Chili Crab Dinner and Batu Caves

Yesterday, Drew and I went to Batu Caves, about a 30 min train ride outside of the city. A one way train ticket for one person was $0.33! We couldn't believe how cheap it was. Plus, to get into the cave was free, so overall, it was a very cheap date. When you arrive at the site, you see this giant green statue of the Hindu monkey god, and in fact there were a lot of monkeys around. If you had food, they wouldn't leave you alone. Very cute though, and several had little babies.

After that is a tourist trap town that reminds me of an Indian Estes Park. At the entrance to the cave is a Hindu temple and a giant, and I mean giant, golden statue of someone. I need someone who is Hindu to inform us, please! After that, you have to climb about 270 steps to get into the cave itself. The stairs wouldn't be that hard, but they are steep and not particularly even. Cute monkeys on the side of the stairway provided an ample excuse to stop and rest from time to time. 

The cave itself was actually humongous. The ceiling in the initial cavern was at least 100 ft high. It was all drippy as caves are. All I could imagine was Avatar Ang having his Fire Nation dance party in there. There was also chickens and roosters running around inside the cave. Not sure how they got all the way up there. One girl actually caught a roost and, holding it around the body, ran up to her mother to show her her prize. The mother gave the daughter a "wow! good job, but secretly that's not very impressive" look, which I thought was funny. My mother would have given me the "What in the world are you doing holding a rooster, you are going to get pecked, its going to get infected, and you are going to die" look. 

Inside of the cave were smaller Hindu temples, with lots of serious practioners. Apparently, this cave is one of the most sacred Hindu sights outside of India. I thought it was really cool that they would pick a naturally beautiful place like these caves as a sacred space. When was the last time you saw a Christian or Catholic church (outside of Europe) that was made more sacred by the nature surrounding it? 

After Batu caves, Drew and I met back up with Drew's dad for dinner. We went to the night market area of Bukit Bintang, specifically Jalan Alor (Jalan I assume in Malay means street, because every street name is Jalan something). Basically, it was a street filled with restaurants with lots of outdoor seating. We found what looked like a popular place and went inside to try it out. Turned out to be the best dinner I have had in a REALLY long time. I finally got to eat chili crab, which is famous in Singapore but we missed on our last trip. KL and Singapore are on the same peninsula, so they are using the same crab; I figure it's equally good in both places. We also ordered these really amazing tangy green beans, chicken wings, satay, and a noodle dish. The food was so good and the crab shelling so intense, that for several minutes at a time the dinner conversation dropped to nil. But, that's the sign of a good meal!

A shot of our shell filled plates after the meal. 

Dessert was a mango smoothie and passion fruit smoothie with boba from the teabus, a smoothie food truck, parked alongside Jalan Alor. Delicious. Are you jealous yet, Leah?