Right after a morning of washing tents for the post-Lumbong trip on the 12th of Dec, I prepared my stuff for the upcoming Batu Caves, which was held from the 12th to 15th of Dec. It helped a little that the meeting time with the participants was in the evening, allowing time for rest. Wanling and I were going for this trip, together with Meena, and a last-minute pull-out by Jorin.
Despite the pull-out, I think I was relatively relieved that all went well, and that I had actually brought along WL and Meena for the Batu recce.
Started off very much on time, with all the 8 participants arriving on time and soon we were leaving Kranji MRT at around 9.30pm. (This was despite the on-going Star Awards showing on TV...which I think many would be interested in.)
Everything went on smoothly on the 12th, including the quick clearance of Singapore and Malaysian customs. Soon, we found ourselves at Larkin...a tad too early for the midnight bus. Nevertheless, we settled at the MacDonalds in Larkin Terminal, and bought essential stuff for the overnight bus ride.
And a standard SOP for long-hours of waiting: Card playing.
Nevertheless, the time passed quickly, and soon the TransNasional bus arrived at the berth at around 11:40pm, slightly ahead of schedule. We boarded the bus, and it left Larkin once all passengers arrived, which was around 11:50pm then.
And the bus ride was super fast, even with one ultra-long pit-stop along the N-S Expressway. That was where you could have teh and some makan (in the form of burgers).
Nothing much to say for the bus ride, other than it being smooth, less bumpy than the ones described by the Berke people for their trip on the same bus operator, and it was fast. Really fast. (So if you're looking for a quick ride to KL, you know which company to buy tickets from already.)
Because of the quick ride to KL (we reached at about 3:40am), there was too much time for us to slack around...in the morning streets of Puduraya! No LRT, no public buses, just taxis. I was left scratching my head what to do during this period of about 4 hours. After washing up, we brought the participants to the nearby 24-hrs prata shops to savour some "local" delight, where everything is big...and cheap. 
After the breakfast, it was a night of ton-ing the streets of KL, with us walking along empty roads and a dark Petaling Street. With nothing much to do, we soon settled into another prata shop, nearer to the bus stop which we're going to take bus into Batu.
The wait for the RapidKL bus was pretty long too. 50 mins for 1 bus. Geez! And you can never depend on the local bus system. Even locals aren't sure of the bus routes, what more can I say for the foreigners?
The Long Wait
This building is REALLY old
Safely on the bus
Arrived at Batu without a hitch, considering that Meena, WL and I have already done the recce before (and lost our way, wasted time waiting, wasted time walking around). We arranged to meet Suja, our caving guide, at the prata shop (again!) near Batu Caves. (And someone asked if I had commission for bringing them to 3 prata shops in a single morning. What do you think?
)
3 of us - Me, Meena, Wanling
Anyway, the day was to start with a nice little walk up the stairs leading to Batu Caves, which is a place not only for Indians, but for all races and religions. Definitely a place for visitors, and apparently commercialised. Of course, we're not about to join in the commercialised area...we're entering places never gone before by normal tourists...
Long flight of stairs! To....heaven?
Marcus & Hua Yang in their army ops gear
Before we climb the stairs...we shall do what all Singaporeans do...TAKE PICTURES!
Nasri
Me
ICs, ever-ready!
All ready to go!
Before Caving
Caving was really fun. Despite the lack of pictures from us throughout our entire caving trip, at least we've done something really wild and exciting. Mud is our greatest ally, and what you touch may not be what it seems. Haha.
After caving, we washed up at the toilets to check into our chalet at the other side of Batu, and moved on to KLCC for our dinner at Manhattan Fish Market. They've a similar outlet in PS (and perhaps more?) but the food is definitely priced cheaper here. We had our fill, and shopped around more before going home via Putra Line and cab.
Our Chalet
Nice Food @ Manhattan Fish Market!
Gloria Jean's Coffee! Extinct in Singapore!
And the night was drowned by continuous karaoke singing within the kampung, whilst we guys chatted throughout the night. Being a kampung, the guys stayed together whereas the gals stayed in another room. We talked about anything and everything...life, work, school, army, physics...I think we could've gone on non-stop if not for the fact that we had to wake up at around 8am the next day for our rock-climbing.
The next day, it was time for some serious rock climbing. Natural rock wall climbing is different from the artificial one in the sense that the artificial one has less chances of having lacerations and cuts.
But it was here that I found that training so much of the lower body puts you in a disadvantage. My hands and arms were really pushing hard, trying to deal with small hand-holds and unstable footholds all the time. Man, was it a tough climb. Not to mention a couple of cuts and a big laceration to boot.
Nice rock cliff...with a huge rock boulder there
Zhihan
Bevian & Janice posing before climbing
Wani goes up...
And we made this climb up to a higher cave where we could sit down and have a nice look of the skyline...
Me going up!
Marcus coming up
Hua Yang: "Look! No hands!"
Nasri coming up!
Slowly, more came up...
Zhihan comes up, with a SLR and a bottle of water for us!
Wani makes her way up!
And what do we have here?
Wanling attempts to scale too!
So does Janice...
And Bevian with her bagful of water
Rock Climbing was surely great, too bad we had to end it at around 2pm. But nonetheless, it was a worthwhile experience to undergo. Maybe, someday we'll do a full-day rock-climbing activity, or at least spend more days at Batu doing rock climbing. Definitely worth a try.
Yen (our rock climbing person-in-charge) had arranged for vehicular transportation to the nearest LRT Station, which facilitated our transfer to KLCC for more shopping and food. A&W was our first stop, a once-popular fastfood restaurant which closed in Singapore, but is still hot in Malaysia. They should bring it back to SG, with its famous root beer floats and Coney Dogs.
After that, we went our seperate ways, and arranged to meet at Hard Rock Cafe for dinner/drinks prior to leaving for Puduraya. Went off with Wanling and Joey to Petaling Street for some shopping, which I ended up getting a couple of tshirts and a pair of shorts (for trekking, cheap cheap nia). It's really a place to hone your bargaining skills!
Then, we took a cab back, and managed to hop onto this cab driven by this Chinese uncle, who was damn friendly and the whole taxi ride was filled with racist jokes and laughter. At least, it was better than Suja's jokes.
Hard Rock Cafe was a cool place to chill out, esp. the 50% off for beer. Zhihan was there earlier, studying, with a jug of beer in front of him. I took a pint of beer, and we settled down immediately to...
play cards.
Haha! Seems like cards is the best way to make time pass. (And a Singaporean obsession) Nevertheless, we ordered on super-huge brownie topped with icecream placed in this super huge bowl for sharing...and it was simply yummy-licious!
Soon, it was time to get back to Pudu, meet up with Nasri and Wani, and hop onto the 12:30am Konsortium bus ('cos it arrived late) for the trip back to Larkin. From then on, it was smooth sailing all the way...
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