Malaysia Highlights

Our week at Malaysia was very busy we tried to get a lot done. We spent the week going to:

• Batu Cave temple
  The Batu Cave is a Hindu temple built into limestone caves with a 42.7m gold statue in front of the 272 rainbow steps leading to the caves. We walked up 272 stairs to get to the cave there were monkeys on the railings looking for food and throwing food, we nearly got hit by a coconut! We even saw a monkey eating a popsicle! When we got up we were in a huge cave that led out side again. We were surrounded by cave walls but there was no roof.

• Bird park
  The Bird park is the world’s largest free flight walk in aviary at the length of 21 acres. They have over 3,000 birds and over 200 species. My favorite part was when we got to feed Lories, we got a cup full of food and they landed on our heads, arms and shoulders it was awesome!

• Lantern festival
  The lantern festival had different areas, including, Candyland, Pandas, Dinosaurs, Ocean, Butterflies, Space, and more. Each with lots of different lanterns that fit the area.

• Royal Selangor
  Royal Selangor is a factory where they create all sorts of things from pewter, we even got to make a bowl from scratch!

• Central market
  Central market is a crafts market. They have all sorts of handmade crafts. Brooklyn and I each got beautiful necklaces made with real flowers, and our parents got a nice wooden magnet.
  
• Orchid garden
  The garden has all sorts of species of orchids and other tropical plants.

• Kuala Lumpur Tower
  The KL tower is 421 meter tall and has a similar shape to the Calgary tower, another similarity is that they have both a rotating restaurant. We ate at the buffet and it was amazing, my favorite was that there was unlimited ice cream!

• PETRONAS Towers
  The PETRONAS towers are a pair of skyscrapers with 88 floors and are 451.9 meters (1,483 feet) tall, they are currently the tallest twin skyscrapers in the world, they also have a bridge connecting them at the 41st and 42nd floors, the bridge is the highest two story bridge and one story bridge in the world!

• Monkey Hill
  The hill had so many wild monkeys! People were selling monkey food, so we decided that we would try feeding them. The monkeys were greedy and kept jumping on us. There were also lots of baby monkeys clinging to their mothers.

• Firefly and Blue Tear Tour
  After Monkey Hill we had a seafood dinner on the river where we were going to see fireflies. We took a boat at night, leaving a fishing village in Kuala Selangor and heading into the mangroves. We started seeing flashes of light in the bushes that looked like flashing Christmas lights! There were hundreds of fireflies everywhere. Our driver told us that the male fireflies are brighter than the females. We also leaned that male fireflies flash a pattern of lights to attract females and if the females like them they copy the pattern. Another thing we leaned about is that Kuala Selangor has the largest fireflies in the world! To get to the blue tears we had to head away from the mangroves and out to the ocean. When we got to the area the boat driver handed us nets. We dragged the nets in the water, while the boat was slowly moving. Our nets started to light up blue, and every few minutes we would see a big light in the water and try to catch it with our nets. Most of them were so small we could not see them. Fireflies light up because they are bioluminescent, and Blue tears light up because they dinoflagellates.

• Melaka
  On our way to Singapore we stopped at Melaka to go on a river cruise to explore the city, we saw many water monitors! When we got off the river cruise we decided to walk around and look at some shops, on our way we remembered we have not yet tried durian. Our dad found a place where they sold platers of durian with three different kinds. First we tried XO, that one was the worst. Next we had Black Thorn, it was better and more fruity. Last we had Musang King, it was the best of all of them, it was the most fruity and best texture. But I still prefer other fruits, because durian was not my favorite We also tried a coconut ice cream with durian on top.