16.1.2023
On Monday the kids had a proper hands on religion lesson. The first stop was at Batu Caves, which is an important Hindu temple here. Every year during the Thaipusam festival thousands of pilgrims come here to pay respects to Murugan, the deity of this temple. This year the festival is in the beginning of February, so the place wasn’t too busy yet. On the other had it would have been interesting to witness the pilgrims walking bare feet to the temple with massive hooks and other piercings through their body. But then again, it probably would have been too much for the kids to see.
To get to the temple itself, you had to climb 272 steps. The steps were originally wooden, but the hot and humid climate had ruined them. Nowadays the stairs have been replaced with concrete ones. Painting the stairs is still in process. Ultimately the whole staircase will be in the colours of a rainbow, not just the centre.
When we were walking under the gate to start climbing, a monkey sitting on top of the gate decided to take a dump right on Risto’s shoulder. Fortunately we had wet wipes with us, so we could clean Risto to be in a presentable shape for the temple again. After this episode it was completely impossible to take pictures of Risto with a smile on his face. He was very offended by the dirty deed the monkey did. There were monkeys all around the stairs to the temple, but none inside the cave itself. There were bats, cocks and other birds instead.
The second religious stop was at a Buddhist temple on top of the hills in Kuala Lumpur. The temple was very pretty. The kids wanted to give a small donation so they could light up some incense sticks like the Chinese people did. It was quite easy to spot that we were tourists. First the kids lit up the wrong end of the stick and then Ronja managed to kill the light in one of the oil candles you were supposed to use to light up your incense stick. Once we finally managed to put the sticks to the sand, we entered the inner temple.
In the temple we tried our luck with “lucky sticks”. First you shake the whole bunch of the plastic sticks in your hands. Then you drop them back and see which stick is pointing out the most. You take that stick, look at the number and take a paper slip with your fortune from the correspondingly numbered box. Everyone else got a pretty good prediction, but poor Risto’s was full of obstacles and misfortune.
The third stop was at the central mosque of KL. It was very big, but not as pretty or decorative as the others we have seen. To enter, everybody else except Risto had to put on a sarong or an abaya. Risto thought this was unfair, because he would have wanted to dress up too. The visit to the mosque was quickly over, because there was not much to see. On Fridays, when the whole place is closed to tourists, about 15 000 muslims can be praying there at the same time. Not everyone fits into the main hall of course, but there was plenty of place outside the hall too.
In addition to these three religious places we also briefly visited Little India, China Town, Independence square, Central Market and the bridge at the “birth place” of Kuala Lumpur. The name Kuala Lumpur means actually two muddy rivers that meet. We didn’t spend too much time in any of the aforementioned places, apart from the Central Market. Not because we wanted to buy anything from there, but because we found a fish spa there.
We had tried a similar treatment with Marko before, but now we wanted to feed our kids to the little fish too. For 40MYR (about 9€) we got to feed our feet to the fish for 10 minutes. First you had to wash your feet and then just put them into the water and let the “doctor fish” eat all the dead skin away. It was only five minutes for Ronja though, because she spent the first five minutes screaming and refusing to put her feet into the basin. Finally she overcame her fear, assisted by Marko pushing her legs to the basin, and let the fish nibble on the soles of her feet. Risto on the other had put his feet into the water right away, but every time a fish nipped his toe, he giggled and pulled his feet up. Eventually he also just sat there calmly looking at the fish and comparing with Ronja, who has the biggest fish eating their feet.
