After the Blue Mosque we ended up going to the Batu Caves. Previously my surgical assistant went here with his girlfriend, and when Heather and I saw the huge gigantic golden Hindu God we just had to go.
Batu Caves is tricky. It's really a limestone hill that has a series of caves and cave temples in Gombak, Selangor. Batu means "stone river," and is really a Tamil Shrine dedicated to Lord Murugan, which I guess is the 10th cave for this Lord guy (6 shines are in India, and 4 are in Malaysia). He's got some property I guess. It's supposed to be 400 million years old, and is super well known among the natives as the place they hold their Thaipusam Festival, which occurs in the Tamil month of Thai (late January/Early February).
There are 272 steps up to the top, representing your ascent up the veil of Lord Murugan. Lame, but the fun part is that there is also 272 monkeys that are willing to steal your food, jump on your bags, steal your drinks, and make your kids get prompt appointments with mental health therapists after being attacked multiple times by hissing stupid disease infested beasts that have been trained to be super aggressive in stealing whatever they can from kids. My philosophy on this tactic is simple: I believe they are a super force from Lord Murugan himself to employ a vermin army of idiot monkeys who exist to suck happiness out of your children all in a ploy to bring chaos into your family.
So what did we do next? We walked up the beautiful stairway to get attacked by monkeys again. We reached the top of the stairways with crying kids to be attacked again by monkeys. We enjoyed a random multi-colored temple surrounded by cheeky monkeys and promptly went down the stairs to only be attacked by monkeys again. Poor Little A was crying the entire walk down the stairs.
Sadly, Little A got the brunt of the pouncing vermin. The recipe was simple: she was burdened with carrying Monsters little floaty of power we were going to be using later at Templar Park, and due to the brilliant pink color, it became a magnet to cheeky monkeys. Her face says it all..."stupid monkeys."
We promptly left after the 5th attack and I shepherded my little flock out of harms way only to retreat away from Lord Murugan's jumping monkey army. Wicked Witch of the West, I have a perfect match for you...
Templar Park:
Needless to say I was a little jaded by this point, and surprise, on the schedule again was our last stop on this hot, blue shrouded, cheeky monkey attacking day, a waterfall. It required a little hike to get too, but we went to the a location in Templar park where there was some waterfalls to relax in. The bathrooms were gross as always, but the highlight was that we found some shade and trees to only once again be stalked by monkeys.
We bought some slingshots at the bottom of the hill prior to going up and sure enough you merely held them up and behold, it was their kryponite! I found my protection!
We let the kids play and Tyler and I held back under the shade. Monster was enjoying the water, but eventually got cold so I brought him out and warmed him up.
I gave the Monster a Ritz cracker, only to turn around to pack them back in the bag when I heard a blood curdling scream from him. I turned around only to find no cracker, a freaked out little Monster in the glory of a three year old breath hold, and a retreating stupid cheeky monkey making off with his uneaten ritz cracker that he stole right out of Monster's hand. I don't even know what to say to this...but can you picture what this must have been like for Monster? Sudden steal of his precious Ritz from a furry vermin sneak attack that is his own size and out of left field? Poor dude. So I was done...
We packed up, we left and back to the safety of a monkey free cruise ship. Darn you Lord Muragan...
-Kevin
This is Heather, and I thought Templar Park was so fun. All the kids loved playing and splashing in the waterfall. They had a blast going directly under the waterfall. Little Monster loved the water and he loved splashing, he especially loved splashing me. He would laugh and then splash me again. He thought it was so funny because I didn't have a swim suit on.
When we told the kids it was time to go, it took forever to get them out. They were having so much fun and they really loved being in the cold water after walking around the Batu Caves. I was so glad they loved the park and the waterfall. Since we had the slingshot, we didn't get bugged by monkeys while in the water. Anytime a kid would see a monkey close, they would yell a monkey warning and aim the slingshot, then the monkey would take off. So the slingshot really was a great monkey defender. We never even put any ammo in the sling shot. All we would do is aim and pull the rubber band back, and the monkey would take off. It was a little trick I learned while in Bali.
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