Category: holidays

The Batu Caves visit (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Introduction

After the KL tower visit, our next stop was to go to Batu Caves during the early part of the day. We decided to take a texsi to Batu Caves, and on the way back I was in the mood for experimenting the train part. I was sick since the last evening and was not quite in the mood to use railway on the way to the temple. The texsi (taxi) costed us about 50RM for four people so that was somewhat less expensive.
For the uninitiated Batu Caves is also known as the 10 caves or Hill for Lord Muruga as there are six important holy shrines in India and four more in Malaysia. The three others in Malaysia are Kallumalai Temple in Ipoh, Tanneermalai Temple in Penang and Sannasimalai Temple in Malacca. For more the information regarding the caves, read here.
The limestone rock forming the cave is some 400 million years old according to facts available and that in itself is a reason you must go there if you are living in this era. Although Chinese and Americans recorded the history of the existence of the caves, it was an Indian who installed the statue of Lord Muruga during 1890’s bringing about the meaning of a temple cave for this attraction.

Details


The cave itself is about 100m tall, and has about 272 steps. This is relatively less but what makes it a challenge is how steep the steps are to reach the top. They are rather precarious and it takes a considerable amount of effort to reach the top where the temple is located.


The monkeys along the way although do not disturb people too much unless provoked but they do snatch any eatables that you would have with you if you are not careful. What makes it a bit dangerous is since the steps are at a steep angle you need to be careful not to get disturbed and keep going up until you reach the top. 


There are three things to see at Batu Caves – the temple cave which houses the main temple, the Dark Cave which has other underground cave portions plus some species such as spiders and fruit bats and would require that you book the exploration trip in advance, and the Art Gallery where you can find Hinduism related artefacts.
There is a huge Murugan statue at the entrance of the cave which took 3 years to build at 2.5 million ringgit. It is made of steel bars, concrete and gold paint which give it the undeniable aura of splendour. For more you can read here.


Fees, and things to see


As for the temple cave entry it is free for all, though there are some dressing restrictions (you will need to cover your body, specifically waist downwards with proper attire). For the dark caves which I did not visit the entry is 8 USD for adults and 6 USD for kids. 
There are nice paintings within the temple cave which depict scenes from the Ramayana.  It will take a good half or more to climb based on your physical fitness, another half hour of checking out the temple and other higher cave areas around the top, getting a view of KL town from the top, and about 15-20 minutes to come down. It is advisable you carry a water bottle for yourself as for adults, no extra food maybe needed. 




There are shops selling souvenirs up the top but these mementoes are expensive. I did check out other shops within KL for the same things, but did not manage to find something good. If you want the mementoes my advise is to buy it at the temple although it costs a bit more. You will not regret it later. That is of course your personal preference.




There are a lot of pigeons around the place and you can feed them for 5RM worth of purchased bird feed from people selling it there. 

Travel


Finally we decided to walk a bit out of the temple towards the Batu Caves KTM Komuter rail station. This is not a high frequency train and one will need to wait for the train for a while, sometimes even up to half hour. The Touch and go card which is available all over Malaysia will work for this train and you need to travel from Batu upto KL Sentral to reach city centre again.  Since we were staying at the Vortex Suites, this suited us best. The train itself was comfortable but not as fast as MRT trains. It was very neat and many people regularly use the KTM Komuter service as it connects city centre to suburbs. 


There are also at least two or more Indian restaurants just near the temple, so be prepared to shell out about 100 RM for a family of four for some decent food. Cost may go up a bit if you order more. But for Indians the good news is these are vegetarian restaurants, and one of them serves Jain food as well. 

The Batu Caves temple is a must visit for people who to go KL as it is easily accessible from city centre and takes just half a day to complete. Moreover it is free to visit the main temple and a unique experience to watch the statue and the colourful steps to reach the top. For the brave hearted, the Dark Cave offers much more adventure if you are going on a guided tour of those. The weather would be generally hot, with occasional spells of rain as is the case in most Malaysian regions, specifically within KL. The air is dry so you may want to keep some nasal saline drops handy to unblock your nose if you feel uncomfortable.

Hotel booking in India – the online angle

India has progressed a long way in harnessing the internet for all purchase related processes, be it a flight ticket, or home appliance or of late even hotel bookings. Hotel bookings were mostly restricted to filling up the required details online, and waiting endlessly for someone to either call you or mail you regarding your booking. This could be an agent or well, the hotel management itself in some cases where the hotel was well known.

There were many anomalies in this kind of scheme. One for instance is that I sent an email via the form on the internet only to receive no reply after – well about – 5 years now!! Another instance is that I got a response from the hotel after about a month, which was of no use practically for me since I had exhausted the travel date for my trip. Atleast this was bearable to some extent but there was one more case where I began receiving spam for the query I sent which made it a bit intolerable.

From those days, hotel booking has steadily progressed to be associated with branded websites who advertise services like hotel bookings, airline bookings, taxi bookings, etc on all media both print and television and even on the net on partner sites. There are a few sites that I would like to highlight for their services (of which I have already used some of them and found it extremely satisfactory)

 

www.Ezeego1.com

 

Ezeego1 is a website that is fairly simple to use (but I don’t think it is web 2.0 enabled as yet – which means more of page refreses than normally required) and gives me all the data I need to see neatly arranged on one single page. I can see the hotels, the photos of hotels, prices with and without taxes and even sort by popularity or price, etc. The site even provides me with a price slider which I can slide to knock off hotels out of my budget range.

This is a unique thing which I liked a lot. Try it out yourself! The photos of each hotel pop up in another window but what I did not like is that in the current age of digital cameras of 7MP and more, I still get to see photos which are dumb and thumbnail sized not giving me the true picture of what I can expect when I land at the hotel. Shame on such photography! The rest is rather straightforward – add hotel to cart, confirm cart, pay and off you go on your holiday equipped with an online confirmation!

Ezeego also has a chat option along with toll free telephone and email customer care.

 

www.travelguru.com

 

Travelguru is somewhat similar to Ezeego, but with some changes. First they are web 2.0 enabled which means I don’t divert away from the hotel booking search results page even if I want to say see some photos of a particular hotel or its rates or features. Everything refreshes then and there only in that part of the page. I am impressed! It’s just awesome to use web 2.0 technology! Travelguru also allows me to pay at the hotel which is an internet first that I have personally noted.

Travelguru has toll free telephone and email customer care.

www.cleartrip.com

Cleartrip is yet another hotel booking service of a different kind. Firstly all results are displayed much like in other sites, with prices of rooms with and without taxes neatly explained. What I also liked about this listing is that next to the hotel name, is a thumbnail photograph of the hotel, with relevant icons showing its available facilities (such as swimming pool, gym, etc). Upon clicking the thumbnail, there is an in browser page pop, using web 2.0 again, which shows some real good quality photos which presents more or less an actual picture of the hotel that is to be booked by you. With these photos, I am more or less confident of what I can expect at the actual hotel. You wont be probably disappointed.

The rest is the same, add to cart, present your details and make a payment. Cleartrip has among other things a toll free phone and email customer care.

 

www.hotelscombined.com

 

HotelsCombined is a multipartner hotel booking network which caters both national and international too. Their objective is simple; they search for a hotel in your city using their multipartner tie up to find the best deals for you. Since this is based on querying multiple hotel booking partners, you may most likely be diverted to the relevant website while you book a hotel offered by them. In that case you must remember to contact only the partner site in case of issues/queries and not Hotelscombined itself. I don’t really know if I would prefer something like this, since it sounds a bit complex for me to reach many other people.

The photos of the hotels themselves are picked from partner sites, so you may not expect the best photos that show you what you get at the hotel really. Sometimes I ve even found that the photos are just thumbnails only. The room cost does not include taxes and the taxes are shown as either at actuals, or zero or sometimes as ‘unknown’!! The partner website though has all room price details, etc with their own contact numbers to ensure you can do the booking of your choice easily from anywhere even outside of India.

It’s to be noted that Hotelscombined does not offer a direct toll free number to contact them for reasons beyond my understanding. While the local sites would go well with domestic customers, HotelsCombined would do a good job if you are looking at a hotel in another country/city from your current location and would provide more than enough details on such listings.

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