Batu Caves

22 March 2009, the following day after attending Balloon Fest with Suli and her sis, Mushtaro, Meng and I met up with Suli and her German friend, Frank at Batu Caves for a visit. We were there to also meet up with my pal Eugene and his KK hiking group.

The composition of the group was very weird this time; Eugene's group was there for endurance training, while my group just wanted to visit. The result, one group was leisurely climbing the stairs, frequently stopping to take pictures while at the backdrop, the other group was training , scaling the 272-steps of stairs for several rounds.


It was nice to be able to visit Bt Caves again. So much has changed except for the smell of sulphur (if you know what i mean). Surprisingly, the climb wasnt that difficult, considering i have scaled KL tower which was 2000 steps (7 times more). However, i was quite disappointed with the management of the cave..The exterior seems okie, but the interior seems a little shabby. I think they could do better than that.. More frustrating was the dark cave which we wanted to go next. The entrance to the gave was locked shut. Entrance fee was required and you need to make prior bookings and arrangements for a guide before entering..oh ya, and entrance fee is RM 35 per person ya! We'll probably try it next time.

Next, we headed to the park beside the cave. Don't ask me what the park was..it was like a rojak type of cave musuem cum reptile zoo cum dance performance type of park..but beats me, it was a fairly interesting place to go (with reasonable entrance fee of RM 7). We managed to see the phython which laid an astonishing 120 eggs that came out in the papers not too long ago(usually they lay about 30 to 100, never exceeding) and also held her eggs!..it felt as though that we were holding soft potatoes..interestingly, we were told that the gender of the snakes could be told from looking at the shapes of the egg; females were of bigger roundish size while males had a slimmer oval like shape.

Our tour ended with the rest of the guys waiting for us outside the entrance. Most of them had scaled the stair a few times, having their legs feelin wobbly..next on their mind was to have food! But what's famous here? Har mee (prawn noodle) was said to be good..and there was also the porridge option..We decided to go healthy that day and so we went for porridge..The place recommended by one of the girls in our group was Pan Heong Restaurant located not too far away from Bt Cave (5 minutes drive)..I never knew that people could queue up for porridge as i never was a fan of porridge anyway..but frankly, it was okie..to get a rating 'okie' from a porridge-hater like me would be considered a 'good' from others..Best sellers here are their fish porridge and prawns..but the prawns cost RM 35 for 2..and mamak mee..their fish porridge had a unique combination of fish with 'pei tan'