Tour De Jour

[Wednesday Oct 10th]
Today we headed out to get a little lost while driving. Ok, not our objective but we knew it'd happen! We found our way though and headed for Kek Lok Si. It's a huge Buddhist Temple, it was started in the late 1800s. They are under constant construction and expansion. Their current large scale project is a statue of Kuan Tin. The Bronze statue is the largest of its kind in the world. They are building a huge pillared roof around it to protect the statue from the elements. We donated to the cause and bought a roof tile with our names on it.

Up at the highest level of the ground lies the huge statue, a small temple with a massive Buddha Figure, and a Koa pond with with a fabulous Asian Gazebo at its center.

On the second level of the grounds is the largest part of the temple. The biggest structure you see there is an authentic Pagoda. In the picture it's the large white one in the background. We got to take the stairs all the way to the top! We've been in a Pagoda ;) Along the way though we walked through many small shrine areas. One had dozens and dozens of Buddha statues lined up. Our picture just doesn't do it justice.

The new and main temple room is magnificently carved out of stone. It really gives a new meaning to relief carving! We will have to show you all the pictures we took of this room. They had about 6 beautifully carved wooden Buddhas, ornately carved stone pillars, just spectacular.

On our way out of Kek Lok Si we walked by a huge rock with lots of inscriptions carved into it. We have no idea what it says or what its significance was but it sure is impressive!

After we finished touring Kek Lok Si we had a quick bite to eat. Anna got to try Char Koay Teow, my favorite Malaysian Dish. She really liked it.

We headed to the Botanical Gardens. Terry really likes that place. Why? The Monkeys! On this fateful visit however, the Monkey encounter was a little more, um, exciting... We bought some Ice Cream cones. Mint Chocolate Chip (We passed on the Cream Corn and Yam flavors...) We took our newly minted ice cream and walked to the gardens. As we were crossing the street to enter the park a Monkey got keenly interested in us. We spotted him. He scurried down the fence post he was perched on and started running full boar toward us. Anna was a little bit ahead of Terry. Terry, in defense, whipped his ice cream at the Monkey to stop its charge. Whew, an episode of 'When Animals Attack' has been averted ;)

We backed off to a much safer place, the locals gave a chuckle and thought we were funny. Soon enough we were ready to brave the wilds and head back in. The scenery there is awesome, the trails fantastic. We spotted a large bug, turns out to be a massive ant. One of the largest Ant species in the world! That's Anna's foot next to the Ant, it huge!

After our stroll, we decided to cool off with a Coconut drink. Mmmm, fresh chilled coconut straight out of the coconut! This one seemed like the bottomless coconut! It was like the Energizer Bunny, it just kept going and going and going...

After the rest of our day we stopped at a place at Gurnee Plaza for supper. We spotted that they had Anna's Sticky Rice with Mango... So we had to stop and try their food. It was quite good. Anna had a dish with hand made noodles, fantastic. It also has the longest carrot strings ever, just look at that! Its a carrot!