Buddhist temples

"Don't build your happiness on top of other's pain.", came a shivering voice from the back seat. Seng and I were in the front seats, taking Theng2 to an early morning school meeting. Apparently the air conditioning is too cold for her in the back, and this is her sacarstic way of telling us to turn off the air conditioning. Kids today!

I have made arrangement to meet Kong Chan this morning at Komtar for the day, so I took advantage of the trip to go downtown with Seng.

I met Kong Chan at KomTAR later in the morning, at our usual MayBank meeting place. Kong Chan knows of a good place for curry mee, so off we went to Pulau Tikus (Rat Island.) This is actually not an island, but somewhere in the North side of Penang, in town, on the way to Botanical Gardens (from Komtar). Across the street from the Pulau Tikus police station, there is a coffee shop called Happy coffee shop.

I was happy indeed when I saw the curry mee vendor. Kong Chan order two bowls of noodles, and set off to order other things for us to eat. He came back with two Hum Chien Pangs (fried cakes), one plain salty, the other with black bean sauce. He went off to look for more food.

I impatiently tore open the salted fried cakes, and bit into it. Ah, it is good. Nice and bouncy dough, with just the right amount of salt. It is at the same time sweet, and salty. I swallowed my half, and Kong Chan likewise the other, when I remembered I did not take a picture of the cake. Meanwhile, I have started into the second one. Another good one. It contains a good amount of black bean sauce, and it is sweet and salty like the other one. I love hum chien pangs.

The curry mee is a vision of beauty by itself. It comes with mint leaves as a garnish, and shrimp, tofu poks (fried tofu), pig blood, and blood clams, and octupus slices. The coconut curry soup is not spicy, but a little salty. The wheat noodles and rice noodles are cooked perfectly, al dente, and not overcooked. Very enjoyable.

A couple more dishes arrived while I was eating. A plate of Sar Hor Fun and a plate of Choo Cheong Fun (literally pig intestine noodles, but really it is just thin white noodles, wrapped into a tubular shape, and cut into inch long slices, with hoi sin and chili sauce, and a sprinkle of sesame seeds and peanuts.) Kong Chan and I dug into them and eagerly devoured the two dishes.

The Hor Fun is actually a combination hor fun and rice noodles. I prefer all hor fun, but I will let this one go, because it has pig liver. There was one slice of pig liver in the gravy, and I was happy to see it. I think, for now, I have had my fill of pig livers. I hope not to see another one for a long long time. The rest of the ingredients include shrimp, green vegetables, pork slices, and char siew. I don't like char siew in the gravy, so that is a minus. All together, it is an okay dish, but not great.

The chu cheong fun is just so. There is not much you can do to screw up a dish like this. As long as the sauce is okay, it will camouflage any mistake you may have made with the noodles. We finished the dish in silent appreciation.

Across the street, into a narrow lane, we came across two Buddhist temples. On the left is the famous indoor reclining buddha. On the right is a Burmese Buddhist temple. We went first into the reclining buddha temple.

The reclining Buddha, also locally called the Sleeping Buddha, is big. It is a hundred and eight feet long, the third longest Buddha in the World, after some buddhas in Burma and Thailand.
The body of the Buddha is (rumoured to be) plated in real solid gold foils. I hope no one is thinking of stealing the Buddha and melting down the gold, although I don't know how you can steal such a big object. I suppose someone has thought of it.

The face of the Buddha is very well painted. In vivid color, it appears to be peacefully resting.

In front of the Buddha, you will see a few gold plated statues of monks. Kong Chan maintained that these are real dead monks. The high monks are gold plated and preserved after they pass away. This is a traditional Buddhist way of keeping them alive forever. Upon reflection, the statues resemble real person. I stared at one of them for a long time, and believe me, it did look like there could be a real deal person inside.

Behind the Buddha, there are cubicles built into the walls. Inside are urns of human ashes. Kong Chan said they are leased out to the deceased families. This is big business, he said. Our old Shih Chung Branch School is being converted into a crematorium and a ash-o-torium as well. I, of course, questioned why such a prime piece of property is being considered for this purpose. The dead cannot enjoy the view, why not do this somewhere in the suburbs?

There are many statues in and around the temple. More Buddha statues, some Goddess of Mercy statues, and in particular, one of a monk (I think) that looked like the Tang Dynasty monk who went to India in pilgrimage: The Tang San Chang (Third Monk of Tang.) This is the monk that was featured in the popular Chinese novel "The Western Travelogues", wherein he traveled to India on a white horse with his three disciples: The Monkey God, The Pig man, and the wondering monk, meeting all kinds of obstacles.

This also reminded me of a (not so popular) joke of a father's advice to his daughter: "Not everyone on a white horse is a prince. He could be Tang San Chang" (monks are no matrimony prospects.)

Outside the temple, there is a vey ornate pagoda housing a buddha and statues of lessor gods praying. We went in to take a look at the buddha. I noticed the window shutters were also carved with many intriguing patterns. A lot of work and thoughts went into creating this structure. I mentally compared this to the playhouse I built for my children many years ago. One is ornate, highly decorated, and the other one is just the opposite spectrum, plainly simplistic. Interesting.

I took some pictures of the Siamese Guards guarding the temple. From the statues, you can see a lot of influence from the Indian statues. I think the Burmese also use the same forms. The influence from India must have moved from India to Thailand, via Burma. Interestingly, the Chinese Buddhist do not have this kind of statues, perhaps because of the distance. The Chinese temple guards are usually statues of old time Chinese warriors and generals. My favourite is Kuan Gung, who carried a long-blades saber on a metal pole. He was a fearsome warrior, and a good and just soldier. I felt safe having him as my protector. Kuan Guan is also distinguished by having long black beard, and a red face. You may have seen him in a lot of the temples and old Chinese buildings. The Han Chiang primary school on Chulia Street, for example, has Kuan Gung painted on one of the doors. In King Street, there is a Kuan Guan temple which I often walk in and pray to when I was living in King Street.

Across the street from the temple of the reclining Buddha is a Burmese temple. This temple has been in existence since sometime in the early 1800's, and claims to be the first Buddhist temple in Penang (or Asia.) During my schooling years, when we used to go to the temple of the reclining Buddha, the temple was run down, and did not warrant a second look. In the past few years, there has been a lot of rebuilding and remodelling. As a result, it is quite a big complex, with many more buildings. The two, Thai and Burmese, temples situated together, just across the street from each other, presented an ideal one-stop tourist visiting opportunity. On this day, there were a couple of tourist buses parked outside on the street.

The picture above is a new additional building. It resembles a Burmese palace. It is also very intricate in the design. From the outside, it looked like a nice temple, but that is about it, nothing impressive. When you walk into the temple, and Wow! it hits you. In front of you, in the middle of the temple, is an overwhelmingly tall and large Buddha. The statue of the Buddha is as tall as the building itself, minus a few feet for headroom. It is tall! It is big! It looks great! Please click on the picture of the Buddha to see the visual effect.

When I first saw it, I was really in awe. I put down my backpack, and prayed to it.

The original temple building is behind this new building. Along the way, a corridor was built to shade you on the journey. Hung along the sides are pictures of Buddhist stories. The old building is just as impressive, although not as grand. There were many statues of Buddha everywhere in the building. In the middle altar was Buddha, in meditation with two other lessor gods. This man in the picture was praying to Buddha, long before I walked into the temple, and while I walked around the temple snapping pictures, and when I walked out 10 minutes later, he was still there, praying. Maybe he fell asleep.

It had rained in the morning, so maybe that is why it must have been humid this day. I was sweating so much, my shirt was wet as if someone had spilled buckets of water on me. Compared to Kong Chan, who remained dry all the time, I was sweating bullets. We quickly walked to Gurney Drive, and into the Gurney Plaza nearby. Once there, we found a food court, ordered a cold Soy Bean milk each, and sat down in the air-conditioned dining room to cool down.

The Gurney Plaza is an upscale mall. The stores are brilliantly lit and beautifully decorated. Since we don't really need anything, we went to the book store (MPH) to browse instead. I bought a couple of souvenir letter openers, just in case I need a gift.

Around noon, Kong Ming came and we had lunch at a Hong Kong restaurant on the third floor. Nothing fancy, just some Dim Sum, and a plate of Sar Hor Fun. Both Kong Chan and I were still full from the breakfast earlier, so it is mostly Kong Ming chowing down the Dim Sum. The restaurant gives each table a gadget with three buttons in it: Bill, Water, Waiter. If you need any of the three, you push the button. Pretty good system. I tried all three during the course of the meal, and it worked.

Later, Kong Ming gave me a ride home, and I spent the afternoon reading my kong-fu novel.

Around 8PM, Ann said "Pau, let's go." and off we went to fish noodles. Ann ordered two bowls: a fish and frog-legs noodles soup, and a fish and crab noodles soup. I don't believe I have ever had frog legs. I heard so much about it, joked about it, but has never tried it. Well, today is the day.

Here is a picture of the frog-leg and fish noodle soup. The frog leg, which I have propped up against the chop sticks, is white in color, I was surprise to find. I had expected darker color, being the dark meat of the frog. By itself, I don't believe it added much to the flavouring of the soup, not the way the fish did. Upon eating it, it is smooth, and tender, although not really flavorful. Unlike meat like crab meat that has a distinct flavour, frogs do not, in my opinion, have any taste. I think I am pretty sure I would not want to eat another one.

The fish soup, on the other hand, is quite tasty. I like the fish on the soy sauce and chili. I also like splashing some of the soy sauce with chili onto the noodles.

Seng gave me half of his crab, and I like the taste of the crab. The meat is sweet. I shared the crab claw with Ann.

From the fish noodles shop, we went to Sunshine square for some Ban Chang Kuay, and fried rice noodles. We bought some rice noodles home. The Ban chang kuay we finished at Sunshine. Another perfect day.