Between bouts of sleep on the ANA flight mixed with some on and off sleep at the Hilton, we were maybe able to assemble something in the vicinity of eight hours. My stomach was a bit rumbly during the night — perhaps due to some unusual eating habits over the past 36 hours which involved eating a lot of different (but not great) foods and at odd times, like a United Airlines “breakfast” at 3pm Japan time or 11pm LA time. Who, pray tell, was that breakfast for?
We started our day around 930am so as to not miss the Hilton’s free breakfast in the Executive Lounge, courtesy of Nicole’s Hilton Honor’s Diamond status. We had a variety of pastries and I had some laksa noodles and rice. My stomach seemed to calm down after a real breakfast.
Despite a train station right across the street, it turned out to be more economical to just keep getting rideshares. We grabbed a Grab and took it to the Batu caves for the grand sum of about $4. The caves themselves are free, so all in all a very reasonably priced outing. The Batu caves are a Hindu temple complex dating back to the 1890s, but significant elements have been added recently.
According to wikipedia, there are 272 steps to the top. I’m not sure whether or not this includes the steps that ultimately lead down into a cave area and then back up to another temple. The steps weren’t multicolored until 2018. I would argue that it’s a fun improvement over basic concrete grey, but evidently it is somewhat controversial because people struggle with change.
There were some monkeys hanging around the steps hoping for visitors who were foolish enough to purchase bananas at the bottom. Nicole caught them eyeing my camera bag when I changed lenses. My 11mm lens wasn’t quite as enticing as a banana. They seemed like they could be aggressive, but I think it was better to be around the monkeys than the thousands of pigeons hanging out at the base level of the temple complex.
There were a few smaller temples at the very top of the steps and after meandering around some caverns. Water was dripping in through an opening in the rock just above one of them. We eventually worked our way back down the 272 (and maybe a few more?) steps to the bottom.
With the sun beating down now, it did feel a bit hot, especially after doing about 272+ steps. We grabbed a Grab to head toward the Petronas Towers. Featured in movies such as Entrapment, they are an iconic piece of Kuala Lumpur’s skyline, which is interesting considering that we weren’t actually able to see them in the skyline until we were less than 1 km away in the Grab.
We walked a bit around a neighboring park to catch some glimpses of them. For a brief period in time they were the tallest building/buildings in the world — eclipsing the Sears/Willis Tower in 1996, only to lose its title to Taipei 101 in the early 2000s, which in turn lost its title to the current tallest building in the world — the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Nevertheless, it was good to at least see them, though I will admit that the Petronas Towers didn’t have the same sort of shock value as seeing the Burj Khalifa. As I looked into it a bit more, I learned why. The Burj Khalifa is almost TWICE the height of the Petronas Towers. So take the one on the left and put it on top of the one on the right and you will have just edged out the Burj.
It’s really quite fascinating. For decades, buildings would incrementally edge each other out by installing something dumb like an antenna, spire, or blimp mooring cone just to get a few extra feet out of their building’s height. The Burj put an end to all that nonsense by building a skyscraper so tall that it really cannot be challenged. I appreciate that kind of excess.
We grabbed our last Grab of the day back to the Hilton, where a storm was slowly rolling its way through Kuala Lumpur. We watched it all go down from the Executive lounge where we enjoyed a tea time thanks to Nicole’s Hilton Honors Diamond status. Post tea time, we decided to explore the rest of the hotel, which is like its own city. It has about a dozen restaurants and bars spanning numerous floors. It was a lot to take in, and frankly very confusing to navigate.
Above you see the Graze Restaurant which merges into the Chynna Restaurant. Also note the Christmas decor. Christmas music was playing when I took this picture as well. We then retired by the expansive pool area on the 7th floor to relax for a bit and do some bloggery as a shower passed through.
After enjoying some free appetizers and wine back at the executive lounge, a downpour commenced and we ventured to the lobby for food. They had an a la carte menu that had options for all palettes. I had Nyonya chicken rice with red chili sauce. Nicole had a margherita pizza. None of this was all that out of the ordinary. However, when we first came out of the elevator to the lobby, there was an entire choir and band playing Christmas tunes while workers were dressed up as Santa and other Christmas creatures. We must have looked bewildered, so a manager of sorts came over to attempt to explain what was happening. As he stated, “We may have started a bit early this year.” There was some kind of event involving media etc. to kickoff the holiday season as it were.
Tomorrow we fly out to Kuching, a town you’ve probably never heard of because I hadn’t until a few weeks ago. It’s still Malaysia, but on the island of Borneo. We have confirmed seats on Malaysia Airlines. None of the air carriers in this part of the world have an agreement with mine, so standby was out of the question. It was either Malaysia Airlines, or some lesser low cost options whose websites didn’t work well. So until then — Good night, and Feliz Navidad.
passports & pepto bismol 