Sunday, December 8, 2019; Port Kelang & Kuala Lumpur Visit #2

Sunday, December 8, 2019; Port Kelang and Kuala Lumpur Visit 2

During our short cruise from Singapore to Port Kelang overnight, it is quite evident that the demographics of the ship’s passengers has change dramatically.  With a shorter cruise duration during summer holidays for Australians, there are a lot of younger families on board, including many with young children, including toddlers and grade schoolers. We heard that there are 800 Americans, 700 Australians, 340 Canadians, 310 UK’ers, 140 Chinese, and 100 Singaporese.  There are also about 40 other countries with residents represented on board.

Even though we had in Port Kelang and Kuala Lumpur just 2 days earlier, there are a lot of things that can be seen so we booked a tour to see the Batu Caves, which is a shrine on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur located in a limestone outcropping overlooking Kuala Lumpur. The caves are still a 90 minute drive from Port Kelang, so a long bus ride is required, but the traffic today, a Sunday, was a lot less than it had been 2 days earlier.  We spent more time driving through suburban areas this trip.  The first excursion we took spent most of its time in the downtown of Kuala Lumpur.  

The limestone mountain that the Batu Caves arises from seems to be relatively isolated, rising up over the surrounding suburban landscape to quite a height.  The temple is marked by a huge golden statue standing at the base of the mountain.  There is a very steep concrete staircase that runs right up the front of the mountain.  There are no switch backs, but there is a landing about every 30-50 steps.  The steps are quite shallow and steep with a nearly 1:1 rise and tread of about 1 foot.  It is easy to feel a sense of dread looking either up the steps (climaphobia), or down (bathmophobia).  The steps are brightly painted with a rainbow of colors. 

Locals celebrate a number of festivals and ceremonies at this shrine.  Many small children are dressed up like kids at Easter in the US, in little suits and pretty dresses.  Infants are also dressed up, and have their heads shaved as part of a ceremony, and pigments are applied to the forehead.  I suppose a parallel could be drawn to Ash Wednesday and Baptisms in the Christian world.   This makes for interesting people watching as people are dressed in all manner of local traditional outfits and kids just being kids.  

We were fortunate that the weather was cooperative.  There as a 60% probability of precipitation today, but when we arrived, there was a light breeze and lightly overcast skies, moderating the heat and humidity.  We were able to climb the stairs in about 15 minutes, stopping to rest and take pictures at the landings. 

At the top of the steps, we were rewarded with views of the cave entrance and the city below, as well as a dizzying view down the steps.  There are a lot of monkeys that play in the vines and rocks around the cave entrance.  Many of these have learned to take advantage of tourists, raiding any unattended bags, and even snatching things off peoples’ heads.  I saw one man who had a ceremonial head covering that had flowers woven into it have it snatched right off his head.  The monkey scampered a short distance away and then ripped the flowers out of the head covering and eating them.  Other people were actually feeding the monkeys with bananas and coconuts they had carried to the top in plastic bags.

The main cavern contains a temple and several smaller shrines in side chambers.  The roof of the main cavern is open to the sky, so there is natural light inside.  There are limestone cavern flow formations including flow stone, stalagmites and stalactites, but the formations are worn and heavily stained with soot and dirt.  There has been no effort at preserving the formations other than erecting railings to keep visitors in the central part of the main cavern.  

The Buddhist shrines are colorfully decorated and feature all manner of figurines depicting a variety of human and supernatural beings engaged in all sorts of activities and poses. It’s all a bit hard to figure out, but it is fascinating and visually stimulating.  There is a fair bit of incense smoke in the shrine.  The shrine is very popular, but we did not find it to be too crowded.  It was easy enough to go from place to place and to spend as much time looking at things as you wished.  

We did have to rush back down the steps to get to the bus in the allotted hour that we had at the site, but that was an adequate visit for our purposes. 

The buses then took us to the Royal Selangor Pewter works, which was situated closer to the downtown core of Kuala Lumpur.  The factory was very modern and comfortably air conditioned, and also offered free fast wifi.  We did learn about Pewter- an alloy of Tin, Antimony and Copper, and watched artisans doing various kinds of work on the products that are produced in the factory.  Most people are probably familiar with Pewter beer steins, but one of the more useful items we saw were airtight pewter jars for storage of tea leaves.  A tiny 125mL tin cost around $150, so while it was very nice, we passed on buying any souvenirs. The showroom did contain all manner of pewter items for sale ranging from simple castings for under $10 to gold plated silver sculptures selling for tens of thousands of dollars.  

Our next stop was the National Museum of Malaysia, which was the one stop on this tour that duplicated a stop from our prior tour, but the museum is large enough and contains so many artifacts, that we had no trouble keeping ourselves busy examining the more interesting artifacts and reading more of the didactic information.  

We wound up the tour with a stop at the Traders Hotel for a buffet lunch.  This hotel had some large banquet rooms that could accommodate huge groups like our cruise ship tours.  This featured some local Malaysian items, and was a pretty good buffet, although the buffet at the KL Tower was nicer.  

We mostly slept as the bus took us back to the Port of Kelang.  As we headed back, we were greeted with a late afternoon monsoon rain that drenched the streets.  We were glad to be in the bus for that.  By the time we returned to the ship, the rain had cleared off as quickly as it had appeared.  We took advantage of the free WiFi in the terminal to update our emails and upload photos before boarding the ship.

We returned just in time for afternoon trivia, which was a normal trivia game.  Three were not nearly as many people playing today as would have been present towards the end of the last cruise, but there were probably 12 teams.  We teamed up with some people whom we had met on the earlier cruise segment and a new Australian couple and tied with 2 other teams for first place.  We lost the tie breaker because we didn’t know how many official constellations there are in the night sky.  Now we know.

We had Surf and Turf for dinner, and then made it to James Bond Trivia, which we won bottle stoppers for.  We finished the evening with the Princess Theater Born to be Wild production show, which we have seen many times already, but they have a new lead male singer, who we think might have actually been one of the dancers promoted to take the place of the injured or sick male lead who disappeared from the stage last week and probably left the ship in Singapore.  They still put on a great entertaining and high energy show.

There was a Beatles Name That Tune trivia tonight but it was scheduled for 10:30PM and we have an early excursion tomorrow when we arrive at Penang Island, Malaysia.