Day 7: Resting from all our work

Lord Murugan

This day, the seventh full day of the tour, there was no program: it's a public holiday, Awal Muharram (which is the Islamic new year). I don't know at which point the OC discovered that no company would open its doors for us today, but they decided not to look for an alternative. That suits me well, for not only does that finally leave some time to get blog and mails done, but with some luck it could make for an uneventful day with very little to blog about.

Steentje bijdragen

Slightly the worse for wear, I moved only slowly for the first few hours. I spent some frustrating time trying to get some kind of internet connection: the sim-card bought in Signapore died on the stroke of 12 yesterday night, and the wireless in my room refused to connect me. Three successive trips up and down to the 7/11 resulted in the acquisition of a sim card, cutting it to size to fit into the nano-card-sized slot of my phone, and its activation with the help of my passport.


Restoration activities

The single activity for today, proposed by Jacco Brandt, consisted of going to the Batu caves, a set of limestone caves featuring a major Hindu temple. Three taxis brought the 9 bodies large group there for fares ranging from 25 to 50 RM. (Divide by 4,5 to get the amount in euros.) The cave complex is guarded by a giant gold statue of Murugan, one of the Hindi deities, currently in scaffolding. The caves themselves from the outside look like a giant crack in the vertical rock, with a long stair going up towards it. At the foot there were already some temple-like structures with brightly painted figures all around.

Giant cave, looking out on roofless space

What we had mistaken for a ticket booth at the foot of the stairs was merely a place where female visitors with insufficiently long clothing were forced into a sarong. In contrast to the mosque, male visitors were not bothered with such trivia. Following the common pattern we have seen, Asians make no bones whatsoever about sexual discrimination. To compensate, male visitors were asked to bring a small bucket of pebbles up with them, as building material for the restoration activities that were going on everywhere along the stairs as well as up above (as we later saw). This is actually a nice way to solve the problem of having no elevator: let the tourist contribute a bit to the upkeep of the place they are visiting! The Dutch saying "een steentje bijdragen" was never more appropriate.

Offer box

Almost at the end of the 272 steps high, amazingly steep stairway there was a short path to a separate cave, not part of the temple. Attracted by the cool dark we explored, and discovered that here yiu could take a guided tour through a different, much longer part of the cave complex. The tickets we bought were for a tour starting only 45 minutes later, allowing us to visit the temple proper first. This turned out to consist of a very high chamber, towards the end so high that it was actually roofless, full of groups of figures that reminded me of nothing so much as nativity scenes. The significance of these scenes totally escaped us, and there was no explanation or guidebook to be had. At the very least, it was clear that this was a working temple, just like the Chinese one we had seen in Melaka this morning: though the majority of the visitors were tourists, a large minority paid homage to the figurines or a small donation in an offerbox. In a spirit of reverence or maybe the inverse, I donated a small sum of money in the hope that this would enable reincarnation of an uncle of mine, who has chosen this day to die. A rather helpless gesture to make up for my having such a good time on such a day, I guess.

Nativity scene

After seeing all there was to see, we went back with plenty of time to spare for the cave tour. In the cool shade I read what little information I could find about the caves and temple. I was quite surprised to learn that the temple is fromthe mid-19th century only; apparently, at that time it was still possible to claim a major, rather spectacular natural formation and use it for your own religious practices. The more surprising because Hindu has quite as much standing as the other world religions, so I would expect all important shrines to be many centuries if not millennia old. But probably I'm naive here, after (to mention just one thing) all the Segrada Familia is a lot younger yet.

The cave tour itself was nothing too special on the comparative, world-wide scale of limestone caves, but quite enjoyable in ots own right. We were told it is home to 200.000 bats, which was the reason to issue us with personal flashlights that we were not to shine above eye level, rather than permanantly floodlightling the place. Up until some 10 or 15 years ago, tourists were allowed to wander around freely, which showed up in the graffiti all around and may have contributed to the sparsity of the typical stalactite/stalagmite formations. That sort of thing suddenly makes you realise again how false the impression might be that we superficially get of KL and surroundings: the city itself is no better or worse than most that sports >1.000.000 inhabitants, but such a lot of it is only decades old! That same uncle whose time in the world is ending today sailed the seas 60 years ago and described what he saw of Malaysia (or Singapore, for that matter) as "poor, dirty and smelly". In all likelihood not a single building that was standing then still survives now.

Clayman

Luís and myself felt we had seen enough and were ready to go back to the hotel, whereas the rest of the group had discovered another place to visit just a small taxi ride away. We therefore made our separate way back to the hotel, by train rather than taxi - we had been told beforehand that it would not be possible to get a cab here. There was a rather new train station next to the Batu Caves; so new, in fact, that nothing was working: ticket machines, escalator, entrance gates, electronic boards supposed to show the departure times: all shut down. Instead they did it the old-fashioned way: one ticket vendor behind glass with a long queue in front of him. When it was our turn we paid a whopping 2,50 RM pp. A hand-written note on the glass listed train times that bore no resemblance to what Google Maps claimed they should be. It was the handwritten version that came closest to the truth.

System Under Test

The Kuala Lumpur train station was as new and unfunctioning as the Batu Caves one. After a trek along the endless platform we found ourselves in Chinatown, where we obtained a very tasty chicken shoarma sandwich (a well-known Chinese delicacy) as a late lunch, eating it while we walked back to the hotel. Which was a silly thing to do (the walking, that is): everyone takes a cab to go anywhere, and though there are sidewalks along most of the streets, they are liable to disappear at random moments, forcing a hazardous crossing or equally hazardous walk on the main road. The students hava adapted very rapidly and also speak highly of Uber, but I have yet to try that.

The rest of the day I did very little. I actually toom a short nap and then dined solo at a nearby restaurant I found on TripAdvisor: a delicious lamb curry for 10 RM. I also finally got out some more episodes of this blog, with which I am structurally behind and likely to remain so.