Ipoh's Limestone Caves

After the beach and the mountains, Mike left a comment last week that caves would be the next place we visited on the weekends. He was right!

Ipoh is actually situated in a valley and is surrounded by limestone hills and caves. There have been temples built into several of the larger ones and they are always interesting to visit. For those more adventurous, there are hundreds of other non-temple caves that can be explored. Some of these were used as communist hideouts in the early 1950s.

I'll take Aaron on one of the adventurous cave visits in a couple of years but for today, we took the easier route.

This is the first temple we visited:



Here's one of the many depictions of hell that this temple had lining the walls of an inner cave.



This is from the second temple we visited. These caves definitely should organize some guided tours so that! Anyway, I think these are Taoist deities (?). Malaysia's Buddhism is very mixed with Taoism and the people often pray to both sets of deities even though they are distinct religions.



And here's the third and largest cave temple of the day.





This is a view of the beautiful 'backyard' that the temple had. Its an exercise park with jogging track, two ponds and lots of beautiful green grass for Aaron to run about on.





By next Saturday, we'll be back in Palembang so, this is the last of the wonderful weekend escapades.