Stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Our first stop in Kuala Lumpur was Petronas Twin Towers. It is the tallest twin towers in the world. It stands 452 meters in height! of course, we were excited to see it because of the movies and could help but to picture Sean Connery there with us! It is interesting because it was originally built on a race track and Doug loved reading that it was built with high strength reinforced concrete instead of steel. It towers over a fantastic water park and is adjacent to the convention center and you can go through basement tunnels to access these from the buildings.

It stands 88 stories high with a free standing bridge that connects them on the 41st floor. You have to change elevators to access the top floors. It has an amazing view of the city and was fun to go and check out!

Our next stop was seeing the Batu Caves. They are in the side of a limestone hill and is a major attraction there! There are a series of caves and caverns with little worship spots throughout. We were warned that there was 2000 stairs to climb to do a total tour but we only counted 581--one way. So, we figured there must be some huge translation gap! Everyone was just fine with that!

Interesting facts: The ceilings and roof holes are inspiring. Cochroaches that grow in dark, damp areas have new meaning in their growth size! So do centipedes that feed on them! The rarest spider in the world lives and thrives in these caves! Total and complete darkness is a reality! Watch out for snakes in the guided tours! It is wet and muddy and you can plan on having mud spots on the back of your shorts if you wear flip flops! Bat poop randomly falls from above--ask Emily about that one! Monkeys there can be aggressive if you are carrying food or might growl at you if you tell them, "hi." You can get an ice cream cone at the bottom of the hill to relax and look again at those stairs!

 

 

Probably the most interesting thing was to watch a woman climbing the stairs on her knees with people around her helping. At first, I just thought she was disabled. Then later, we learned that people will sometimes come and do that to plead to the heavens for a special blessing. It was amazing to see. This one woman was panting and sweating and it looked kind of crazy to watch--it was too much to watch for me. I just felt so badly for her and wanted someone to pick her up and carry her. Ally stayed and watched her to the top and it blew her away when she got to the top and stood up! That is how we learned what was really going on. It was such an interesting thing to see.