From Weld Quay, which is also called the Jeti, we took the Rapid Penang bus on Route 203 to head to Ayer Itam, home to Kek Lok Si (极乐寺), the Heavenly Temple.
Route 203 took us through Komtar, Penang's commercial centre, right through to the foot of the Ayer Itam hill, from where we began our climb up to the temple.
The construction of the temple started in 1890 and took 10 years to complete in 1905. The buildings of the temple complex were sponsored by five leading Chinese tycoons of Penang. The Qing Dynasty donated nearly 70,000 Buddhist scriptures for the temple in 1904 when they learnt about the construction of the magnificent shrine from the Chinese consul in Penang.
We had read a lot about the grandeur and magnificence of the temple and that's what drew us here. But we were a bit put off as we climbed up to head to the shrine - the stairs leading up to the hill are heavily commercialised with shops at every level and with little regard for hygiene and cleanliness. But it was an entirely different story when we reached up there.
In 1930, the seven storey, 30 metre high, main pagoda of the temple or the Pagoda of "Ban Po Thar", the Ten Thousand Buddhas was completed. This pagoda has a unique design - it combines a Chinese octagonal base with a middle tier of Thai design, and a Burmese crown, reflecting the temple's confluence of the different streams of Buddhist sects. In a sense the shrine attempts to unify the various streams of Buddhism.
The red lanterns against a backdrop of the deep blue sky looked amazingly beautiful...
Lamps of devotion...
One of the many shrines inside the temple complex...
Amazing flowers showed us the way...
The Lord is there, everywhere...
As we head to Bukit Bandera, or the Penang Hill, I figure out that Ayer Itam is a foodies delight, with the best Laksa of Penang being prepared and sold here... Sigh! That would have to be another time...
And the bus to take us to Bukit Bandera has just arrived...
Very nicely captured..
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