Batu caves, monkeys and eerie Putrajaya

Greetings!

I'm writing from an internet cafe in the 'flash' Bintang region of the city. We've moved into a very nice hostel overlooking a 'Times Square-like' intersection with huge neon signs and electronic billboards and trendy malls in all directions. Quite a change from the wet market and slums (that's what the hostel owner called them) of Chowkit.

Today we took a bus out to the Batu caves, about 40 minutes outside of the city.

The caves are enormous and house a Hindu temple, which you reach by climbing 272 steps! After the amazing limestone caves of Kanchanburi, the Batu caves were a little disappointing, mainly due to the tack souvenir shops at the entrance, a foul smell and litter and rubbish scattered about. On the other hand, we were entertained by a troupe of monkeys that played along the steps, chased each other up and down the railings.

We had lunch in a little diner near the caves in what appears to be an industrial suburb. We've had a lot of meals in these local eateries and the food has always been delicious, tasty and quite spicy. Most have a buffet where they pile your plate up with rice and then you choose the meat and veggies you want and at the end they add it all up and charge you based on how much you ate. Eating in Malaysia has definitely been one of the highlights of our trip so far, the same goes for the food in Singapore.

Futuristic Putrajaya

Yesterday we took a train to Putrajaya, a completely planned city, which is the administrative capital of Malaysia (so a bit like Canberra I suppose, though about a hundred times cooler!).

By the time we got there (about 2pm) we wished we had arrived earlier. The place has this incredibly futuristic feel to it (with an Islamic slant given the mosques) and because it was a Sunday, was very quiet. In fact when we went walking along the river, we had the place almost to ourselves - a rarity on our trip through Asia so far.

We finished off our day back in KL visiting the Sunday night market In Bangsar Baru, the same one I went to on my own three years ago when I stopped over in KL en route to South Africa. The array and quality of fruit and veggies was exceptional - I have to dedicate a blog entry at some point just to some of the exotic fruits I have sampled including salak (has a snakelike skin and looks like a giant garlic when peeled), mangosteens (deliciously sweet, apparently a favourite of Queen Victoria), and Rambatan (a lychee which looks like a, pardon the image, a hairy scrotum). For dinner we had Nasi goreng, Murtubak and Roti Canai washed down the usual iced lemon teas.

Tomorrow we head down to the town of Malacca (or Melaka, or Malaka depending on which guide book you read). It looks fascinating with Portugese and British inspired architectural sights dating back to the 15th century and a relaxed feel. From there we head back to Singapore for our flight on Friday night.