KL Bird Park

The bird park in KL is pretty amazing. It's the largest open-air bird park in the world, with 3 000 birds and over 200 species. Although some of the birds are kept in their own cages, the majority of the 21 acre park is fully open, allowing the birds to fly around as they wish. There is a huge netting surrounding the park, which prevents the birds from getting out.

Not sure what this is...

Pink Flamingos

The rare Jennifer bird.

Toucans

A huge hornbill. This bird was very aggressive and surprisingly quick. When I took this picture, it jumped across the cage and jabbed its bill through the holes, almost chomping down on my nuts.

Airing out in the sun.

A scarlet ibis... I didn't know they had them here!

4WD Trip

One week later we went on our next trip - a 4WD drive through Taman Negara (Malaysia's equivalent of Algonquin Park). Although we didn't actually get to drive the jeeps, it was a pretty cool trip... off-roading through rivers in a national park...

Our first stop was a mushroom factory. Here they are filling bacgs with all the ingredients used to germinate the mushrooms (sadly I have no idea what they are).

The mushroom jars are stacked in a huge warehouse where they are left to germinate.

Just like Momma used to make.

Our 4WD. From left to right: Jenn, Elsa, Chris and Mark - all of them teach at Sunway with us.

One of several streams we drove through.

Careful.. that last step's a doozy!

We stopped here for lunch and a quick swim. It was suprisingly cold.

Jenn eating a rambutan - very similar to suck-fruit (aka guinep or chennette)

Our next stop was probably the most exciting one - a peanut plantation!! Woo-hoo!

Sorting the peanuts.

The last stop of our tour - a tofu plant... run right out of some guy's garage. Yum!

Batu Caves

Our first sightseeing trip in Malaysia was on August 1, when Jenn and I went to the Batu Caves. They are 13 km North of Kuala Lumpur and are the site of a huge religious festival/parade for Thaipusam which is a religious festival at the end of January for Hindu's celebrating the son of Shiva and the "coming of one" of Pusan and the Brihaspati stars.

There are three main caves and a number of smaller ones. They are made of limestone and are 400 metres long and 100 metres high. We didn't go to the main caves, instead we took a tour through the Dark Cave (Gua Gelap), which meant we were wearing headlamps and crawling and wriggling through the caves.

The entrance to the caves.

A small temple at the foot of the caves.

A stall at the bottom of the caves selling religious paraphenalia for use inside the caves.

At the bottom of the 272 steps to the cave entrance.

There were monkeys everywhere and they didn't seem to be all that afraid of people. In fact, they're actually quite bold - if you have any food you have to be careful, as they'll often try to steal it from your hands.

A monkey that seems to have been successful at "finding" some food.

The entrance to the Dark Cave.

Here we are ready for our caving adventure. We look pretty stylish.

This is a painting on the wall of the cave further inside... I have no idea how old it is - I'm guessing 1985???

One of the formations inside the Dark Cave

Not sure what kind of snake this is...

Not sure what kind of cave animal this is...

At this point we had to wiggle and crawl on our bellies through the cave. At some points it was so narrow, you had to put your arms over your head through the hole first and then shimmy your body through. It was pretty freaky.

Made it... bat guano and all.