Cental Market

If you want to go shopping for souvenirs please visit to the central market; a Malaysian friend suggested me. So that afternoon we went there for a little shopping to buy souvenirs for families and friends.

Central Market is located at Jalan Hang Kasturi, a few minutes away from Petaling Street. It was founded in 1888 and originally used as a wet market, while the current building was completed in 1937. It has since been classified as a Heritage Site by the Malaysian Heritage Society and it is now a landmark for Malaysian culture and heritage. It is also strategically located within public transport facilities.

Central Market has created a corner to display multi-ethnicity and the stalls are zoned based on the features of each race. The new zone therefore would consist of 3 lanes namely the Lorong Melayu, Straits Chinese and Lorong India. The purpose of this new zone is to let the visitors have an insight of the cultural difference of the various races in Malaysia.

There is also a Malacca Jonker street – a street featuring double-storey and single-storey Baba-Nyonya styled architectural buildings, a Batik Emporium which houses well-known designer labels with the best Malaysian made batik items ranging from clothes, shoes, bags to home finishing.

Central Market is a one stop shopping centre for Malaysian products such as handicrafts, art, kebaya, songket, batik and the wide variety of Malaysian cuisine. Efforts to improvise and upgrade facilities in Central Market also include having a variety of food & beverage outlets such as Secret Recipe, Old Town Kopitiam, Kings Confectionary, Famous Amos, Precious Restaurant (Traditional Baba Nyonya Cuisine), Ginger Restaurant (Traditional Malaysian Thai Cuisine) and many more.

The colourful Malaysian Traditional Cultural and Arts events are presented at the Central Market Outdoor Stage. Central Market celebrates all the Traditional Festivals of each race in Malaysia. Moreover, Central Market supports the local contemporary arts in The Annexe Gallery.

We bought some souvenirs, walked along the street and looked around just for window shopping.

Batu Caves

Hello guys!

Today I wanted to share a holiday experience in Malaysia. One of the places we’ve visited was Batu Caves which is located in Gombak District the state of Selangor, about 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur. Batu Caves is a limestone hill, which has a series of caves and cave temples. It takes its name from the Sungai Batu or Batu River, which flows past the hill. Batu Caves is also the name of the nearby village.

In addition to recreation place Batu Caves is also used as a sacred place of Hindu worship. What are interesting about this place are the Hindu temples in the caves as well as the god of Murugan statue towering approximately 43 meters. Reportedly Murugan statue is the tallest statue of Hindu god in the world.

There are three main caves and a small cave. There is also a tour to see the bats living in a dark cave. To reach the main temple in the cave we have to climb stairs as much as 272 steps. While we go up the stairs, we can meet a lot of long tailed-macaque monkeys and if we have peanuts or bananas with us, they'll climb to us as I won't consider recommending. You might fall though. We can take photo's of them, carrying their babies for the peanuts. There are locals in the entrance, who will approach us to buy peanuts and bananas!

Every day there is a little celebration of a group of Hindus in the Batu Caves. Every time it's an imposing event, although there's no self torture.

Temple Cave is the best known and biggest of the caves.It's visited by many devotees.The ceiling is 100 m above the ground and this huge chamber is lighted by daylight from several holes in the ceiling.At the end of the caves you can see the bright sky, when you look above you.

Batu Caves is located in Gombak district, which is accessible through Jalan Kuching and Middle Ring Highway. The easiest way to get to Batu Caves is to take the KTM commuter train from KL Sentral station to the Sentul Station. Otherwise we can also catch a bus, Bus Nr 70 and 349 are leaving from Lebuh Pudu in China Town every 30 minutes. And if you go there by taxi the fare from Kuala Lumpur is only about RM10-Rm15.

No admission fee to enter the site of Batu Caves, unless we want to go into a dark cave.