Kuala Lumpur: Caves, forest and monkey raiders

Hi everyone.

Well, we made it at last. After two weeks of packing and decorating hell that was twice as hard as we expected, we called a cab and rushed to Stansted airport (leaving Shane and Kare's flat less tidy than it should have been. Sorry, guys).

Now I'm sitting in a Kuala Lumpur Starbucks (of course, the coffee's as crap as in the UK, and the same high price) while Maja and the boys go and check out UP in 3D at the shopping mall cinema. This is no 3rd world experience.

KL is pretty hot and steamy, tough work for pedestrians, as there are hardly any pavements or road crossings, and the older human-scale houses are fast being replaced with pretentious office buildings and high-rise apartments.



















The Petronas towers are an exception, and are really pretty spectacular.



















We've been having a great time, though. We've been put up and looked after by local artist Jasmine Kok, who has been amazingly tolerant of us taking up her limited space and the boys running amok with her possessions.

On the first day, she kindly drove us to the Batu caves on the edge of town. This natural feature was discovered by some English explorer in the somethingth century and has since been taken over by a Hindu temple.













The cave itself is worth the trip, but the highlight for us was the cheeky monkey that raided Aron's drink and glugged it down without spilling a drop.



















The rampaging troop was actually pretty friendly, they'd just learned to fleece unwary tourists, which just shows their great intelligence, as far as I'm concerned. And the older males have these great moustaches that make them look like gentlemen from the Raj.














Here a video of a bunch of raiders looting a trailer of trash outside the bird park in KL:


There is a reconstituted rainforest called FRIM only a few miles out of KL that is packed with amazing canopy trees













and exotic plants













and a clump of the biggest bamboo I've ever seen.













We found a rubber tree that had been cut to let the sap run free. A quick touch revealed that the natural substance goes surprisingly hard. I believe they add sulphur to soften it for tyres etc.














The boys has the greatest time there - despite a few mossie bites (no malaria here). Ariel, who normally won't walk more then 100m before demanding the pram, walked and sweated for a couple of hours through the forest; leading the way, and fearlessly scrambling around a landscape that is pretty hazardous for a three year old like a mini Indiana Jones.














We have many more pics and videos to show you, but this post is getting pretty huge so I'll save them for next time.

Regards to you all.

Dan, Maja, Aron and Ariel

PS You can click on the images to see them in full size