We left for the airport to go back to Singapore in the afternoon, so we took the morning to stop at a Buddhist temple down into a small neighboring town in the morning for Max to Ooh over the cool architecture. We grabbed a taxi and headed to the temple, which was right behind the large blue state mosque (see in photos).
Puh Toh Tze Temple was a larger temple that I've been to through my travels. In the parking lot as a 20ft tall statue of a Buddha with a prayer pillow (for kneeling on). The entrance was much more decorated than what I have seen, with lots of animal protection (lion) and strength (elephant) statues. There were two main prayer halls, the later one having a 20 ft statue of the Buddha lying down. There were about 20 smaller statues of old Asian men doing weird things, like combing hair or yelling at someone. They had a multiple story "grave" area. It consisted of small grave markers that looked like book marks and urns with photos and words of blessing in them, stacked on lot of shelves through out rooms. There was a third smaller prayer room which held a free library where you could take books about Buddhism. There was a small section in English, and we snagged some "What Buddhists Believe" books, as well as the Dharma written in Chinese (because it was pretty and cool) and a book explaining the who/what/why of the different statues of monks/Buddhas.
We went back to the hotel to pack, as we had various bags for sharing and got on the plane to Singapore. We checked back into the same Indian hotel and had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver. He was older, in his 60s, and spoke very fluent English. He wanted to talk about the situation on Japan. He was saying how disappointing and unfortunate it is that many people are trying to make money off the situation, like the hotel prices in the cities are going up and the airplane tickets out of the country are much higher. HE said the Singapore Air tickets from Narita (Tokyo's airport) were like 3x more expensive than before. He also spoke of something interesting which he said he read in the newspaper: That some people believe God did this to Japan because of what they did in WWII and the fact that, unlike the Germans, they have no apologized to the world for their crimes. The Japanese did some pretty bad stuff to the people of South East Asia, such as their own death camps and marches, and purging the population of certain beliefs and ethnicity's. Given the age of this guy, as dad pointed out, he would have been born near or during the occupation of Japan in Singapore.
I took them out to Marina Bay Esplanade where we watched my good friend sing the other day. It was the ending of the music festival, and we went to the hawkers center and Max finally tried the meat-on-a-stick. There is something about any meat cooked on a stick that makes it just SO good, I think its the fact that they brush them with lots of oil. I've had these skewers in China, S'pore, and everywhere else I've came across them in SE Asia, they're amazing! We went and talked down by the Bay, looking at he city light and listening to music. The Marina Bay Sands (giant boat-like hotel/casino) and its corresponding mall was having a light show with changing lights and lasers for a long time. There was a 5 year old boy screaming with excitement, it was too cute!
I had a BLAST with everyone, that mountain was THE most amazing place I think I've ever been! Hope everyone enjoys the pictures!
Here are some extra things that we saw/thought about that I wanted to share :)
We saw a lady in a burka walk into kfc. I was tying to figure out how she eats in public while in her burka. She can't lift her mouth piece because she can't show her mouth. If she eats finger food, has okay but what if it's soup? How does she eat in public?
There are no plastic bags in the national park which makes sense since they can't hurt animals if they get into the mountain. But even in KK, the grocery store only gives outs plastic bags from Monday to Thursday.
When we were at Poring hot springs, all the staff were ladies and they were always in groups. When they took us to our room, two of them did. When we were eating and I asked where the bathroom was, two Ladies walked me there. Max said of course, they're battle buddies (Army talk) but we couldn't figure out why they did this., it seemed like it was a rule or something.
So there were lots of Muslim women climbing the mountain, meaning thy were fully covered in this heat and physically exhaustive sport. One girl had a shirt on that I could see up her sleeves a little and her "long sleeve shirt" underneath was actually arm coverings. That made me happy because it seemed like they wouldn't have to be so hot now.
You know how I know I've been here long? I have to translate the Malaysian or Singaporean accented English to the guys into American English. I'm sure everyone's heard thick accented English sometime In their life and it's a bit hard to understand. I fully understand there's and keep forgetting dad and max can't and I have to translate or talk To them back in a certain way.
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