Today was our first of two ports of call in Malaysia. This was at George Town on the island of Penang. George Town was established by the British East India Company in 1798. The British brought in Chinese and Indian laborers to clear the island. Even today the area retains an interesting mix of ethnic Malays and the descendants of the Indians and Chinese, as well as more than 100 years of British rule.
As we left the port, we drove through the old part of town, where citizens came to the “wet market” for a breakfast of noodles and grilled meat.
Kek Lok Si Temple
Our first top was at the Kek Lok Si Temple, the largest Chinese temple in Southeast Asia. The first temple on the site was started in 1890, and new buildings have been added throughout the ensuing century.
The climb to the main pagoda looked pretty steep from the bottom, but fortunately the many staircases were broken up by diversions through gardens or shops before continuing upward.
The exterior of the seven-story main pagoda of the complex represents three distinct architectural styles. The base is Chinese, the middle section is Thai, and the top is Burmese. The temple houses 10,000 alabaster Buddha statues! Entering the grounds through a Full Moon Gate brought us into a courtyard of beautiful flowers surrounded by walls of Buddha statues.
Guardians kept evil spirits at bay under their feet. This one is holding a pearl in his left hand to distract the dragon in his right hand.
Our guide told us thee was a funicular to take us up to the final level to see a new pavilion under construction. This provides shelter for a 100-ft. tall bronze statue of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, that the Chinese donated in 2002.
The grounds feature smaller statues representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac.
There are also some playful benches for children…
…as well as some statuary that is distinctly not related to the Chinese zodiac.
Reclining Buddha Temple
We next stopped at Wat Chaiyamangalaram Temple – let’s just call that the Reclining Buddha Temple, shall we?
This temple is built in the Thai style and a large portion of its construction was funded by the Thai government. Thai like their temples to be gold and shiny!
The temple houses the third or fourth-longest reclining Buddha statue in the world.
He’s 102 feet long from his alabaster head to his mother-of-pearl inlaid toenails.
The statue is actually part of a columbarium. Behind the statue is a wall of niches housing the urns of cremains.
A similar wall of niches lines the inside of the base of the Buddha statue.
We thought that some of these Buddha statues bore more than a passing resemblance to Jeff Goldblum.
A Drive Around Penang
After lunch at a hotel in the Batu Ferringhi district (we did not see any Ferengi), we made a stop at the Penang Butterfly Farm to enjoy watching these little critters fly around.
I suppose it was the opposite of the elephant orphanage in many respects.
The colorings of many of the butterflies were unfamiliar to us.
From there, we continued our counter-clockwise drive around the north side of the island through an area of fruit trees of all varieties, most of them unfamiliar to westerners. The most prevalent were durian trees. This fruit has a nasty reputation for its strong, unpleasant odor. Our guide said that the Malay describe the durian as “smelling like Hell but tasting like Heaven.”
We stopped at a roadside stand to see the fruits of some of the native trees, including the nutmeg (below).
A bored-looking macaque was mildly interested in us.
Our drive through the heavily-forested terrain of the central mountain ridge eventually gave way to the gentler slopes along the coast. All too soon we were back at the ship and ready to head on for tomorrow’s destination: Kuala Lumpur.