TEMPLE HOPPING | Travelling in Penang

Yep, temple hopping, a new expression I just made up. And yep, that’s mostly what I did for the first days of my 3-nights trip to Penang.

On the first day of our arrival, it was already late afternoon, and it was too bad that temples close quite early. But well, I could still take in the beautiful elaborated temple roofs and temple wall paintings all around Georgetown…

Yet, as the darkness of the night was closing in, an unexpected pleasant surprise awaited us at the end of the jetties…

A lighted temple vibrating with the sounds of drums and prayers! It was open! At least one which decided to celebrate Chinese New Year before the day itself!

We had no idea what temple it was but I later found out that it was called the Hean Boo Thean Kuanyin temple. The festive atmosphere was amazing.

Meanwhile, I have to admit, I felt at peace and happy. Chinese temples always have this effect on me. Especially when I start lighting and placing the incense sticks in front of the deities… I didn’t do it in this temple, because they were in the middle of a kind of prayer/ceremony and thus no one could get inside. Anyway, that was an awesome way to end the day.

And omg firecrackers at the end of the ceremony?? Made me feel completely at home!

On the second day, we had planned to visit a particular temple, which is the obviously famous Kek Lok Si temple! We went to Penang Hill first… and LOL before we finally reached Kek Lok Si we came across even more temples! I have no idea what they were called and I didn’t bother searching on Google, because they were so many along our way, all in one place! Here we go…

This was actually my favourite out of all the random temples we saw. That was particular because it was a temple that was in higher altitude, away from everything… It stood high and silent.

The other temples were smaller and at some point I was so tired I stopped taking pictures and just admired the spiritual architecture.

Finally, we found our way to Kek Lok Si… but by the time we reached the gigantic temple, we were so exhausted that we sat on the first bench that we saw and stayed there for like nearly 2 hours. And by the time we stood up to explore the temple was closing… and we had almost been stuck inside!