Day Eight - Twin Towers the Sequel

We got up extra early this morning, 7am! Our poor bodies where in shock! At least we made it down for breakfast. It was exactly as we'd expected. The buffet style breakfast featured global dishes including standard continental breakfast with fresh cakes and cereals for Europe, pancakes from the US, a fully Irish//UK fry up from back home, miso soup and rice from Japan, Curry from India etc. So much food, we really stuffed ourselves!

The screen showing allotments for the slots to visit the sky bridge

Making it over to the Pertronus Towers around 8:10am we thought we would have made it good and early for the opening of the ticket office at 8:30am. Nope, the queue was MASSIVE! Several hundred were in front. Daily, only 1,200 free tickets are handed out. We queued about an hour and managed to secure two tickets for later that afternoon.

The Monkey Lord

Taking full advantage of the spare time, we jumped on the monorail and headed back to KL Sentral and boarded a local commuter train headed towards the Batu caves, a Hindu religious site set inside a cave complex "discovered" some 120 years ago.

Vinnie in front of the massive Lord Murugan

It took less then one hour to get to the cave complex, with the train station only 100 meters from the ground. There are many temples set inside and around the cave complex honoring different lords. The rock is limestone which explains why the caves have developed. The caves are said to be some 400 million years old! The world's tallest statue of Lord Murugan, a Hindu deity, is located outside Batu Caves, standing at just under 43 metres in height, painted with some 300 litres of gold paint.

One of the many unfriendly monkeys!

It's 272 steps up to the template cave, with has a 100m high roof. The steps are step and made more difficult by the presence of Crab-eating Macaque Monkeys! These monkeys are not afraid of humans and will attack!  They jump around and over you as you climb the steps in their search for an easy meal from humans! It sorta added to the fun.

Inside one of the caves

We made our way back to the city centre just in time for our allotted time slot to visit the Petronus Twin Tower sky bridge around 2:45pm.

Inside the caves

The tour kicks off with a short 10 minute video on how great the Petronus Corporation are. It was interesting, but almost like brain washing. Under very strict control and order we were escorted in smaller groups through security, bag check and then into a lift to the 41st floor, the location for the lower section of the sky bridge.

At the base of the Petronus - about to head up to the sky bridge

We had around 10 mins of surprised time to walk and enjoy the bridge and it's views of the city below and towers on either sides of the connective bridge.

Part of a tower from the sky bridge

It is a must see attraction, but it does take some organisation and patience to get tickets. Then when you are there it's so formal you almost feel you aren't actually welcome and are only seeing parts of the tower with secret parts off limits to us tourists.

Vinnie on the sky bridge

Leaving the tower the Petronus Corportate profile was in full view as we left via a room contains a little more background to the towers itself and not the corporation, which had been the focus of the Pre-Visit video.

An interesting road sign

Post tower we headed back to a vegan macrobiotic restaurant we had spotted on the first day, woods bon marché. Naturally nothing was off bounds on the menu, which made a welcome change.

Ireland's Potato at the Times Square Mall

That evening we relaxed by the hotel pool, moon bathed at 8pm in temperatures over 30 degrees before retiring for an early night.

At the hotel swimming pool with the Petronus Twin Towers in the background

That however was interrupted when several loud bangs where heard outside our window. It was a massive midnight fireworks display. Turns out it was the annual show to ring in the day long national day celebrations. That certainly explains all the flags we had been seeing around the city over the past few days.