Shoshanablank’s Weblog

Hello again,

It may look like I am writing this post just minutes after my last post, but it has  actuall y been a few days. I forgot to publish my last post until today. This whole blog thing is tricky.

Anyways, where was I? Malaysia. Some other Malaysia highlights include the Batu Caves, the Islamic Art Museum and the National Mosque. The Batu Caves is a place that most tourists visit in KL. The caves are a sacred Hindu site and are absolutely breathtaking. You must go up something like 20 flights of stairs to get there, just straight up, no turns, step after step. Good workout if you go fast without stopping. All the way up the stairs there were monkeys everywhere. They weren’t too afraid around people, probably because they are so used to it. We saw one monkey with an ice cream bar, and another monkey trying to steal it from him. You couldn’t even tell how many monkeys were there either. I’d be staring at a tree and suddenly realize that there were 10 monkeys in it, but they were just so stealth. The cave itself has a huge opening at the top with vines and misty sky. O”nly a picture can describe the beauty. By the time we wanted to leave the caves, it was pouring outside. This is VERY typical in Malaysia. Every day we were there (except beach day) it poured rain for atleast 2 hours in the afternoon. I have never seen rain like this in my life, so much, so fast. So once we got the courage to go down 20 flights of stairs outside in the pouring rain we realized that at the bottom of the stairs there was now 3 feet of standing water. So we had no other choice but to walk through it, getting even more soaked. And then the 5 of us squeezed into a taxi.

The next day we went to the Islamic arts museum and it was very interesting. There was an exhibit on Islamic arts influence on Western art and culture. There was even a Matisse and a Kandinsky (for you Guid)painting that illustrated the Islamic themes that these artists used at the time. Also, I learned a lot about  Islam in India, which will be useful for my travels there. Then we went to the National Mosque. We had to wear huge purple robes to go inside, and I had to wear a hood of course, to cover my head. This very nice lady explained to us all about prayer, how the men and women are seperated, and even told us that soon there would be thousands of people there for Ramadan.

Malaysia was good in general. The country is a giant melting pot of people, mainly of the Islam faith. We even had a restaurant we went to  on a regular basis (2 or 3 times a day!) where we ordered naan (very good  bread) and milo (this chocolate milk type thing).

My next post will be about India.