Today Sarma was with us for our two days of sight seeing outside of Kuala Lumpur. We started by taking a train and bus out to The Royal Selangor factory. I had pre booked yesterday for us to take part in the tour at the factory. The tour involved completing our own pewter bowl in the school of hard knocks using only basic tools. When we arrived we were given our own private tour of the Royal Selangor museum. It showed us the tin mining era and they different ways to make pewter objects. We were then taken into the factory and shown the steps to complete pewter projects. There were people completing them as well. What amazed me was the women who was decorating the cup was putting the dints (decorations) around by hand. It was amazing that she could hit the hammer in the exact right spot to make a pattern.
The school of hard knocks was our next stop. We were given School of Hard knocks apron to wear and to keep and given a piece of circular flat pewter to turn into a bowl. Our first task was to embed our initials onto the bowl by using a hammer and letters made out of metal. I got the hang of it by my letter y and by then it was too late. Next we hand to use a mold, which is a hole in wood to knock our bowls into a slightly circular shape using a mallet. It took a while and when we had finished we turned the mold over and used a deeper mold to turn in a proper bowl. It turned out quite well. I decided to bend my edges of my bowl to give it a more artistic feel and Anthony decided to copy me. Happy with our masterpieces we spent some time looking in the gift shop before heading back home to get ready for our tour.
We decided to have a late lunch at KLCC. Amazingly Steve and Anthony bumped into someone they knew in Melbourne, Rosa. We scoffed down lunch and made our way back to the hotel to meet our Taxi driver.
We had organised a taxi driver named Ambi to take us to the fireflies for 300RM which between all of us was going to be much cheaper then an actual tour. Ambi had never been out there before but did a fantastic job finding the way and organizing the day. On the way there we decided to book him in for tomorrow, for our trip to the elephant sanctuary. We drove for about an hour til we reached a small village town in Selangor. It was cool to see as there are many stalls on the side of the road selling fruits and stuff. We continued down some dirt roads until we came to the place where the eagle feeding and firefly tours were. The place looked very run down and old, however most places in this town did so we just took it in our stride.
We life jacketed it up and jumped onto a boat. The boat zoomed down the river until we reached the part where the eagles lived. We could see them all soaring around the sky and trees, they are truly magnificent creatures. The boat driver threw some meat over board and we watched as the eagles circled and swooped for food. It was difficult to take photos off but beautiful to watch. We returned to land and our taxi driver was upset as he just found out he could have come with us for free. I think he might return to do that.
Next we headed to the monkeys at the local fort. You can buy food from a vendor to feed them, though I will warn you they get a bit crazy and jump on you. They were pretty cool, but one wouldn’t get off me and Anthony shooed it off me and it bit him. This meant rabies shots the next morning and he will need more done in Australia.
We headed back to the fireflies tour and had a while for dinner. We had dinner on a restaurant on the barge. The restaurant was on stilts and had beautiful views of the river and the sunset. We ordered variety food and marmite chicken made a comeback. It is popular over here and it is chicken cooked in Vegemite, which I do not recommend. The best thing about Malaysia is often they give you free fruit when you are finished a meal. This is something Australia should do.
We made our way down to the fireflies, put our life jackets on and hopped into the boat. We raced down the river until it got dark and then we slowed down to watch the fireflies. The fireflies were tiny balls of light and they looked amazing. There were some annoying people that kept using flash and ruined the mood a bit. When those people stopped being idiots it was a relaxing experience.
We got to dry land and drove home, All very tired but had a good day, We stopped at KLCC for a while and searched for the Monty Python DVD there. They don’t seem to sell many DVDs in Malaysia. We have organised Ambi to take us to the elephant sanctuary tomorrow as we had a good experience with him today. He has also agreed to take us to the Batu Caves for the same price.