Ipoh, limestone caves, and Buddhist cave temples

Kit, Asa, Mike (an exchange student from Minnesota), and I took a day trip to Perak, a state across the bridge from Penang.

First we went to see these massive limestone caves...we did an "adventure tour" through them, for which we had to bring our own flashlights and got wet and dirty in the river. The tour lasted four hours! The caves are huge and gorgeous and there were lots of bats. We basically followed the river the whole time and there were several parts where we had to crawl through various small openings. Very small openings...I literally had to lay on the ground in the river and crawl army style...a bit tricky to do with a flashlight in your hand! Then, towards the end of the tour, we had to slide down this huge, smooth rock. The tour guide got himself down and then had to catch people as they came. There was much screaming, especially from the Chinese women who were with us. Then he pointed to this rather small hole in the rock on which we were standing and said we were climbing down in it. I honestly thought he was kidding, but no, we went down this hole. The whole experience was amazing and we came out scratched up and wet and covered in little stones.

We changed and went to see these Buddhist temples nearby that are built inside caves, so half of the temple is a cave and the other half is man made. There are all these great paintings on the cave walls and statues and of course lots of monkeys. Outside there were several ponds with the biggest fish I have ever seen. Right outside the temples there are a few food stalls so we stopped by one to drink some water. There was this pretty big group of men sitting there, drinking beer. Of course they were curious about the white people since this part of Malaysia doesn't get many tourists, so a few came over to sit with us. They bought us beer and we talked for a few hours (with Kit translating some of it and lots of hand movements for the rest). They told us all about their lives - jobs, families, hobbies. The best part of traveling is definitely meeting people, it was great.

Then we went to Ipoh, the capital city of the state of Perak where we were and had dinner. They are famous for steamed chicken and bean sprouts which were delicious. We wandered around for a while and then headed home. Kit and I discussed how great life is - the past few weekend we have been spending entire days outside, seeing new places, meeting new people, and eating amazing food. I love it all!