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!!!