"It's Your Christmas"

I was on the plane!! I was on the plane! I was on the plane! 

I was headed to KL and companionship! I even had an aisle seat!

And We were delayed again. I stood up, stretched,  and walked towards the galley to get some water, “It’s your Christmas.” said a flight attendant cheerily. It was 12:00 midnight. I had spent the entirety of Christmas Eve in the airport. “Merry Christmas!” was my response.

My seat mate was a nice guy. He like me was overjoyed to be leaving DBX after a similarly long delay. The flight was uneventful. I was too excited to sleep. After traveling alone (something I enjoy doing a lot) I was looking forward to making  it to Malaysia to the point of being antsy. We were two hours late. Disembarking I met Oliver, a Londoner who used to live in Malaysia. He told me to use the train. By this point I was back to jumping up and down excited so I told him thanks, happy Christmas and headed to the fastest way possible, a cab. 

It was a 40 minute ride into the city which seemed like 75 hours because I was just ready to be there. Upon arrival I grabbed a key and ran upstair to delouse myself in the shower and put on clean clothes. Timing was perfect, A & S walked in the door as I was putting on my shoes. After that much travel, It was the best feeling to see people I knew and loved and to hug them. They asked me what I wanted to do and even though I felt like I should say something adventurous to dive right into to all that is Malaysia, I needed food. 

We walked to lunch which was a highly rated buffet-esque place and I thought we navigated pointing in weird angles to get most of what we wanted quite well from the various shelves and racks. 

After lunch we headed to the Batu Caves and the Hindu temples inside. The caves were said to be discovered in 1878, however Chinese settlers already used them for many years to collect bat guano to use as fertilizer. The caves are accessed via 272 stairs and the climb is totally worth it. 

The entrance is guarded by an extra-large gold statue of Lord Muragun, the hindu god of war. (It is also the tallest statue of him in Malaysia and the second tallest in the world at 140 feet and the tallest statue in Malaysia overall. He is depicted with up to 6 heads because he had 6 mothers). 

They are predicted to be 400 million years old. We explored the temples first and watched an ongoing temple ceremony.  To say it was eye catching is an understatement.  

The juxtaposition of the natural cave and the bold colors of the paintings and statues, the incense from the ceremonies, and the music from gongs and musicians combined flooded the senses. The final flight of stairs led us to yet another temple that sat beneath an “open-air” cave if you will that was covered with plants at the top.
We each stopped and carried a bucket of sand that was to help the restoration of the cave.

As we walked out of the temple part to the natural cave tour we saw our first monkeys, macaques of Herpes B virus fame (interestingly the virus in the macaques is similar to HSV in us, cold sores, but their virus in humans is incredibly dangerous and can result in permanent central nervous system damage or even death. As irony would have it, these guys are usually the guys that tourists egg on the most. In sum: if you are bitten or scratched by a macaque seek treatment. You will need to take antivirals). One of the macaques had an attitude and was hissing and showing his tiny dominance to all around. 

In my opinion, all he lacked was a red Mazda Miata to complete his image Napoleon complex. 

It was raining as we left the temples to go tour the natural cave. I was hoping we would see a snake but alas no luck. We heard the fruit bats and some of us got guano-tagged but were asked not to put our lights to the ceiling (this was a difficult temptation to suppress, however I pictured the headline: American on Vacation in Malaysia Starts Fruit Bat Massacre. It didn't read well, my light stayed down.) so no dice on the bats either. We did see stalactites and mites as well as other amazing millions of years in the making formations, some great spiders and other bugs. We also spent some time in the complete dark. 

After the caves we got durian puffs (wouldn’t suggest it unless you like a foul malodorous taste with the consistency of a Cheetoh (so it lingers in a melded with your tongue kind of way)) and I bought a coconut to drink/ eat. While we were waiting for the uber I went and saw two more temples. 

From there we went to a market and wandered. On the way there in the car, and maybe highlight of the day S played her audio recording of A’s snoring the night before and certified that she should always be invited to take trips with anyone. Because Amazing!  

S got cash (there are questions that are easy to answer wrong. I had had the same problem at the airport) and we attempted to buy a selfie stick, but couldn't find one that worked with everyone's phone. We tasted a variety of asian popcorn flavors (after the puffs we said no thank you to the Durian). 

We bought a jelly dessert, a pepper apple thing, long gong fruit and jack fruit and then promptly went to dinner (because snacking in Asia should always be followed by more eating) at Bijan (delicious and would recommend it) with big plans to go to a night market and eat more immediately after. Those plans dissolved quickly and with resistance from no one once we had all sat down. Mine was the realization that I had been up for two days.