Thursday, October 16, 2008

Pictures!

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/BailPortDicksonBatuCavesKualaSelangorAndSelangorRiverCherating#

Sailing Lessons, Batu Caves, Fireflies, Cherating

Sailing lessons, Hari Raya, Batu Caves, Fireflies, Cherating, South China Sea

Whirlwinds of fun the last couple weeks in and around KL. The pics are a bit out of sync as these are pics from my Bali trip to current taken with my little waterproof Olympus, a great camera for beach and sea but not the one I use most of the time.

My friends from the UK arrived and we had an excellent run of sampling all kinds of delicious food around KL. Yes, it is all about the food! We went to Kampung Baru, about a 10 min walk from my apartment several times. Kampung Baru is the last true "kampung" (village) within the city limits of KL. The area is filled with lots of delicious cheap food and during Ramadan and Raya season, there are tons of special booths dedicated to selling special Raya treats. I think BB was a bit less sure of all the unusual food types but CB was very adventurous in her tastes.

C and B were off to the Singapore Grand Prix over the weekend and I went to Port Dickson to take sailing lessons on the Straits of Melaka (or Malacca). It was great fun and I learned alot. We sailed on the 8 metre Miri Magic, a custom racing yacht. There is so much involved and I have decided I really want to keep learning about sailing. There is nothing quite like that feeling of the raised sails catching the wind and gliding off across the sea. The quiet is fantastic. We saw tons of flying fish and one huge sea turtle. There is lots of work involved as well. I had blisters on my hands from all the rope work. I stayed in a very nice hotel in Port Dickson and had one of those little bungalows on slilts over the water. There a big hole in the middle where you could look down to the water and the shower was outside. It was lovely. Port Dickson gets a bad rap in the guidebooks but I think they have made a big effort to improve things and that has not made it to the guidebooks yet. The small city maintained beach was very nice and being out on the Straits was fab!

C and B came back from S'pore on Monday night and did sight seeing about KL. Wednesday and Thursday were national holidays in Malaysia and took in lots of sights. First stop, Batu Caves just outside of KL. This is quite a spot and although quite touristy, is really a must see. The caves are natural formations in the limestone cliffs and there are TONS of macaques hanging about. One of the pics you see the monkeys lined up on the posts going up the steps. This is a particularly important site during the festival of Thaipusam, an important Hindu festival mainly for the Tamil community. The caves get all this natural light at different points in the day and it is really quite a site. Just had the little camera on this day but those statues are HUGE!!!

Then we headed off to see the Silver Leaf monkeys (second time for me), eat flower crab on the Selangor river and...drum roll...see the Kuala Selangor Fireflies. I think this is one of the most fascinating natural things I have ever seen. The river itself is very cloudy and has these HUGE tidal variations. Right about dusk the river starts to rise and comes up almost 1 metre in about 30 minutes. Once it is dark and the river is up, these interesting little river boats take curious tourists down the river in the pitch dark. The rower stands up while rowing. You travel down the river and once in the midst of the Berembang trees (a type of mangrove), you feel as if you are in the midst of Xmas trees all lit up with Xmas lights. In this case, the lights are the fireflies. We were very lucky in that there had been a big downpour of rain that afternoon and the evening had cleared up to be quite lovely. There were 1000s and 1000s of fireflies and the males flash in unison. The fireflies only light on these certain kinds of trees and no one really knows why they always come back to this one spot. This is supposed be the largest known firefly colony. The Selangor river also has the reputation of having fresh water crocodiles, but we didn't see any of them but made me very sure I didn't want to take any chances of falling in the river.

The other day of the holiday we headed over to the east coast of Malaysia and the little beach town of Cherating. Thanks to Bob for being the driver as the first 90 min or so involved getting lost trying to get out of KL and then driving up and over one of the mountain ranges. We hung out on the beach and swam in the South China sea. We tried to go to the turtle sanctuary but they were closed for the holiday.

I had a great time with C&B and was sad to see them go. My apartment is perfectly suited to having visitors as it is spacious enough to accomodate others without feeling like you are on top of each other.

Happy trails to you....until we meet again.