The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 21 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 55 posts. There were 176 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 259mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 4th with 69 views. The most popular post that day was Doing an egg-stand.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, pokokassam.com, transientjourneys.com, and batupermataimpian.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for cengal tree, taiping, gunung jerai, guilin, and tanjong sepat.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Doing an egg-stand February 2010

Taiping – Heritage Town of Perak (Part 1) September 2009
14 comments

Gunung Jerai – 9 years later May 2010

Half day at Tanjong Sepat August 2010
1 comment

Rawang and Batu Arang July 2009
2 comments

I would brand my son’s recently concluded wedding as
‘the wedding of the year.’ Not that it was conducted on
a grand scale or for its lavishness but for us parents, it
was a laborious journey both mentally and physically.
Months of preparation before culminating in the final
day of the wedding itself.

Chinese weddings are always conducted with lots of
rituals and old practices. Practices which sometimes
I wondered if they are relevant to our times. But they
always carried with them implications which are more
ritualistic than being religious. Everything which the
wedding conductor or ‘tai kum’ does or rather asks
you to do or even her recitations, are all for good
luck, good tidings, good fortune etc. All these will
inevitably strike at the core of any person for no one
will want to be against all these good tidings.
Therefore, her words will be followed to the T, no
matter if they seems odd.

One example of this oddness was when the Tai Kum
instructed me to do a few things after the wedding
ceremony. The bride will only be allowed to go back
to her family after 3 days. The new couple will have
to bring with them fruits, 2 packets of groundnuts
and ‘cham liu’ for the bride’s parents. ‘Cham liu’
basically means any prime cuts of roasted meat for
the parents. For me this practice is really not relevant
in this day and age. In ancient times in China, people
of one clan usually live faraway from one another. To
go to the next village you will have to go up
mountains and pass creeks meaning the journey was
far and arduous. Going home for a bride was a big
matter and not often. Bringing with them prime cuts
of meat was a bonus as people of ancient times do
not get to eat meat often only the rich get to eat
meat everyday.

Coming back to the ‘tai kum’s instructions, I will not
stop the new couple from going home. They can go
back anytime and for the ‘cham liu’ I’m sure my
daughter-in-law’s parent would already had enough
of them. Every stall and kopitiam sells them and I’m
sure most workers would also be fed up of this
food. Plus they are cholesterol-full food, not good
for matured people.

To be honest, I found that the new couple has done
a good job for the wedding dinner. Both the march-
in with the girls letting off balloons and the band
singing some good songs were quite impressive.

So, the show’s over now and my life is back to
normalcy and quietness. But strangely I do miss a
bit of the fun,noise and camaraderie with my
relatives during the 3 days of the wedding.
So here’s to the next ‘wedding of the year’ in my
family.

Since we only had half a day we didn’t manage to go the Sepang
Gold Coast but we did manage to visit a mushroom farm and also
took some nice photos on the famous ‘Lover’s Bridge”.

Dragon-fruit farm

Raspberries at the farm

Passion fruit

This Gano mushroom farm also has a homestay programme and you
can have a tour of their farm and buy their mushrooms and mushroom
products at their shop behind the building.

Mushroom cultures

Lovely evening scenery behind the mushroom farm

Lover’s bridge where couples converged here at night to feel the sea breeze.

Our trip will always ends with a sumptious seafood dinner.

Another discovery I made is that if you take close-up shots of
these insignificant and tiny flowers a whole new perspective opens
up and they are really beautiful.

Recently I was at the Putrajaya Flower Festival and though this
festival was not spectacular but the close-up shots I took of some
seemingly mundane flowers was lovely.

Balancing the ropes of his trick.

And balances a ruler too.

Looking for the Lembah Bujang Archaeological Museum was not difficult
as we saw the museum’s signboard on our way to G. Jerai. Coming
down from G. Jerai it was just about 12km away. Coming from KL, just
go on the trunk road to Alor Setar and going in to Gurun town you can
spot the museum’s signboard which will lead you all the way to the
museum.

This was our second visit and our first was already some years ago.
But being a Sunday too, we found the place was not crowded at all.
Well, maybe museums to most people are just stuffy and boring old
places. Since we were in the vicinity it warranted a second visit just
to refresh our memories. As it turned out everything was just
exactly as it was, only the small stream/waterfall in front has dried
up.

Below are excerpts taken from the museum to explain the origin and
how this museum was for

Inside the Museum

Outside the museum was various reconstructed candis (temple) from the
sites they were excavated and named after the place they were
discovered.

Candi Pendiat.

Candi Bukit Batu Pahat.

Candi Pengkalan Bujang.

Candi Bendang Dalam.

The Thangka here is a cotton canvas panel about 50-60m
long and painted with the Lord Buddha with his 2 disciples.
Needing more than 10 strong man to carry it out into the
temple’s compound in a rolled-up form, it was heralded with
much rituals from a group of Tibetan monks. Similarly, to
unroll and prop up the Thangka too needed the help of by-
standers and devotees. When it was proped up everyone ran
underneath it to gain good chi and wash away any bad luck.

Of course there were many other ceremonies associated with
this auspicious day being done here but the highlight of the day
was for me, the airing of the Thangka.

The Tibetan Tangka in The Enlighten Heart Buddhist Temple, Tambun, Ipoh.

Unrolling the Thangka.

Running under the Thangka for good luck.

Monks in ceremonial robes and masks.

Doing the smoke puja to appease ‘wandering and lost souls’.

Carrying Buddhist deities for good luck.

Monks in the procession.

This monk got a lot of attention from avid photographers.

Bathing of the Lord Buddha.

Turning into a junction to go up the hill we noticed a signboard displaying a new
name for the resort, “The Regency” which immediately reminded us that it would
be a pricey place now unlike years ago when a room was only RM50. What
greeted us as we reached the resort was a spanking new place and instead of
everything being in order we found that some renovation and things being put
up were in progress. Later we found out at reception that this resort is only 8
months old and all the fuss around the place was for the opening ceremony by
the Sultan of Kedah 1 week later. Well, we should have come after the
ceremony as by then all the flowers would be nicely planted and things done
up nicely. But nevertheless we took a room with a view of the sea and it came
up to about RM232 inclusive of breakfast. Next time you can just skip the
breakfast and it would be Rm202 as the breakfast is nothing to shout about
with just toasted bread and nasi lemak.

Our chalet with a balcony and a view of the sea at the back.

The bedroom is nice too.

Other types of chalets.

The cafe.

Lots of these African daisies around the resort.

We only found out from this signboard that there were more places to check
out further up the hill. The last time we were here we did not noticed any
road existed here but we knew there was a waterfall from the car park of
the resort. The roads going up the summit were quite steep compared to
those going up from the base of the hill but were still manageable for us.

Telaga Tok Sheik

This Telaga Tok Sheik was supposed to be a well but we found it strange that 
the icy clear water was not coming from the well but instead from a blue pipe
attached near the well. The council workers said the water here never runs dry.

Steps leading up to Padang Tok Sheik.

Unfortunately there was no further explanation or any sign to enlighten us on
the significance of this place. The several council workers here were clueless
when we asked them the story behind this place.

There was also no signboard pointing to the way to Batu Kapal. This path was
shown to us by some local boys.

This is Batu Kapal? Maybe we had to stretch our imagination a bit to try to see a ship.

The museum which was located 3/4 of the way up the hill was closed for renovation.

There is a recreation area below the museum but since we had been here the
last time we decided to give it a miss as we were rushing off to our next
destination.

And so we drove all the way to Bukit Kayu Hitam on the Malaysian border, park
our car in a friend’s factory and took a van to Hadyai which costs only about
RM5.50/person. We got a room which was quite reasonable in the heart of
town and within walking distance of all the major shopping centres. With no
particular plans at hand we just dropped in at the nearest travel agency and
enquired about any places of attraction. Since it was already 4pm , they
suggested The Stainless Steel Temple which was about 30mins away and the
time was just right as this temple will be lighted up at dusk and you can see its
beauty at night.

Stainless Steel Temple in the daytime.

Bells in the compound.

This 3-headed cobra has a very long tail curling round the whole temple.

The circular doorways are parallel to each other.

The stairs are stainless steel too.

It was time to light up the temple and the people can participate in turning
on the switches after a brief chanting ceremony by the caretaker.

The lighted up temple at dusk.

Inside view of the upper tower of the temple.

There are a lot of these stainless steel urns around the temple.

The next morning we went to Wat Khao Rup Chang, another temple about
1 1/2 hours away very near to the border town of Padang Besar.
The first thing that strikes us as we saw this temple was that it was very
different from the usual Thai temples that we used to see around Thailand.
It was more Indian-like and it was exactly like we thought when the acting
chief monk explained that it was built according to an Indian temple after
the chief monk visited India. We had tea with the monk in an adjacent
cave temple and he invited us to lunch too which was of course vegetarian.
Surprisingly the lunch was tasty too though they were not elaborate
vegetarian spread like what we would have from restaurants. Simple meals
but good and tasty.

The Wat Khao Rup Chang.

Inside of the temple is typically Chinese.

Adjacent cave temple where we had tea with the acting chief monk.

The big Buddha.

On our way back to Hadyai, our driver took us to savour their
famous chicken rice. I agreed too that it was way more
delicious than the Hainan Chicken Rice we had in Malaysia.

When we first reached the summit of this hill we thought we had entered a
lovely and tranquil resort as there were not a lot of indications of it being a
Buddhist retreat. That was the first impression that the Sasanarakkha
Buddhist Sanctuary Taiping gave us when we visited during the last Labour
Day holidays.

Acting on vague information from my elder brother in Taiping who also has
not been to this place, we proceeded to look for this sanctuary. Passing by
the Hokkien cementery, we stopby a Taoist Temple with the Tiger deity and
ask for more information from the people at the temple. It seems you can
call the sanctuary and they can take you up by their 4-wheel drive or you
can drive up but must be careful ‘cos the road is narrow and steep. We
decided to drive up in our non 4-wheel car and luckily it was only about
6mins drive as the road was certainly steep.

We proceeded to the main office to make known our presence and found
that the people there were friendly and offered us mineral water without
a charge. This was the profound difference that struck you at this
sanctuary as we were so used to going to temples locally or even in
China where everything has to be paid and donations expected. Here
even their Dhamma Workshop and Meditation Retreats are all free of
charge. Annually, there are 2 meditation retreats.

All these are made possible by the joint effort of major Buddhist
organisations in the country and the Taiping Insight Meditation
Society. The objective of this sanctuary is to provide a retreat
centre for the promotion of the spiritual,mental and physical health
of its supporting community and also for Buddhist monks to practice
the Buddha’s teaching.

Walking around this vast sanctuary of about 10acres gives you a serene
feeling as you see many chalet-like houses nestled among the trees which
are places of meditation. With no loud and noisy tourists, this is truly a
calming and peaceful sanctuary well worth a visit.

Sign board turning into the Hokkien Cementery.

A memorial in memory of those who died during the Japanese invasion

The Tiger diety temple

The main office building.

View from up the hill