It finally happened! The whole family went to the Batu Caves in Selangor, Malaysia. I have been dreaming about visiting since first seeing it on The Amazing Race. When planning our tour through Asia this was a stop that had to make the list. Something about the giant golden Hindu god statue really got me intrigued about visiting someday.
Walking off the “tren” to the Batu Caves I practically jogged to the giant golden god. Even the scaffolding all around the god of fertility could not get my spirits down, knowing my pictures weren’t going to be what I had imagined. A kind gentleman snapped our family photo in front of the magnificent statue. Then the gentleman said, “Your son is so cute. Can we get a picture of him?” This is something we are very familiar with after eight weeks of travel in Asia. We gathered all three children and let the man take a picture. It is so hilarious to me.
Walking towards the 270 plus stairs the children were so excited about seeing the monkeys running all over the place. We had heard about these aggressive monkeys and their vivacious personalities. These guys were jumping all over the stairs, in the trees, climbing lampposts, and grabbing food and items from the visitors. Monkeys are great distractions for children when you have an endless amount of stairs to climb.
Once we reached the mouth of Batu Caves we were amazed by the enormity of area in front of us. The rock walls of the cave towered high above. More stairs led down and beyond that more stairs led up to get you further into the cave. Along the way are different areas of statues and scenes probably from Hindu mythology and religion. Walking into the furthest area of the cave you see light streaming in the sky; a large opening in cave from above lets in the sunshine, and rain if it’s raining. Along the right wall are rocks and greenery growing naturally. Also naturally occurring are those crazy monkeys. Many of them had babies clinging to their bellies. In the center of this area of the cave is a place of worship for the Hindus that visit.
While we were trying to either avoid, Averi, or get as close as we could, Claire and Tage, to the monkeys a couple of Hindu families came up to us and requested our family to be in a picture with them. It is a theme for us and still makes me laugh. It was fun to chat with one lady I met. She was from India and had flown in that day to come to this temple. She was a beautiful older woman who was so kind. I am still so amazed at all the people who can at least understand English, even if they can’t speak it well.
We stayed in that area of the temple for a while photographing those silly monkeys. At one point Claire got really close to a monkey and my heart began to race a bit. Then the monkey got closer, and started touching her feet with its hand, then its mouth, and then I said in a frantic voice, “Claire don’t get bit!” I scared her, she cried, and the monkey ran away. Rabies was on my mind and it was more than I could take. It was a tense situation for me, while she wasn’t thinking anything was wrong.
About half way up the long set of stairs in the front is an area called Dark Cave. We went inside and paid for the educational tour. It is RM35 per adult and RM25 per child. Dark Cave is home to several species of bats, snails, worms, spiders (one of the rarest in the world), grasshoppers, mice, scorpions, and other creepy crawlies. To say I was intimidated to go further into this cave would be an understatement. I was petrified, but had to do it for the sake of the experience.
The tour itself is done really well. Our tour guide, Zarras, is a great guide who is completely passionate about this cave and his career. You get a fancy helmet and a helpful flashlight for your tour. Tage really soaked in this tour. He placed himself right by the tour guide to get a good look at the bugs and ask questions. The other people in our group were patient with his head right their line of site. We did keep him by us as much as possible so he wasn’t interfering with their experience. At one point we turned off the flashlights and listened to the bats in pure darkness. It was so creepy to me while at the same time so incredible. The sound of bats in not particularly comforting, but I was able to control my fears of rabies during the 45 minutes of the tour.
We carefully made our way down the steep concrete stairs dodging the renovations and monkeys. I got another great stare at the massive golden structure and relished for several minutes, while snacking on Sky Flakes crackers far away from monkeys, and pinched myself all the while not believing that I was really at Batu Caves.
Have you ever been to a place that you cannot believe you are actually there? Maybe its a cruise, a sporting event, or Disney World; we’d love to hear these dreamy stories. Leave a comment below or contact us and let us know where we should go or what we should do in the future.
