end of KL

Wow - it seems like an eternity since I've written.

Last day in KL:

We woke up at a reasonable hour and went to the Batu Caves. This is a very holy area for Hindus and they hold a festival here every January/February that includes thaipoism (I know I spelled that wrong). That practice is where people hook sharp hooks into their skin and carry things or pull things with them. There is a small market near the base and then a huge staircase (272 steps) up to the cave entrance. It was hot, but we had received advice to go early and we figured out why. The steps are on the west side of the hill so if we would have gone in the afternoon, we would have just fried.

On the way up the steps, there were so many small monkeys just hanging out. Hindus are very loving towards animals and try to care for them as much as possible so the monkeys are used to being fed. They even sell fruit to give to the monkeys at the base of the hill. As we were walking up, Cori and I took our time while Caitlin and Kathryn went ahead a bit. We couldn't really see them too much as there were a lot of people walking up the steps. Apparently, about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up the steps, they stopped to look at some of the monkeys. One monkey did not like Kathryn and hissed and bared it's teeth at her. Just then another monkey jumped on her leg and started to shake her leg. She kicked it off, hopped over a concrete separator thing and ran the rest of the way up the stairs. While this was happening up above us, we were feeding some monkeys part of a granola bar down below. Chuck was even getting down on his knees so the momma monkey could take it off his head. Before we went there, we had heard that the monkeys weren't always friendly and not to feed them so my number one rule was even if we don't heed that advice and we feed them that Cori could not feed them. Well, when we saw how tame they were, we let Cori give them a piece of granola bar which they took. She held out another piece and the daddy monkey that had taken it before quickly reached out a swatted her hand with his finger nails. It didn't break the skin or anything, but it startled her and she now thinks that monkeys are bad. We finished walking to the top and checked out the main temple and several groupings of statues. After walking downstairs, we had popsicles and coconut water.

While we were at the caves, a couple of different people stopped to see Cori and a couple of middle eastern women even asked if they could take a picture of her. This really has been a theme of the trip.

We went back to our super good hotel and went for a swim next. It is so humid here that all of our shirts are drenched everyday. Kathryn has literally been able to wring out her hair at times. I keep thinking, it's not that hot, but I'm pouring sweat. We met a vey nice lady and her little girl from Kuwait at the pool and did laundry with her. She was wearing a full burka. Just thought it worth mentioning for some reason ... Chase met some indian boys and played tag with them in the pool for awhile.

While we were swimming and doing laundry, Chuck and Caitlin went to the fire station for some patch trading and shop talk. It was a little bit interesting to note that they have motorcylce firemen there as well as normal truck firemen. The traffic is so incredibly bad that the motorcycles can go first to change all of the lights and try to get traffic moving. When they get there, they actually have hose, etc to start fighting the fire.

Next, we hit somewhat of a low point of the trip. We had been advised to go on the city tour in the morning, but we only had so many mornings ... we went on it in the afternoon. It was a double decker bus called the hop on hop off and it basically went around to all of the highlights of the city and you could get off and back on at will. It was hot - so hot ... It was ariconditioned, but just barely. Also, they didn't do commentary over the PA or anything like that. About half the seats had a set of headphones you could wear to hear some commentary. We got off the first time because we were all starving. We ate at McDonalds ... I know, not very adventurous, huh? It was fast, familiar and close. In the kid's meals, you have a choice of fries or corn and for the drink you can have Milo, a black currant drink that starts with an r that I forgot the name of, or soda. Feeling refreshed, we hopped back on the bus and it seemed even hotter. We got off as soon as there was anything remotely interesting to see. It was at the national palace which was cool, but you couldn't go in ... and it was 30 minutes until the next bus came. Cori played in the fountains a little bit to keep cool and we looked around until the bus came back. This bus was a little bit cooler, but also crowded. We saw an australian family we had befriended earlier on the trip and talked to them while we rode around back to our hotel. It seemed like a good plan...and then Cori had to go to the bathroom so we had to get off the bus. She has had a touch of diarrhea still so we knew if she had to go, she had to go. Fortune smiled on us as the bus came to the next stop and took a 5 minute rest. Schedules, rests, etc are all very loose here. There was nowhere at all to use the restroom so we went between two cars in a parking lot and Caitlin and Kathryn stood on either end. Cori was freaking out because she didn't want to go which was surprising since she usually doesn't mind ... finally she went and I knew why she was freaking out. It was a sound I won't soon forget. She had diarrhea ... OMG. I had no wipes, tissues anything. I was like Kathryn, Caitlin, what do you have in your pockets, quick. No one had anything remotely useful so I started taking off my tank top that was under my shirt and suddenly thought of my socks. I used one, but needed more ... Kathryn offered one of her socks, but I told her it would be better to lose them in pairs and just took off my other sock. Wow ... back on the bus just in time. Now we sat in traffic forever and ever. We were supposed to meet up with my friend at 6:45 for dinner and we arrived right at 6:45 sweaty and nasty. It was ok - he had a friend joingin us who was also running late so we ran upstairs to change. Oh, but not Chuck. He had to ride the bus two more stops to get to the hop on hop off office since we left our bag on an earlier bus. We were not able to retrieve it, but it wasn't a great loss except that our other bags were stuffed.

It was raining at this point - hard. My friend had his driver pick us up at our hotel, drop us off at dinner and then turn around and go back to the hotel and pick up Chuck when he go there. We went to the BEST indian restaurant. Once again, Scott and his friend ordered everything family style. We had potatoes, vegetable dumplings, onion ring thingies and some chip like things with a mint/dill yogurt dipping sauce for appetizer. Then, for Cori, the most amazing thing happened. They brought out HUGE leaves for plates. Our dinner was delivered next - very spicy lamb, butter chicken, rice, nan (very good flatbread), tandori chicken, tiger prawns, fruit nan ... I'm probably leaving something out, but suffice it to say that we all loved everything! Cori couldn't get enough Tandori chicken and Kathryn loved the fruit nan. We said goodbye and went back to the hotel to pack and crash.

We had to get up at 3:30am the next morning to make our flight. It was difficult, but we all made it. The kids liked being able to walk up and down the steps in to the plane. Oh - and we snuck through the carry on bag check area quickly while they weren't looking so we could carry our bags on. They can only be 7 kg each which we are way over. Then we almost got on the wrong plane. They boarded three planes at the exact same time and once we were through the gate, we were all together on the tarmac. We were in line to go to India and realized that we should switch planes. We did get on the right plane.

I have much , much more to write both about our plane ride and the food we had ordered and about Vietnam, but I'm out of time!!

Hope everyone is well!

Love, Kristen