Kuala Lumpur

Wow what a day today has been! We first headed out of our hostel to the 7/11 so Jen could get breakfast (shes not a fan of the same cereal and toast that ever hostel seems to have), and we split some type of pastry thing and an apple juice. We got on the monorail just a few blocks away which took us to the central station of Kuala Lumpur. Right around the corner you could get train tickets for areas in and right around kl, so we hopped on a train to Batu Caves, around 8 miles north of kl. Once we got there, we went to take pictures in front of this green statue when some Indian woman walks up and tries to sell jen bracelets and anklets. She literally gets down on her knees, after repeatedly being told no thank you, and proceeds to put the anklet and bracelet on Jen anyways. Im dying laughing at Jen trying to figure out how to tell this woman no in some way other than the word NO that apparently hadnt worked. I finally went over to help her after I got my fair share of entertainment (sorry Jen lol) and just started taking the stuff off of her because its nearly impossible to do yourself! Anyways, after that we walked to the caves entrance and saw a bunch of monkeys, just chilling on the sidewalk. I figured if they are just chilling there, they muct not mind you getting close to them. Jen was smart enough to stay back at first. Once I got a step to close, the monkey barred its teeth and started coming at me! We later realized they don't mind being close to people...if THEY come close to you. But then we saw a mommy monkey and her baby, and that could have occupied Jen for at least a good 3 hours (you know how she is with babies). After we took a fair share of pictures of her, we walked the 272 steps up to the main cave. This place was amazing! Its more of a GIANT tunnel that leads to an open area than it is a typical cave. The place is full of Hindu worshipping temples! We played around in the cave for a while, just kind of admiring them, when we started to walk back down the steps. About 10 steps down and off to the right was the option to do a dark cave tour which was another cave in the mountain that was more your typical idea of a cave. So we did that and within the first 50 yards into the cave there are tons of cockroaches and other beetle like insects crossing all around our feet. It took everything Jen had in her not to just run the other direction. We made it past that part and finally got into the dark part of the cave. Apparently there is also this one species of spider that, out of the whole world, only lives in this cave. And out of the whole cave, there are only 4 nests (idk if that means 1 spider per nest or what but I thought that was crazy). After the tour we went to the bottom and ate at this vegetarian indian food stand/restaurant. We got some kind of bread/tortilla thing that you sort of dip into sauces, along with some indian noodles and a coconut water. On the menu there was "coconut" and "cold coconut water". We thought the only difference is one was chilled. Apparently the normal one they just chop open and serve you so you can drink the milk and eat it. Thats what we wanted. The cold one we ordered was chopped open then filled with cold water. It was kinda like taking a cup of milk that still has a couple sips left in it, filling it up the rest of the way with water, then drinking it. Wasn't the greatest portion of our meal. We finished up, hopped on the train, and went back to the city. We want to head north tomorrow to the highlands, so we decided to see as much of kl today as we could. We started off walking, no clue where we were going, until we found something our little tourist book talked about. We eventually stumbled upon the lake gardens, which had we not been tired of walking in ~95 degree heat (were right on the equator), would probably have been fun to find, but we walked around the area for about an hour just tring to figure out where the "lake" was. We then saw a tower off in the distance, which happened to be the Kuala Lumpur tower (original), and thought it didnt look too far away. We set off and about an hour and a half later...we were somewhat close. We finally dragged our dehydrated selves (although we had bought and drank our weight in water) up to the tower only to find they charge some stupid tourist charge just to ride an elevator to the top. Eff that. Disappointed as we were, we still wanted to see Little India, as we had seen Chinatown the night before. We set off going farher north of it though (and farther from our hostel) to this place called Chow Kit. It was supposed to have a ton of hawker stands so we thought we could get dinner, but it must not have been late enough because it was still just a huge vegetable market like it is during the day. So we walked BACK south down to little india, resisting the temptation to go into Pizza Hut. Once we finally made it to Little India, we could have eaten a horse. We found this one woman without even a stand, just selling various items. We tried a couple things until we found this one bean-ball type thing that was absolutely amazing. We bought a few and kept walking. We never really found anywhere to eat and our feet were hurting so we started in the direction of the hostel. We stopped at one last cart and bought another fried creation with some delicious sauce, and figured well live until breakfast (Im still not hungry and thats saying something). We finally made it back to our hostel, upstairs and crashed into the room and turned the AC on full blast. Altogether today we walked anywhere from 10-12 miles in ~95 degree weather up and down hills, constantly wanting more and more water and not with much food in our bellies: we were spent. Despite the facts just stated, today was an amazing day. Exhausting at times, but we loved every minute of it. Time to try to upload a few pictures and go to bed though. Goodnight!