Malaysia

At the beginning of February I travelled to Putrajaya, Malaysia for work. Despite having never travelled to Malaysia before, I didn’t add on any vacation time for this trip. Part of this was due to a busy February travel schedule and part of it was simply because I don’t know much about Malaysia. And given the current Coronavirus outbreak (which was not actually wide-spread in Malaysia) I was glad to be doing a quick trip. I was traveling with a colleague and we did have one day before the meetings started so we rented a private car with our hotel and set out to see a little tiny piece of Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. We started at the Batu Caves.

About an hour and a half from our hotel in Putrajaya are a series of Hindu temples, some within the caves themselves, and the worlds largest statue of the Hindu deity Murugan.

I have never experienced anything like this before and it was quite breathtaking. We were also incredibly lucky because the festival of Thaipusam was set to take place in three days, during which thousands of people would visit and would have made this a far more hectic trip.

So we climbed the stairs.

And on the way, we stumbled upon monkeys. Which was unexpected and a little startling. As you know, monkeys are trouble.

When we reached the top of the stairs we entered the mouth of the cave.

Where we found other temples and a couple of roosters. Which led me to think about something I’ve never thought about before; are roosters and monkeys friends?

I’ve never been in a Hindu temple before so I figured this would be as good a time as any.

I can’t say I understood much of what was going on, but I took off my shoes and followed a family inside who had brought offerings. Then I watched as these offerings were made and this man bathed this statue (I don’t know how else to describe it).

Then we headed out of the caves. Here is the view from the top.

And one last photo of the statue.

Next we headed to downtown Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it). We started in the heart of the city with the famous Petronas Twin Towers.

Downtown KL is very pretty.

Our next stop was Chinatown and the central market where I did some shopping but apparently, no photography. Next we stopped at an open air aviary where we saw some very cool birds.