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.

Car Rentals in Kuala Lumpur – SoCar vs GoCar

Introduction

As I was headed to Malaysia for a trip for 10 days, I needed an option to commute within the country. While renting cabs with drivers was definitely an option, there was no privacy enough, and there was no way to make my own decisions on where I wished to go when. I was not so keen to rent a cab outside of KL city.

We had plans to visit multiple places such as Cameron, Penang, Langkawi so I needed a vehicle which I was willing to drive myself. It was the best option as it would give me the convenience without burning a hole in my pocket. The trip itself was turning out to be expensive and I wanted a good option for inside the country travel.

Things that I was looking for

As any first time car rental customer, I had some concerns, so I needed these

Easy rental mechanism, including driver sign up and validation of
license
Preferably use local Karnataka (state license from india) – without the need for IDP
App based car handling
Easy fueling
Easy breakdown service if needed anywhere within the country

Options available

Based on the market services available in Malaysia, two common providers of cars had their apps listed – GoCar and SoCar. The former had tie ups with Renault and had new cars such as Captur and Almera (Sunny) while the latter had tie ups with Perodua and Toyota to a large extent and had more exotic cars if required.

While GoCar did not cover fuel for their rental rate, SoCar did. However the story did not end there. In this review, since I rented SoCar, I will talk about only that service. Maybe the next time I would try out GoCar although I do not expect any major differences in terms of what you basically get for your money.

SoCar

There is something you need to know during your registration on both the apps. You need mainly three things.

Your passport copy
Your driving license copy
Your own selfie of you holding your driving license

Please bear in mind that item 3 should be taken in such a way that you stand far away with the license in your hand. If you take a photo too close to you, that would be rejected. I faced multiple rejections before I got it quite right. If you face a rejection its only because both you and you holding the license is not clearly visible. Correct it and you should be through.

Some things about the app

The app is well defined. You find the common options that you expect to see. You can choose source and destination options, timings and even use the map to find where you want the car from. There are also some options for home delivery of the car for some extra money which can be a boon at times.

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The makers of the software have ensured finer options such as clock entry, drop downs, display of car choices are perfectly available on the screen making the app good enough to use to get the job done.

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Car control

This is the best part of the app. You can control the car directly from the app. You can unlock or lock the car from the app itself.

Other than lock and unlock there are also buttons for horn, and hazard lights in case you need the support of these means to locate your car. There are also two icons for roadside assistance and support call if you would need those. Personally I would say that this is the most important screen as far as driving the car around is concerned. I undertook a trip spanning Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Penang, Kuala Perlis and back – which was almost 1500kms and never once did I feel anything in this screen did not work properly.

Profile section

The profile section of the app provides options to refer and earn, details on your reservations, payment options, promotions, notices from SoCar and help topics. It also provides an option for contacting support where you can “ASK” questions. You must be aware that the replies take typically a few hours to a few days so it is not that straightforward from the app. Better thing to do will be to call SoCar support if need be.

Promos

The last screen of the app provides promos as per the season and the occassion. These are either discounts or referral based bonuses as seen below. It is upto you whether or not you wish to use these and sometimes there are good deals in terms of discounts.

GoCar

The GoCar app is similar to the SoCar one, but GoCar has aligned with the Renault Nissan alliance in Malaysia so they have more Almera (Sunny) cars and Renault Captur besides the usual local brands and others like Toyota. These cars have rates that do not include fuel rates so its only the rental rate per day. But the car choices are good here as well.

The app is a bit basic compared to SoCar, and since I did not hail a car, I am not sure if the car can be remotely controlled from the app for lock/unlock etc. However I did notice that there were options to look for cars and call their support staff, besides options for making and viewing reservations, payment options, and promotions and deals.

In a later post I will talk about a few nuances of driving rental cars, but for this post I will leave you here with these details so you can take your pick of which car rental service you wish to rent while in Malaysia. Let me know your comments.

How to cover Malaysia in 10 days – full details on a self planned trip

Some history

Ever since 2016 my wife and I decided that we want to do one international trip (though not necessarily one country) every year. We made it to Singapore in 2016, and Dubai in 2017. It was time to explore and take my family to Malaysia this time around in 2018.

The fact that I was working in Malaysia in 2002 and could not get time in the short one year that I stayed there to see many places only meant the urge to go there was pretty strong in order that I could get another chance to cover all the places I did not see this time around.

Also 15 years down the line with a lot of instrastructure and convenience improvements happening around the world, surely the trip would seemingly put me at more ease than earlier on. So it was time to decide how to plan the trip.

My logic for planning trips

I usually do my own booking and planning for everything for my trip. I look through places to visit, I look through multiple sources of reviews, I look through the best times to travel to maximise effeciency and minimize costs at the same time.

Based on these criteria I then use some of my favourite apps to look for flights or hotels and go on with the booking part. Let me share with you how I managed to do that for Malaysia. One of the questions I wanted to answer before I flew there was whether I just wanted to visit Kuala Lumpur (KL) or something more than that which everyone does in a packaged deal – such as Cameron (like our Ooty), or Penang/Langkawi types of ventures. This is when my friend suggested to me that I could not cover all places for just 10 days. I still wanted to be a bit ambitious.

Flights

For flights my preferred destination is Cleartrip portal/app. I am a man of simple UI designs and those kinds of apps that get job done rather than confusing people. Cleartrip has been my favourite for many years and also somewhat the cheapest even though only by a few hundreds of bucks. Still, search is simple, user interface is intuitive, they remember all my values I filled in for previous trips, so booking as such is a breeze. I would still prefer that these sites show the total amount upfront to avoid any confusions but Cleartrip adds the convenience fee only at the end. I believe so also MMT and other sites do the same thing.

The logic for flights is simple. If X is the cost of the flight, X will again be the cost of airport taxes, then about Rs.500 more than 2X would be the insurance cost per passenger, and about another Rs.300 would be the convenience fee. Since we are four of us in my family, I would always be scouting around for deals worth about 15000 Rs. all inclusive for a person. If I am able to get it lower, all the more merrier. Also you need to start at least 2 months prior to the date of travel. Especially so if your travel is on the week during the year end. This is exactly what I did. I booked my travel during September-October for a travel in December.

There are lots of factors which determine what price is shown to you, so be aware of them

how many times did you access that app using your own phone?
are you accessing the app over multiple networks or only at home?
did you also access the portal on the same wifi network or not?
did you try booking via portal or via app (the discounts are more on the app sometimes)
did you access the app continuously with your login ID every day of the week for a week or so
how desperate you are on those dates you want to travel, were you looking for same dates each time or different dates to find it cheaper
are you trying to book all four people at once or only one person at a time

These are some of the things that determine pricing to a large extent. So it is upto you how to outsmart the app. Use different phones or PCs, use office PC / home PC combination, use different locatios, etc. Beyond all this the price won’t vary too much until you start reaching the deadline for booking itself. So you need to be careful of that.

Sometimes the pricing also varies based on location. It is always better to board the journey from a smaller civil airport than a place where the transit passenger density is too high such as metros. But you must also bear in mind that if you want to board at a smaller airport, then it also means if you are living in a metro you need to first go upto the smaller airport by car or train or bus or air, which will set you back by 5000 to 10000 Rs. more. It is important to understand the cost addition to make your decision.

I booked my trip from Trichy to KL just because the trip from Bangalore to KL was 90k and the one from Trichy to KL was 53k. But I also ended up spending about 10k more to go to Trichy and back which you need to understand. This is because you need fuel for driving upto there, some place to stay, food costs, etc. But this time it was still lesser by 30000 Rs. to do this journey. The 30k saved is better spent on the journey elsewhere while in Malaysia. However if you frequently get tired of driving, then this option should not be chosen.

Hotels

For hotels, I believe in booking hotels where Indian restaurants are nearby if possible. I am particular about food and hence this mode of booking. Also among the multiple options that I have tried with respect to hotel bookings (booking.com, trivago.com, tripadvisor.com, makemytrip.com, etc) – I was most comfortable with booking.com for the following reasons. Now before you read below, you may say after reading that some other portal provides you with same or similar options which I will not deny. For me it is about ease of booking that helps me go forward with the portal more than the cost of the hotel itself. The whole experience has to be seamless.

Booking.com provides me with photos of the hotel. The way it would be when I land there. Nothing more, nothing less. It provides the full inclusive prices except the taxes which also it prints an approximate of below the full price just so that I get an idea how much extra it would work out to. It also shows rooms that are going to house two semi-adult kids and two adults in comfort and in line with the policies of the hotel which would not throw a surprise on me when I reach there.

The good thing about booking.com is that it also provides me with passes to attractions which help me skip the line and go into the priority queue at different places. I tried this out at the KL tower, and it was pretty useful although the queue itself was not so much. If it were Petronas towers or for example the Burj Khalifa, then the real benefit of these passes would be well understood. I decided to visit four places on my travel, KL City, Cameron Highlands, Penang Island and Langkawi Island. Based on these choices, I booked the available hotels by either giving my credit card details and in some instances, paying a nominal fee to ensure my booking held good.

You need to be tactical about these bookings and must surely make the trip to ensure best price and avaiability. In the event that you feel you are not going to make the trip, be aware of the last possible date on which you would be able to cancel and always have a reminder around those dates to help you cancel. You will mostly be charged only when you land up at the hotel or a day or two earlier to that depending on the hotel policy. So no worries there.

Visa (Entri Malaysia)

Once you have your air travel and hotels secured, it is time to make the visa. For Malaysia, the visa is called Entri visa and you can choose tourist type and either single or multiple entry based on how your planning has been done. If you plan to say go to Singapore and enter Malaysia again on non transit mode, you will need the multiple entry visa, else a single entry visa would suffice. For the most part, it was a breeze to get the visa, sitting at home, filling in a few details online, paying the visa fee online and taking a print of the resulting visa grant form.

Visa and fees

paying online is safe no issues with that
indicate your travel date properly so that the visa would be granted for a month from there for tourist option
choose the visa type properly (single or multiple entry visa)
always ensure, double check, proof read and ask others to read all the fields you enter properly for correctness, a little time spent on this will save you lots of trouble at the immigration counter
if any data is filled wrongly then you may face rejection when you enter malaysia and this can put you into lots of trouble, so take care of this.

The visa fee was about Rs.1500/- per head, so for a family of four 6000 in total. Be advised about this additional cost in addition to flight charges.

Luggage fee

You must also be aware that all flights do not offer the standard free 7kg cabin and 20kg check in luggage options free. In fact some flight costs do not even allow one cabin bag. In my case I opted for standard 7kg for each of us as cabin luggage, and additionally paid for 20kg x 2 suitcases for check in. It was a deliberate choice since I knew I will be carrying that much of weight already.

For all you know you will return with an additional 20kg over and above this, so bear these in mind. The charges were about 700-1000 extra per 20kg baggage, so depending on your plan you will need to pay accordingly at the time of flight booking.

Given you completed until this step, the only other things pending are to plan what you want to visit while in the country, and how you are going to travel there. I will cover more on this in my next post.