Our hotel tour stopped at three spots. The second one isn’t even worth mentioning. But I’ll give a brief summary of what it was. It was a clothing shop that was suppose to give a tour and history of Malaysian clothing with an opportunity for shopping afterwards, but unlike the Royal Selangor tour it was mostly a shop keeper who motioned to some artists at work and gave maybe a sentence or two about what they were doing before rushing us off into the store to shop. No one in our tour group bought anything and we hovered around our driver until he got the clue that we were ready to go to the Batu Caves.
The Batu Caves are limestone caves that require a 272 step climb up to reach. There are three caverns, the main one of which is free. We didn’t visit the other caves since we couldn’t find them and it seemed the one we did find was closed. These are called the Art Gallery Cave (15RM) and the Dark Cave (35RM-80RM guided tour). The caves are a part of a Hindu temple and because of this you need to dress appropriately. This seems to mean knee length shorts at least (longer is better) and a t-shirt should be okay. Otherwise you may have to rent some clothing at the entrance. The dress code fluctuates a little bit and my friend was able to go up in a tank top as were several of the tourists around.
Outside the steps of the temple is the world’s largest Murugan statue. Murugan goes by a couple different names and is the Hindu god of war. It’s 140 feet tall (42.7 meters). The steps leading up to the cave are filled with monkeys. Do not feed the monkeys or touch the monkeys. I suggest keeping your things close and not carrying food on you, especially not in a plastic bag. We saw a monkey steal a bag of someones food and run off with it. I do however suggest having a bottle of water on you, it was a bit tiring on the way up and hot. I bought a cold bottle of water and it was refreshing and needed.
Once at the top there are a couple shops selling souvenirs and some parts under renovations/repair.
Then there are more steps in the back of the cavern where the Hindu temple is. If you go into the temple make sure you take your shoes off.
Outside of the main limestone cave back out near the statue of Murugan are several shops and other tourist attractions, and while we were visiting, a ton of pigeons.
The easiest and cheapest way to get to the Batu caves is via train. The Batu caves station is close. It’s also suggested to visit them early in the morning or in the early evening when it’s not so hot. We were lucky it wasn’t too bad of a day but the climb in the sun was still brutal.