Currying Flavour for Christmas

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We left Cameron Highlands for Penang, via a short stopover in Ipoh. We managed to find our hostel easily and settled into the Penang lifestyle by having late night noodles from one of the many street vendors.

We spent our first sightseeing day looking round the local area, visiting Fort Cornwallis, which is built on the Cape where the city’s founder (Captain Francis Light) landed. We also saw some beautiful government buildings, a church and some temples.

Our next outing took us to the Snake Temple, where there are live snakes on the alters. Whilst the concept sounded interesting it was a little disappointing as all the snakes were very lethargic and it was hard to tell if they were real!

The following day we went to see two temples, the Burmese Dharmikarama and the Thai Wat Chayamangkalaram. The Burmese temple had a peaceful garden and nice pagoda tower, as well as a very tall standing Buddha. The Thai temple was built in 1845 when Queen Victoria granted some land to Thailand. It also houses a reclining Buddha that is gold plated and 33m long.

We spent Christmas Eve going to see another temple (Kek Lok Si), which is on top of a hill. The temple is split into two, with the main buildings on the lower level and a garden and a statue on the upper level. The statue is of Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) and was around 37m high.

Christmas day was spent watching films, eating a curry and listening to Christmas songs. Apart from the curry the only not traditional thing was the heat! This concluded the final days of our time in Penang and Malaysia, as we were off to Thailand.

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