got one after 20 minutes or so, and headed back to the hotel to get ready to get drinks and dinner.
It felt a bit odd going to dinner when I’d barely been awake four hours, but hey, it was what it was. I wanted to take the Monorail to dinner because I’ve been on a bit of a “subway / monorail / urban train” counting kick lately, and hey while it’s a bit more of a Shelbyville idea, I felt I had to ride it!
Finding the monorail and buying tickets was a piece of cake, and soon we were at our stop. It looked on google like it was a 5-10 minute walk to the bar we were headed to, but it turned out to be right at the bottom of the monorail station.
Heli Lounge Bar is on the 37th floor of an office building, and it has two parts. The first is an inside bar where you get the drink included free with your cover charge. For some reason, you have to order this inside. But hey, they had a mirrorball helicopter, so that was kinda cool. I went with the lychee martini:
After getting your free drink you’re allowed to go upstairs to the rooftop helipad to drink it. Carrying a full martini up two flights of stairs wasn’t an easy task, but finally we made it and emerged to the awesome view. We had timed the visit for shortly before sunset, and timing was perfect!
Had to pose for a photo with the Petronas Twin Towers!
Sunset over KL…nice oranges and pinks in the sky, and the buildings were all lighting up for nighttime.
Petronas Twin Towers lit up at night:
After having a couple drinks and bar snacks we were pretty much over the place. It was a neat one time experience, but as someone who doesn’t like heights to begin with I was a bit unsettled the whole time. That combined with feeling poorly due to oversleeping I’d had enough, so on to dinner we went.
Another friend had recommended a local pub that did good pizzas, so we ended up going there for pizza and a couple of craft beers. It was good, not great, and we assumed from the pizza prices on the menu that the beers were similarly reasonable. Nope, not at all, and 2 individual pizzas (which were like $10 each) and 3 beers each came to over $100. Clearly Malaysia is not the place to come for craft beer!
After a good (and more reasonable six to seven hours) night of sleep I was awake at 530a. Ugh. Hello jetlag, this was going to suck. I made the most of it and went to the hotel for a short workout, followed by Starbucks while I let Ian sleep in. Hooray, I’m in Malaysia!
A couple hours later when Ian was ready to go I was in need of more caffeine to struggle through the long day, so we headed off to another coffee place he’d found the day before.
It seemed to be a Vietnamese chain and was called “CONG Caphe” and I was able to get a delicious iced Vietnamese coffee. We sat in the upstairs balcony, despite warnings that we should “mind the naughty step” whatever that meant!
Fully-caffeinated and ready to go it was back to the hotel to pack up a few things and then head to the KLIA Ekspres to the airport. Bangkok awaits!