As we walked to the restaurant that Brigitte wanted to introduce me to we passed some of the landmarks that I had already seen and even taken pictures of. The benefit this time was that I got to learn a little about them.
Remember this picture? I took this one the first time I went to China Town. Now I have information to share about it. This is a Chinese Temple. I went inside this time and here are some of the things I learned...
When you first walk in you see these hanging just inside the doorway. These are incense coils with prayers of individuals hanging down in the center. The way it works is the incense is lit from the bottom and as it burns up the prayer is sent up to the heavens to be answered. Cool, huh? Another cool thing is that all of the prayers are written in Chinese. When you buy the incense to hang you have a person behind the counter write your prayer for you. This particular temple is 100% Chinese. Anything that is written here is done in Chinese.
This is an oven in the temple. This is an alternative to the incense. You can have your prayer written in Chinese then burn it in this oven if you prefer. The thought being that as the prayer burns the smoke carries it up to the heavens.
These are offerings to the Gods. At the end of the day all food that is left is picked up and donated to the poor.
In the brass bowl looking thing are a bunch of lit incense. These are left by people that have come to pray.
Each Chinese temple has one God that it is dedicated to and that God has the biggest alter within the temple. This is the God that this temple is dedicated to. I don't know his name or if he has one.
This is one of the alters that has the other Gods on it. There were two of these. They have all of the Gods represented so that when you pray it is heard by all of them. It is kind of like covering all of your bases.
We left the temple and continued our journey...
This picture was taken the first time I was in China Town also. This is an Indian temple. It is also the only temple that Indians can be married in within all of KL. The Chinese have only one temple for marriages also but it is in another part of KL. I didn't go in this temple even though I could have. They were having their prayer and there were a lot of people there. I learned that between 1:00 and 4:00 the Gods rested and there was no activity at any of the Indian temples. At this particular temple there is a curtain that is pulled around the statues to signify their time of rest each day.
From here we headed to parts of China Town that I had not seen before.
This is one of the oldest buildings in China Town. It is basically in ruins as are most of the old buildings - even the buildings that have been designated as historical. There is no money in the KL budget to renovate these buildings and bring them back to their former glory. Usually what happens is they let the buildings go until they fall (or are close to it) then sell the land to have new condos or other things built on it. Kind of sad when you think about the history that is being tossed away...
Finally we made it to the restaurant. And how fitting that it was a Chinese restaurant! It was kind of small but the decorations were very cool! It was mostly done with old pictures of China Town from way back in the day. There were also two huge mirrors on the long walls. It had almost an old western saloon feel to it.
As most people that know me will tell you, I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food. Pei Wei was about as close I would come to it back home. Well, there are no Pei Wei's here and the Teriyaki chicken bowl is pretty much non-existent. So I am learning to try new things when I find myself at a Chinese restaurant. This is what I had for lunch...
This is Beef Rendang and coconut rice and it is one of the best meals I've had here! The coconut rice ranks right up there with some of the best rice I've had in my life. It is tinged blue (not sure why) and made with coconut milk. Yummm!!! I've never had beef rendang and it didn't look very appetizing when I got it but the taste was really good! It had just a little bit of spice to it. They were good separately but every few bites I would mix the two and they were just as good that way. I will definitely order this again and I will get back to this restaurant!
After lunch we walked around a bit and mostly Brigitte told me about the different stores. We didn't take a lot of time to shop which was fine by me. I was enjoying the history lesson and the little tidbits that were being shared.
LRT back out to my side of town and went home. I'm looking forward to being able to go back to China Town and spend more time there. I'm also looking forward to visiting other areas of KL and learning about them!
See you next post!!
Monkey update: No monkeys on this day...I guess they are not fans of shopping...
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