Kek Lok Si (or Temple of Supreme Bliss) has been Penang’s big attraction for decades. The Chinese-Buddhist temple complex at Ayer Hitam is massive … there are many shrines in addition to the old main pagoda built in an eclectic style … Chinese, Thai etc all put together. More recently there is a ginormous statue of the Goddess of Mercy. Like Vegas, it keeps renewing itself and expanding … bad comparison perhaps.
Wandering around the complex (and around Penang too) I couldn’t help notice the number of Chinese beggars around. It has often been touted that Chinese are rich and the Malaysian underclass is from other ethnicities. Definitely not so!
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- Restaurant in shophouse.
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- The Kek Lok Si temple complex is large.
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- The Kek Lok Si temple complex is large.
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- The Wishing Tree. Write your wish on a tag and hang it on the tree (for a fee). I can’t read but the red ones may say “Remove Before Flight” like on the aeroplanes.
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- One of the several Buddha shrines.
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- Buddhas with Swasitkas … that’s the second example of an Oriental religion being hijacked by the West (by Hitler in this case, but he mirror-imaged it). The first example is Christianity … an Oriental (Middle Eastern) religion by origin.
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- The original pagoda at Kek Lok Si.
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- The original pagoda at Kek Lok Si.
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- The original pagoda at Kek Lok Si.
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- I thought pumpkin patches are meant to be on the ground … not on vines like grapes.
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- Suburban Penang with the city centre in the background, viewed from Kek Lok Si pagoda.
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- The Kek Lok Si temple complex.
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- The Kek Lok Si temple complex. The newish Goddess of Mercy statue is huge (with a pagoda roof over it).
