Malaysia Day 3
(Continuing my tale of Malaysia…)
20th March, 2006, Monday
The third day morning, we went to the Batu Caves where the Murugan temple is located. The huge golden colored statue of Lord Murugan was a sight to behold. There were quite a number of visitors for a Monday morning. I found out that for one of the festivals (I think it was Thaipusam), the temple is decorated a lot and there’s a huge gathering of devotees. And yes, it’s a Muslim country. It’s wonderful how India and Malaysia are alike in the respect that there is such free expression of one’s devotion to the God they worship.
After that, we went to a watch factory showroom nearby, but our group didn’t find anything interesting there, so we went to the car kitshop next door and were engrossed by all the stickers, etc.
Next, we proceeded on towards Genting Highlands, which is on top of a hill. While we were on the way, I kept wondering when we’ll actually reach the hill, but I realized we were already climbing the hill, and the road to the top is actually a 4-lane highway!
We reached the entrance of Genting Highlands and had to take a cable car ride to reach the real Highlands. It was an amazing ride, goes pretty high in the air and towards the end, your whole surroundings is covered entirely by mist. Definitely not for the acrophobics.
Our guide said that Genting Highlands actually employs 10,000+ people. It’s that huge!
The number of hotels, rides and attractions were just too much for me to take. I just looked at that wall with all the themes, attractions, restaurants, etc. and just stared.
We went around the place – we saw a restaurant with long tubes of spice on the walls, we saw an Eiffel Tower, we saw the statue of liberty riding a bike, we saw a larger-than-life Oscars statue, …
We decided to watch a 4D movie of Ali Baba, that it turned out to be pathetic. The seats did shake and we did “fly” along with Ali Baba on his magic carpet, but the quality of the animation was so blech.
We played the classic dashing cars. That’s always fun.
The outdoor theme park looked huge and tempting, but there was so much to see inside that we didn’t plan to go there.
I went for the Sky Venture rollercoaster ride which was pretty decent and had some good dives in the air.
We had a short-eat break and decided to explore another part of the place. We came across a T-shirts shop which had real electronics lights on ’em. I was quite fascinated by it and my cousin bought a shirt which had a life-size equalizer on it.
Next shop was where you get your hands waxed. No, not like that, they make a wax statue of your hands! The first thing the attendant asked us was whether we would like to get the hand statue done in “Baba” fashion (think Rajnikant).
I had my hand in “Dum”-mode and got the wax done in blue. It’s now waiting to sit on my desk at work. If anybody messes with me, I’m gonna tell them to talk to the hand, literally.
Next shop, we got keychains with names engraved on them.
On further exploration of the place, we came across a small “river” going around which had Venice-style gondolas you can sit in.
Next, we went bowling and took an offer which was 10 games for 6 people with two jugs of Nescafe juice. The mango juice was awesome, and we were playing 2 games of bowling side-by-side in 2 lanes, and it was just non-stop, heh.
Next, we attended the Mysteria show – it was about dance, acrobatics and magic stunts – the girl goes in, and a real tiger comes out. My favorite part was an acrobatic stunt by the kids where one kid comes in, puts a chair, stands upside down on top of the chair, another kid comes, and places his/her chair on the previous kid’s chair, and stands upside-down on top of the second chair, and so on, until there was a chain of 8-9! Unfortunately, no photography was allowed.
For dinner, we went to the Only Curry house. I just had to have some Malaysian special cuisine and this was probably my last chance. So, I had the chicken honey and a fish curry, even though I had converted to a being a vegetarian ten months ago. The chicken honey was sweet but d.e.l.i.c.i.o.us.
Next, we barged into the chota-mota games place like throwing the canister in the bucket and video games.
We decided to call it a day and started back to our rooms. It was a 15-minute walk back! In-between we had to move from one building to another and had to go outside for that. It was really cold and misty. It was such a thrill.
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