Penang Part 3: The Kek Lok Si Day

Day 3: April 13, 2006 (Kek Lok Si Temple)

I have to warn you guys that if you are so not interested in the Chinese Temple or Buddhism of any kind, please skip this post, ok?

Today we started out pretty late with Kek Lok Si Temple, the famous attraction 3km. away from Penang Hill. It took us a while to get there from the hotel becoz the temple is not exactly in Georgetown (it’s in Air Itam where I believe it is another town).
Once the taxi dropped us off on the road at the foot of the hill, we found out that we had to walk our asses up to the temple. Fortunately, the stairs weren’t too steep and there were shops along the way, under the roof, which I think it’s quite cool becoz I remember when I went to some temples up the hill in Thailand..u just basically have to walk up the steep stairs which are directly underneath the sun! Another pleasant thing I like about Penang is that the shop ppl are not as aggressive as the Thai ones! They asked u politely if u wanna buy anything, if not, they would just leave u alone. The Thai ones?? They would just keep bothering u until u r out of their sight or someone else comes instead. If u don’t believe me, just try walking in Siam Square or MBK area, especially in Bonanza (it’s opposite to MBK that connects to Siam Sq.) some of the jean shop bitches are just too scary we had to walk around the other way to avoid them.

Ok let’s get back to Kek Lok Si, it took us awhile to go up the hill..then in the hallway there was a stinky toilet and this huge rock with Chinese letters. Too bad that my Chinese language skill is ZERO, otherwise, I’d have a lot more stuff to talk about, hehe.

HMM.. how do I start this..WELL, Kek Lok Si temple has so many levels with many small temples in it. This is the temple on the first level.

The First Temple.

Me at the temple balcony with the Chinese looking thing, hehe.

Enough posing for now, let’s see inside the temple!

The Buddha Statue inside.

The candle jars were quite interesting to me becoz I’ve never seen them before. In Thailand, they use the candle sticks not jars like this :)

This is a pole next to the Buddha statue, see how interesting it is??
On the pole itself there are many many little Buddha statues on it, neat!!

The Miniature Buddha Statues on the Pole

From the first lvl, u can see the view of Penang and also the pagoda on a higher level of the hill:)

As u can see from the pagoda pic, there is a stairway, right? So we went up the stairs and we found a dead-end!! The doors to the upper lvl of the hill or the temple up there were just locked..so we just walked up there for nothing (well for some nice view if u r quite optimistic).

There weren’t much stuff on the second level that interested me, only the Chinese style doors. They just reminded me of the acrobatic Chinese period series I liked to watch when I was young.

A lovely Chinese-styled door to the balcony, you can also see the city view there.

A nice view of the Pagoda from the second level:)

The third level is more interesting, there is a bigger temple with monks doing their daily ceremony and big statues of Chinese monks or the Chinese angels that people worship.

I wish I could read the signs :(

The Chinese Monks

It was very fascinating to me becoz I’ve seen Chinese monks performing their ceremony only in Chinese movies! Did I mention that I was a huge fan of acrobatic Chinese period series? One of the monk was looking at the camera..i hope it wasn’t sinful to take the photos…

There are two ways u can go from the third level, left to Kuan Yin Statue and right to the Pagoda. We took a left turn first becoz I wanna get on the cable car, hehe.

It costs10RM for one-way and 20 for round-trip, if I remember correctly. We just bought the one-way ticket becoz we wanna walk back down but when we were one the cable car and saw the stairs..we changed our mind. Luckily they are thoughtful enough to have another ticket booth up there also, hehe.

The Kuan Yin statue is just HUGE!!!! And the temple area around the statue is just fabulous! They are still renovating the place when we were there, u will see some construction stuffs in the photo.

The Kuan Yin Statue with unfinished poles.

Is it possible that they are building it according to the photo in this welcome sign?

A view from Kuan Yin statue.

Nice garden at the temple :)

Do you see this entrance to the temple? There are carved stones in 12 different animal shapes according to the 12 Chinese years; ox, rat, tiger, rabbit, goat, horse, snake, dragon, monkey, chicken, dog, and pig.

The funny thing is earlier that morning I was just watching TV in the hotel room and the show was like a documentary about your personalities according to the 12 Chinese years. And now I’m here seeing the 12 Chinese years..how coincidence! Or, rather, DESTINY!

A cute dog stone..just like cute dog year ppl such as me, haha.

A souvenir shop and also where the cable car is.

It was 5pm already when we were done with the Kuan Yin Statue and that’s the time it’s closed so we caught the last cable car ride back down to the third level. We went to have a quick look at the Pagoda. There was some fee to get in which I can’t remember correctly but it’s not much.

The temple on the Pagoda side is just as nice and beautiful as the others! There are a few Buddha statues inside also for people to pray and stuff but it was after 5pm already so not many ppl around there to be seen.

One example photo of the Buddha Statue.

Cute tiny orange-looking trees in front of the temple :)

The Pagoda

The door in front of the Pagoda, another nice city view :)

So yeah, that was my Kek Lok Si experience, it took me half a day to see all of it. If u ask me, this is the place you must never ever miss when you come to Penang.

Before ending my third day in Penang, we went to have dinner at the Revolving restaurant in the City Bayview Hotel. If I remember correctly..the Buffet dinner is around 37RM++ a person on Mondays-Thursdays and 45RM++ on Fridays-Sundays, from around 6-7pm to 10.30pm. If you are interested, please check with the hotel for an accurate info :)

Well, we made a reservation for 8pm, the restaurant is nice, I guess. You can see the city view and some boring hotel roof-top view also, hehe. It’s not that great becoz it doesn’t go around smoothly. The food was nothing special, no pork, like usual since it’s Halal certified. There were some international food and local food. The only memorable thing there was dessert! Nice dessert selection they had, hehe. The reason I’m not all impressed with it coz it’s quite noisy since so many ppl go eat there as groups or families..also a few couples. So imagine the kids running around inside the revolving restaurant like a playground. Luckily, I didn’t spill any hot coffee on them by accident, oops!