Batu Caves & The Monkeys

Today I ventured into the Batu Caves! It was so awesome, way cooler than I was expecting, and I was expecting it to be pretty awesome. So it started out with me going to the train station. When I got there I had just missed a train so I had to wait about a half hour. I was kind of confused because my ticket said Sentul, even though I told them I wanted to go to the Batu Caves. When the train finally came I got on and tried to ask someone where to get off, so he looked at my ticket and told me he would tell me when. Once we got to the Sentul station he told me that was it. So I jumped off the train and it left. There was seriously no one at this station and it was in the middle of nowhere so I knew this wasn't right. I went up the stairs and asked the man at the ticket window and he told me I should have stayed on for three more stops. Oops. So I bought a new ticket, luckily they are like 30 cents US. But then the next train wasn't coming for 45 minutes so I just had to wait with nothing to do. The train finally came about 15 minutes late so all in all I waited about an hour.
When we started getting close I could already see the gigantic golden statue and I got so excited! Once we arrived I hopped off the train and tried to find my way to the entrance, and of course I took the most round about way possible, sometimes my navigation skills aren't the best. There were stray dogs everywhere, but I was kind of excited to see them because I haven't seen any dogs or cats for that matter since I've been here. Anyway it was a long walk but it was worth it. This place was amazing. So many cool buildings and statues and just everything. And I wasn't even up in the big main cave yet. I took a look at those stairs and I was instantly exhausted. I know I'm in shape but wow, that's a lot of stairs and they are so steep. So I started my way up the stairs, I only stopped once halfway up to catch my breath! But my calves were spasming from all the work. There were people sitting and some even laying down trying to find the energy to make it up the rest of the way.
Once I got inside I couldn't believe how pretty it was. There were statues placed in the walls and all sorts of other things. They had a little temple in there too where you could pay to be submersed in this bath, it was different prices depending on how much of yourself you wanted submersed, kind of weird. At the end of the cave there were more stairs heading up to another circular area that opened up to the sky, it was so cool looking. Even after seeing all this I was still feeling sad because I hadn't seen a single monkey! After I checked out everything there was to check out in the caves I headed back down the stairs. At the bottom I saw that there were more places to look at down the way a little. So I headed forward and was checking out this little waterfall when I looked to my left and notice a bunch of monkeys!!
I hurried down the walkway and bought a banana then headed towards the monkeys. At first I just stood back and watched them for a minute, there were so many of them everywhere. Finally I think they all started noticing what I had in my hand so they started getting closer. I saw the cute little monkey that I wanted to give the treat to so I walked over to him and held the banana out, he took it and sat right down to eat it! They aren't scared of people at all. Then I noticed this older looking monkey that had a whole bag of fruit in front of him. All of the other monkeys would try and take a piece out of it and he would growl at them. It was so funny, you could tell they were trying to plan a way to get a piece from him. But none of them ever succeeded. I could have sat there and watched them for hours, it's kind of weird how human-like they are.
After the monkeys I headed back to the train station to get home. What a fun day!