After a huge day visiting the towers the day before we took our time to get going and left the hotel at about 10:30am to visit the Batu Caves. We decided to take the train today, there are about 5 different train lines and figuring out which one to take can be a challenge.

We walked about 3km to the Bank Negara station through another shopping center… Thankfully this one was more like a Myer shop and even Toni wasn’t that impressed. The public train transportation system is pretty cheap as we had to go through 6 stations and it cost us each 1 RM about 30 cents. While waiting for the train at the station we happened to be sitting in the Ladies Only Coach which only women are allowed in, not sure if that is to keep them separate from the men ie for the men or for the benefit of the women?

So the train ride was pretty painless and we couldn’t stuff this up as the last station is Batu Cave and in about 15 minutes we arrived.

Alighting the train we entered the Batu caves compound to be greeted by a huge green man elephant statue and a temple at the top of several stairs, photo op for me again!

After a short walk to the imposing staircase of 287 steps there was another huge golden statue and about a thousand pigeons at the bottom where everyone was taking photos. We decided to get going and head up the never ending stairs.

Oh look, Toni’s least favorite animal, Monkeys and I happened to have a bag of fruit in my hand… Not the smartest monkey I am. I was the main attraction and about 5 monkeys quickly surrounded me and wanted my bag. I growled at them but a bigger one missing half his top lip got the better of me and I gave in, lucky them.

Feeling a bit puffed now about half way up we stopped to admire the city view and other tourists battling with the monkeys too.

Once we reached the top the cave is really big and is a huge cavern that you walk through on the way to an opening and the end, about 300m of cave I guess. We took a few more photos and I posed being superman holding up the cavern wall.

We left the main cave and saw a sign for the dark cave so we went for a look, this is a private tour of the dark caves which we bought a couple of tickets, we’re given a flashlight each and in a few minutes our tour guide ushered us to the start of the 45min walk.

This cave is dark, musty and very long. We only get to see about 800m in but there are other caverns off limits as they are conservation areas. Our guide stopped us every fifty metres to explain the ecosystem and the different creatures that inhabit the caves.

As there is no light in the caves the food chain is pretty interesting. The fruit bats go out at night and feed, they return and poop guano. This guano is where the insects feed on and they have changed to adapt to the pitch black of the cave. She pointed out a millipede with really long legs and a common house spider that was introduced many years ago who’s legs have grown extra long and their spider webs are really messy as they can’t see what they are doing. Another introduced insect were the crickets with very long legs and antenna as they can’t see either.

Once in the cave about halfway she instructed us all to turn off our flashlights and see what total darkness was like. Totally black as in my hand was 1cm from my eye and I couldn’t see it, pretty eery place without light.

We were now coming to the end of the cave and the roof had collapsed many years ago so I took a few photos meanwhile Toni was trying to get the bat guano out of her hair. Apparently that’s lucky, I think not.

Well we made it out of the cave and had to brave the 287 steps on the way down, not as hard as up but it still makes me chuckle seeing the tourists being harassed by the curious monkeys.

We decided to head to the butterfly park next, so we took the train to a station near the national mosque and made our way on foot.