Giant Buddhas, Butterflies, & Dragonfruit: More Sightseeing!

This week in Penang really had some of the best sight-seeing of the entire trip, at least to me. Some of the places I got to go were really incredible. The first place we went to on this particular outing were the main Thai and Burmese Buddhist Temples. Most of the Buddhism practiced in Southeast Asia is Theravada, but where there is a strong Chinese influence (such as Singapore and Malaysia) Mahayana is the dominant school practiced. In Penang, most Buddhist temples are Mahayana because of the dominant Chinese community, but there are definitely Theravada temples present. The Theravada temples we visited were also a lot "flashier" than their Mahayana counterparts.
This picture shows the outside of the main building at the Thai Temple. It has a lot more gold, shiny things than most other temples and is also a lot bigger. In addition, this temple is home to the 3rd largest reclining Buddha in the world.

Now a brief tangent: I am pretty sure that Malaysia is in this phase where they have to have as many "world's largest [insert random noun here]" as possible. This 3rd largest reclining buddha thing is just one of many. For example, Kuala Lumpur has the 3rd largest communication tower in the world (i.e. a giant space needle) and the Petronas towers, which were at one point the largest twin towers in the world. However, because Malaysia didn't want to be one-upped, they will not inform you that they have the second largest twin towers in the world. Instead, they will tell you that they have the largest twin towers where the twin towers are connected by a bridge. I'm pretty sure next it will be largest twin towers connected by a bridge with two support beams. It's pretty ridiculous. They also claim to have the "largest toy museum". However, it is basically a bunch statues of American pop culture figures you can take pictures with. Those are not toys. I honestly prefer the "world's largest" things you can find in America, such as the world's largest museum of prepared mustards, the world's largest ball of paint, and the world's largest basket-shaped building. Oh, how I miss good ole American ingenuity. Ok that's all, back to Malaysia

This thing is massive. It is probably close to being as long as Chambers. Here's a picture (with me in it of course, this was a tourist-y outing after all)


Next we went to the Burmese Temple, which was also really impressive. The people who built this basically tried to one up the Thai Temple, but couldn't build a bigger reclining Buddha so they just settled on building a bunch of other buildings and shrines, like the one below.
They also had a globe statue of some sort that seemed kind of out of place. However, to me it's value rested in how the artisan chose to spell Mexico.

Anyway, I put up some more pictures of the Burmese Temple, which you can see below.


After we were done there, we drove to the North side of Penang to visit some farms. Chances are that if you know me well, you know that I love farms, in large part because I friggin love food. However, the first farm we visited didn't grow food at all, it grew butterflies! Again, chances are if you know me well, you also know that I do research in the Entomology Lab at Davidson, meaning I like insects...especially butterflies. So this was kind of the greatest excursion imaginable. I was pretty convinced I was going to die of happiness. I also basically hijacked our group's fancy camera and took tons of pictures. Here are some of the awesome butterflies I saw:




The Butterfly farm also had some non-butterflies on exhibit as well.

For example, here is a picture of the epic scorpion pit.


And, my personal favorite non-butterfly, the pig-nosed turtle. It basically looks like a Pokemon (more specifically, somewhere between wartortle and blastoise). If you don't believe me google image it for a better look.


So after I practically passed out from all the awesome things at the Butterfly farm, we went somewhere equally amazing: the Tropical Fruit Farm.

Some of the fruits in Malaysia are absolutely incredible (we will ignore the exception of Durian for the moment) and a lot of them you can't get anywhere in the States. And at this fantastic establishment, these amazing fruits were everywhere. The first fruit we saw comes from a type of cactus and is called, for some reason, dragonfruit. There are types of dragonfruit, white and red, and a lot of times when you buy them out at the market they are kind of flavorless. Apparently, this is because they are harvested too quickly. However, at the amazing tropical fruit farm they are perfect and freaking amazing.


This is a picture of me and a dragonfruit. They look super cool.

Also, at this farm were such fruits as Star Apple, Passion fruit, Cranberries, Star fruit, Sentul, Mangosteen (which is my absolute FAVORITE fruit now. Sorry pineapples...these things are way out of your league.), and Rambutan.


As you can see, Rambutans are pretty unusual looking (but delicious!).

So to end our fantastic trip through the tropical fruit farm, we got a free fruit buffet!!!!! Well, it wasn't really free seeing as it was included in our ticket price but I don't really care. It was super delicious except the mangoes were really off. They also had another AMAZING fruit called custard apple which was mindblowing. I could probably give up cheese if I could have them all time (incredible I know!).
Anyway, I'll have more about spirit medium stuff in the next couple days! Sadly, I'll probably only have 2-3 more blog posts since I head back to the states this Friday. I leave sooo soon!!!

In and Around Penang Pt. 2

So, I've been really lazy about blog posts, mainly because I've had to do a lot more research type things than in previous weeks. Anyway, here are some pictures from some places I visited last week, including the famous Snake Temple!

Here we have the main altar of the Snake Temple. Dr. Lye had connections with the Hokkien Kongsi, which is the organization that governs most of the temples in Penang, so we got a personalized tour of sorts. The crazy thing about this temple, which is colloquially called Hock Hin Keong, is that there are live pit vipers throughout the temple and...well, their movement isn't really restricted at all. So, you end up finding snakes in unexpected places.

Like the walls....

And on potted plants.....but actually, there were a lot less snakes than I expected. Apparently, back in the day, the temple used to be situated in a pretty rural area so there were a lot more snakes in the surrounding swamp. But, as development increased, the snake population did too so most of the snakes in the temple were born in their "breeding pit" (which is basically just an undeveloped section of land). I only saw about probably 13 different snakes in the actual temple or so, but it was probably less. Also, all of the snakes in the temple now at least are pit vipers which are venomous. There were signs all over the temple that said things like "Don't let the pit vipes kiss your finger....it may be your last kiss." Though this warning was puzzling, it was pretty obvious you didn't want to mess with the snakes. I mean, just look at the mean mug on that guy.

I also learned that the Chinese go ALL OUT when it comes to incense. As this sign demonstrates, there are joss sticks (i.e. massive incense sticks) that are over four feet tall. I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple that are over 10 feet. That is a lot of incense and a lot of smoke. They're pretty impressive to see. Apparently, at the snake temple, they had to greatly limit the amount of incense offered in general because the smoke was killing off snakes :(. That actually made visiting the snake temple pretty nice as it was one of the few temples not totally filled with smoke and covered in dust (you almost always have to take off your shoes to enter the temples so all that dust can make your feet feel pretty nasty after a while)

And finally, a nice tourist-y picture of my outside the snake temple, in all of its glory.

So after the Snake Temple, we went to a couple of other temples until we arrived at Seng Ong Beow, or the City God Temple. Though the name City God Temple sounds more or less pretty innocent, this place is basically the temple of the underworld. And being the temple of the underworld temple, that means that the First and Second Uncles are going to be there. And they most assuredly were and their effigies were a LOT BIGGER than they had been anywhere else. Also, here they are offered real opium every morning and evening and they also have an entourage of "minions" who also have statues. These guys kind of resemble the minions who work for the bad guys in the Adam West Batman TV show, but are definitely way creepier...maybe because they're covered in dried opium and have deranged smiles....that might have something to do with it.

Also, the effigy of the Second Uncle was very different than it usually is. And as much as I shouldn't say it, it's also a lot more hilarious looking. This guy kind of looks like a Chinese Danny Devito and the fact he's wearing a bib doesn't help his cause. Aside from this, however, the reason he looks so different than usual is because this is how he was originally supposed to look as this is the oldest image of the Second Uncle in Penang (Seng Ong Beow is the oldest temple where the Uncles have been established). This brings up one of the main components of my research, which is determining why these guys are starting to appear all over Penang and how people's perceptions of them are changing with their increasing prevalence.

So in order to learn more about how people's views are changing, I obviously have to talk to....well, people. The guy I'm interviewing in this picture is the Daoist priest in charge of Seng Ong Beow and he had lots of great information about the way people "traditionally" viewed the Uncles. However, I'm beginning to notice how the people I'm talking to at the newer temples generally view the Uncles as really great gods, claiming that they serve higher positions and esteem than the "traditional" viewpoint. It's interesting stuff and I'll add more about the trends I'm noticing, etc when I start working on the paper (which may very well occur back in the States)


So this same day (last Friday), we went out to lunch with this really well-known business guy Dr. Lye knows through various connections. This guy was clearly a big deal. He had an entourage and, from my understanding, was basically the Donald Trump of Penang. He also has two wives, so I'm pretty sure that makes him the closest thing I've seen to a bro since I've been here. I felt super epic eating noms with this guy and afterwards we went back to his epic house which can see the inside of above. We also had awesome snacks and coffee and I had a really interesting conversation with one of guys in the businessman's entourage. We talked about everything from the nature of religious practice and experience and the supernatural to global politics and what it's like growing up in America. So, overall, this was a pretty awesome day. I'll be putting up a couple posts up soon including one about my visit to the awesome butterfly farm and some more about spirit mediums and my research.

In and Around Penang Pt. 1

A picture of myself and the mascot of a Penang-based biscuit company.
I can't decide whether it's adorably creepy or creepily adorable.

Today I realized that I haven't really said much about the actual city of Penang itself. Well, I'm going to tell you SO much about what there is to do in Penang that it will fill two blog posts! Aren't you excited? However, my experience here is in no way a typical tourist experience of Penang. My professor grew up here so he knows all of Penang's best kept secrets like an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant and where to find tea sets for the best price. Also, we're not staying in the "tourist-y" area so pretty much everything we're around is pretty authentic. So to show you some of things I've gotten to see, do, and (of course) eat I've posted several pictures below and tried to explain as briefly as possible what exactly is going on.

Being a person who often thinks with my stomach, I thought the logical place to start my tourist-y collage would be food. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the meals I've had here in Penang, but I do touch on the most interesting ones (at least from the first half of my trip).

In this picture, I'm posing with a bowl of cendol (pronounced chen-dull), one of two well-known Penang desserts. It looks super gross...mainly because it's topped with beans and squiggly green things. Well, it's actually not gross at all. The beans are Red beans so they're sweet (a dessert bean!) and the green squiggles come from the leaves of a local plant. And below all of this is a ice blended with some kind of coconut milk and sugar mix....so overall really good! The only problem is that it can get really soupy when the ice melts.

This equally unusual dessert (possibly more so...) is ais kacang which literally means red bean ice. However, in addition to the obvious ingredients (i.e. red beans and ice) ais kacang also includes ingredients like coconut milk, aloe vera, grass jelly, palm seed, ice cream, and corn. that's right....corn. sometimes...even the infamous durian fruit is added. I would talk about durian here...but ever since trying it the first time I've had no desire to get within photo-taking range of this incredibly smelly fruit. All you need to know about durian is that it smells "musty" and is gooey and cheese-like. And it can take days to get rid of the smell....no thank you. Anyway, ais kacang was still pretty good but I found cendol to be a lot better.

First of all, let me just say this is not exactly what I ate. This is the food I picked out at a local "Steamboat" restaurant, which is basically like a cheaper, more casual, all you can eat version of the Melting Pot (which, in my opinion, makes it vastly superior). All the food is fresh and you pick almost anything and can either grill or boil it. They also have a lot of sauces for your food after you cook it. There was also lots sushi at this place too which made it that much better.

Anyway, that's enough about food...for now. The next set of the pictures deal with various places of interest I went to in Penang during the first part of my trip.

Soo all these statues look they're for sale right? Well...kind of. This is what Dr. Lye calls the "God Adoption Agency." Basically the back of this one temple houses a bunch of abandoned or forgotten shrine or temple statues that can be...well...adopted. It's technically free, but it's disrespectful not to donate some money to the temple itself. Still, it's a really cool place and I definitely picked up a really awesome Kuan Yin statue here. They pretty much have every Chinese god here in some form...big or small. Almost all of the statues are incredibly elaborate and extremely well made. This is definitely one of those places I would not find on my own if I was a tourist in Penang.

If you go to Penang, you will notice that pretty much every street is filled with these types of buildings. These are called shophouses and were built by the Chinese and Indian immigrant communities way back (some of them date to almost 200 year ago). The reason they're called shophouses is pretty obvious: the shop is the first floor and the top floor(s) are the house. This is still the case in some shophouses but I've noticed that most are either all shop or all house in most of Penang. Shophouses come in a bunch of different styles, depending on the time in which they were built, and some of them have a lot of history. For example, the blue shop house pictured above was Sun Yat Sen's HQ for plotting the Chinese Revolution of 1911...pretty cool. The yellowy-cream colored one next to it (the color is called orche is was originally produced from cow urine...not something I'd personally want my home covered in but I suppose it looks nice...) was a really cool modern art gallery that showcases local Malay artists.

The inside of the historical shophouse once occupied by Sun Yat Sen. Now, it's a full time museum and pretty cool to walk through.

So next are some pictures of various religious sites in Penang. None of these are really related to my research, but they're definitely interesting.
This is one of the most famous Chinese temples in Penang. It's actually the oldest one as well, having been built about 200 years ago. It's called the Kuan Yin Temple, largely due the fact that it's dedicated to Kuan Yin. So who is Kuan Yin? Well, basically, Kuan Yin (sometimes written as Guan Yin) is a bodhisattva (Buddhist for an enlightened being) associated with compassion and is generally associated with East Asian Buddhism. Kuan Yin is also notably depicted as a female (though some groups view Kuan Yin as male). Because it's the oldest and most well-known temple, there are always a lot of people there and there is a lot of incense. You can even buy incense in the form of joss sticks, which are basically giant incense sticks that can be exceed 4 feet in height. This tends to make the inside of the temple pretty hazy. Actually, most temples ban the burning joss sticks over 4 feet inside temples because this creates too much smoke.

This picture shows devotees at the Kuan Yin Temple lighting incense which can be placed in any of several places around the temple. In addition to incense, a bunch of other things can be offered or purchased to be given as an offering. It's also pretty common to see people buying oil to refill temple lamps. This temple was also the first time I saw people using divination tools, etc. One method is for a person to shake containers of sticks with fortunes inside until one falls out and then the fortune within that stick is interpreted. There are many different "flavors" of these sticks. The one's at the Kuan Yin temple tended to have more general information in them while other temples may have one's that give everything from lottery numbers to medical advice.


This is another kind of Chinese temple called a Kongsi. Kongsi temples aren't really dedicated to any major Chinese God and are instead more for the worship of the ancestors of a well-established Chinese clan or a local Chinese deity, such as Tudi Gong. However, this does not mean that they are less impressive than those temples dedicated to major Chinese deities. In fact, many, including the one shown above, are more impressive as far as size and ornateness are concerned. One Kongsi temple we visited (not shown here) had absolutely massive ancestor plaques in the back of the temple, much larger than any altar to a deity I've seen as of yet.
Seeing as Malaysia is "officially" a Muslim country, it makes sense that I'd visit at least one mosque while I was here. So I did and I ended up getting to go inside the largest mosque in Penang, the Kapitan Keling mosque. It's one of Penang's most historic mosques and is about as old as the Kuan Yin temple give or take a few years. This particular mosque was constructed by the South Indian Muslim community in Penang. The term South Indian Muslim confused me at first seeing as I thought that most Indians that were Muslim live or moved to what is now Pakistan, but then I realized that this community was established well before India and Pakistan became different nations. However, this is not to say that the Indian community is exclusively Muslim as it is most definitely not. There are lots of Hindu temples all over Penang, but they are much more particular about photography in their temples and have more rules, regulations, etc.

This is a picture of me inside the Kapitan Keling mosque.
Note: Grandma, if you're reading this, please don't have a heart attack. It's just a photo opp I promise.

Well, that's it for part one. I'll try and put the second one up in a couple of days, but I have a lot of work to do for my research so hopefully it won't take me too long!

Spirit Mediums: "First Uncle"

A Shrine to the First Uncle

So last night I finally got to go to my first spirit medium possession, which was really exciting because it's basically the entire reason I'm here. The god being channeled was the First Uncle (sometimes called Elder Grandpa) and it's actually debatable whether he's a god at all as he's generally considered to be a ghost. I should point out though that, in the Chinese sense of word, a ghost is not necessarily a bad thing and generally refers to a spirit who either died a violent death or is unable to worshipped (meaning ancestor worship) by their family for any of several reasons.

At this point you're probably curious why people would consult someone like this for any reason. Well, the Chinese imagining of the underworld as well as the god realm (...aboveworld?) is set up a lot like the Chinese government was back when there were emperors, eunichs, Confucian scholar exams, and all that good stuff. (Which makes me wonder what Chinese religion would look like if it mirrored the Chinese government today...a post for another day!) So, this particular ghost is basically an official in hell who, according to his devotees at least, has accumulated enough good merit to be considered a low-ranking deity. I suppose this raises another question...why go to a low-ranking deity? Well this guy isn't above requests that other gods may view as petty, such as the giving of lottery numbers and issues with wealth, etc. He's also easier for "lower class" to relate to as, unlike higher-up gods, he smokes, drinks, and he's great with kids (no but really...the mediums that channel him love kids when possessed).

With that background information out of the way, now we can get to what happened last night. We drove up pretty much right as the medium was becoming possessed. All of the lights in the temple were out except for a dim red light above the altar, which (obviously) made things a little creepy to begin with. and if that wasn't creepy enough the medium was convulsing. off to a great start! sarcasm aside, it was actually really cool. the medium became possessed and put on a ritual outfit so he'd look like the god he was channeling.

Here's a picture of the medium in ritual garb.
So here the medium is posing like the statue of the god he's channeling (see above). His mouth is black from opium (did i mention he does that too) and he's holding an opium pipe with a cigarette in it. There's also a bowl of Guinness (yes...a bowl) which got refilled several times during the possession.

how the Gods drink Guinness

So after all of these rituals (yes, even consuming large quantities of alcohol is a ritual in this case) the medium sat at a table with his "interpreter" on one end and the person consulting him on the other. The interpreter basically deciphers what the medium is saying as, in the possessed state, the medium's voice changes dramatically and, in some cases, may speak in another dialect or accent that laypeople may have difficulty understanding. Mediums can also give cryptic responses, which the interpreter unpackages for the devotee. I was really surprised by how casual the whole thing was from this point on. People just sat down and divulged their problems and, in turn, received a combination of spiritual and practical advice from the medium. In some ways it was like any other consultation someone might go to save for the shrines, incense, and possessed guy. I had definitely expected it to be a lot more formal.

The people that came had somewhat similar complaints ranging from questions of wealth and health to questions of general luck and spirit disturbances.

The set up

After everyone had consulted the medium, the medium's assistants asked if I wanted to ask the medium anything. uh....what? It took me a while to respond but I said sure (when in rome...) and sat down and asked him questions related to my research. I didn't get much advice there, but then Dr. Lye asked the medium if he had any general advice for me about my "studies". Well the medium had a lot to say about that. He very accurately informed me that I don't know how to relax and that I should try various things to destress. But, according to the medium, I will apparently be successful. It sounds a lot nicer when you hear it from a God haha.

Just me interviewing a God...no big deal

So after that very interesting experience I told the medium thank you and got up to ask some of the people that work at the temple some questions. However, while the medium was "depossessing" (not the actual term but I really don't know what else to call it) the First Uncle kept coming back into the medium, which is apparently very abnormal. Why was this happening? Well, apparently the First Uncle liked us (i.e. Zach, Dr. Lye, and myself) that we wanted to know if we could come to his birthday party in October. Really...I'm not making this up. We had to tell him that we would unfortunately be in the US and wouldn't be able to attend. So Dr. Lye told him he would send a friend on the First Uncle's birthday to send him our greetings. And at that, First Uncle said OK and then medium finally depossessed.

The medium during depossession

In short, this was definitely not what I expected my first experience with spirit mediums to be like AT ALL, but I'm very happy with what I got to see and experience.

Cave Temples at Ipoh

Disclaimer: this post is really, really long. You've been warned.

Last Friday, on our way to Kuala Lumpur, we stopped in Ipoh to take a look at several of the cave temples in the Kinta Valley. This part of Malaysia has huge limestone mountains with tones of karst formations, which basically means that the edges of the mountains are cliff-like and there are lots and lots of caves within the mountains (super cool, i know). Anyway, when the Chinese and Indian settled the Ipoh area in late 19th century, they turned several of these caves into temples. We stopped at three of the most famous. Unfortunately I can only remember the names of two of them, both of which were Buddhist caves. The third one was a Taoist cave temple and was the least well known of the three (which is probably why I didn't remember the name...)

The first cave temple we visited was called Sam Poh Tong (Tong means cave but I have no idea what the first part means...probably because I don't know any Chinese). Though it wasn't by any the means the largest, this cave temple was probably my favorite of the three. As you walk towards the cave there are gardens and ponds and bunch of other cool stuff. For lack of being able to describe how cool it looks I give you more pictures.

The Main Gate (rear side)

So after this awesomeness, you walk into this big cavern that's filled with shrines and statues. Really cool. Since a written description doesn't really work in this case, here are more pictures! wooo





However, the best part of this cave was actually outside of the cave. If you continue through the cave it lets out into this secluded area that's surrounded by mountains on all sides. In this area there was this really cool building and a TURTLE POND. yes, you can feed the turtles. It's awesome. Here are some more pictures as this is something better experienced visually.

Turtles I fed at the Turtle pond! om nom nom

So after this we went to a Daoist (also spelled Taoist) Cave, which was totally different. How different? Well for one thing they have awesome kiddie rides at the entrance.

Because no religious site is complete without a gimicky rooster ride...

Aside from that the inside of the cave was very different than the previous cave. Shrines were not as elaborate and some of them were paintings on the actual cave wall, not statues or altars and the like. Also, in one part there were MONKEYS which was just fabulous. Here are a couple pictures showing the inside of the cave.

One of the aforementioned monkeys

The last cave we went to was Kek Lok Tong which was absolutely HUGE. HUGE HUGE HUGE. This cave, though mainly a Buddhist site, also had several statues of Daoist deities. All of the statues were a lot bigger than the other ones...mainly because the interior of this cave is just really big. There were also some quirky things about this site...like this small Eiffel tower statue with a Mickey Mouse figurine below it.


Anyway, here are some pictures of the rest of Kek Lok Tong

This is not even half of the entrance. There was a reason I put huge in all caps

I also want to add that at this one rest stop on the road to Ipoh we stopped at a gas station that had "refreshrooms" instead of restrooms. Apparently the difference between refreshroom and restrooms is that in refreshrooms you assume the pose shown below...
Anyway, that's all for now. I'll put up another post in a couple of days.