Hanging out at Chin Swee Temple~

5 June 2011

A long awaited retreat~! Our first time driving up to Genting Highlands, mainly to escape the horrible city weather, and we ended up at Chin Swee Temple, of all places... we could have chilled out at starbucks or picked strawberries at the farm, so i have no idea why we chose to climb up and down flights of stairs and slopes looking at statues instead @.@~

Anyways, i rather enjoyed the trip cos the last time i visited the place was ages ago so it was like visiting a new place, and its always nice to be able to visit a new place (even though its not exactly my first time there... confusing much??)..

The first thing of interest that i saw there was a bug... a stripey spider to be exact... was trying to take a pic of it when it suddenly fell right in front of my nose... scary man... actually the whole place was full of bugs... they must enjoy the view too~

pretty flowers... luckily took a pic of them before we set off exploring, cos it rained pretty heavily while we were exploring, and when we came out all the pretty flowers were drooping... :D

pretending to enter the pagoda to climb it, but actually we felt too lazy so we didnt climb up... :P

8 stories of tightly winding stairs...no joke~

uh oh, he pushed till it became slanted :S:S

the nine dragon wall and the gods of fortune hill behind

Dragons on the roof too~

The whole place just looks surreal... with the greenery and mist, it feels just like a whole other world...

You can imagine yourself at some hidden temple... (if you look closely, you'll realise that Buddha has grass growing in his hair... cute...)

or acting in some period kungfu movie... lol...

Got fake cranes oso... tat grey thingy in front is supposed to be some magic fountain/ water dispenser where you press the button and water comes out.. but apparently it needs some maintenance :*

Giant Buddha can help make your tummy look smaller... lol...

It started raining a little while after we arrived, so we went to hide in Goh Tong Hall, obviously named after the founder of Genting Highlands.. It was full of these beautiful sculptures that form the personal collection of Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay.. all of them were besar-besar belaka and must cost hundreds of thousands of Ringgit O.o... The main reason we went to the hall actually was to find a place to sit while we ate the waffle pizza's that we got for lunch but while observing the ppl in the room, i realised something funny...

every single person went and molested this happy looking sculpture :S there was this man who was rubbing its tummy and the heads of the little monks at the side of the belly for so long that i was wondering whether the paint would come off... I figured it must be something to do with luck, so what the heck, I went and patted its tummy also.. what to do? I'm kiasu wat

After that we went and looked at the sculptures depicting the 10 levels of hell, with super gory and scary sculptures that i couldn't bear to take pictures of in case i get nightmares while looking at them :S:S:S apparently even a small thing like littering can make you end up in a boiling pot of oil... so beware....

The last place we visited in the temple was Chin Swee Hall where I found the biggest 木鱼 (literally translated as wooden fish-the thing monks beat when they chant) ever seen! the stick even looks like a fish's eye :D

Climbing all ard the place got us real tired out, after all i wasnt wearing shoes that were suitable for lots of walking so we ended up in the casino uphill for the purpose of getting free milo, hahaha...

missed us??? :P

Had a lovely lovely dinner at Gohtong Jaya before we made our way back to hot and stuffy KL (RM48 frog legs anyone?).. The jam was terrible on the way back cos the rain and the winding road caused plenty of accidents = plenty of things for ppl to kaypoh and slow down for...

*groan* what an end for a super fun day~~~ only made it back at ard 11pm that night and had to work the next day, SOBS~