The Langkawi sky bridge in Gunung Mat Cincang is 2300 feet above sea level and is actually curved so you can get the best view of a spectacular chasm, and differnet perspectives over the land and sea. The sky bridge spans 125 meters, from this you get a tremdous view across the Andaman Sea and in good weather, nearly always, you can see Tarutao Island, Thailand.

The bridge is 1.8m wide and has viewing platforms twice the width of the bridge so you can take your time and make the most of the views without people pushing past. Mind you it wasn’t actually that busy when I was there.

Getting here is easiest from the nearby island Penang, Malaysia and Satun in southern Thailand. As for traveling around the island the island has a reasonably well developedroad network. Its patchy in places which is why I choose to hire a motorbike. But to my luck it broke down and I had to hitch hike back about 10 miles!

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The only other thing you will notice in Snake Temple is the stink of all the burning incense. It is the sacred smoke from the incense which is supposed to render the snakes harmless, considering I saw an old man milking one of the snakes I consider this very doubtful.

Snake Temple was build around 1875 for the memory of a Buddhist monk called Cheng-Swee Chor-Soo Kong, or Chor Soo Kong for short. A monk was traveling from China in the 1800s to Penang and had a statue on him of Chor Soo Kong and talked of great myths and legends of this deity’s power as a healer. In 1873 when David Brown, a British resident found out about Chor Soo Kong and prayed to him he was apparently cured of an illness. It return for his cure David Brown donated a tract of his land so a temple could be built for the homage of Chor Soo Kong.

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The limestone caves are sacred for the Malaysian Hindus and consist of three main caves 400m long and up to 100 meters high and a few smaller ones. The biggest and most popular is Temple Cave.

Every year at the end of January (the 10th month in the Hindu calendar) the Batu Caves hold the Thaipusam festival, I would not recommend to go during this time as just under a million devotees and other visitors will invade the area for celebration of the son of Shiva known as Subramaniam and the becoming of Pusan. As a type of sacrifice the many devotees carry kavadis (basically burden), and attach many types of decorative frameworks to themselves with nice great big hooks pieced through their skin and even there tongues and cheeks!!! They believe that doing this their gods will owe them a favour, work that one out?

Anyway once you are here be on guard for some extremely friendly well street know ledged macaque monkeys they tried to steel my camera, luckily for me they only tricked me out of my bottle of water. (I tried chasing but I couldn’t keep up with the little bugger up the staircase which has 272 steps!) You can buy alternative food which should keep them away from the shiny items you may be carrying so stash up on peanuts and bananas before you go

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The Petronas Twin Towers were designed by the architect Casar Pelli, and finished completion in 1998. The towers are based upon a Muslim symbol which is throughout the design of the building and also boast the worlds deepest foundations at 120m. I’m not sure if a lot of people know this but two different companies built each tower, they had a race between them. The company who started over a month later actually finished first!

Underneath the Petronas Twin Towers are the Suria KLCC shopping mall, and the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas which is the home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. I never got a chance to listen to the orchestra but if your prepared to spend a few thousand pounds by all mean check out the shopping mall for some of the most expensive brands possible.

Tower One is fully occupied by the Petronas Company which is Malaysia’s national oil company and a number of its subsidiaries and partners. Tower Two is nearly all available for lease companies which have offices in Tower Two include Al Jazeera International, Boeing, IBM and Microsoft.

Outside the towers is KLCC park which looks lovely, and of course is the paddling pool for all you children out there. But the best bit for me was the Skybridge. It’s accesible on the 41st and 42nd floors so is approximately half way up the buildings have 88 floors each. When you look out from here it is pretty spooky especially to think that some crazy french guy actually climbed another 20 floors above you outside with no ropes!!!! (Yes to all you climbers it was Alain “Spiderman” Robert)

Also once a year they open up the top floor to allow the best of the best base jumpers to jump off unfortunatly I’m no where near that good and would never get invited

Malaysia Travel Photos