Anna's Last Day

[Wednesday Oct 17th]
Well today's it. Anna's last day in Penang. We went to Kek Lok Si one last time, strolled through, its an impressive place. After that we drove to find the Reclining Buddha.

There are two Buddhist Temples here, right across the street from eachother. Both quite big and impressive. One of them has the 'World Famous' reclining Buddha, noted as the worlds largest reclining Buddha...

Also inside that temple are many other Buddha statues. We had our pictures taken if front of 'ours'. There was one for each Chinese Zodiac. Mine Being the Year of the Monkey and Anna the Year of the Ram/Goat/Sheep.

Not all the statues were simple or normal statues. There is a rare custom where certain individuals/monks, when they die, are placed into a large Egg-shaped capsule without any special treatment. After several years the capsule is opened and if the individual was pure, etc, they are preserved. A lengthly process is followed where the body is slowly repositioned. Then it is encased in layers of gold and becomes a statue. It is important to note that the individuals are not treated like mummies in Egypt, they are just put into one of these cases. I don't know what this is called so I can't point you to a reference...

We did a brief tour of both temples, brief because out time was running short. We started to head back to the apartment. I got lost driving, was fooled by signage. After some tense traffic, detours, unexpected site seeing, a deceptive map, and ending back up in Little India (this time in a ca, we finally made it back to a highway I knew. From there it was easy to make it back to the apartment. We ended up with plenty of time to finish packing, get prepared, and head to the airport.

We had dinner at Nando's at the airport and then Anna left to catch her plane.
Have a fun and safe trip, I Love you Anna!