Kota Bharu and Earth Camp
We had a three day weekend to celebrate the birth of the Sultan (the eight year old). What better way to celebrate the head of the State of Terengganu than by leaving it? As it turns out, Deepani (who has been working in Sri Lanka) was in Singapore visiting her cousin. Since Singapore is only so interesting, she’s also wandering around Malayasia and arranged to come to the East Coast. We went to the Perhentian Islands for two days and then went to Kota Bharu, the capital of the state to the North, Klantan, which I’ve been meaning to visit even since arriving here. Kota Bharu is also very close to the Thai border, and our sight seening most comprised of visiting Buddhist temples along the border.
I find that the Perhentians (this is now the fourth time I visited, I believe) are less interesting to me and are probably only good for about one full day. Two days was much too much, even with most of Saturday spent snorkelling with Jackie and Ellie (Deepani had gone before I arrived). To my general satisfaction, I also now find that I can manage the informational aspects of Malay pretty well and was surprised at how much I could understand when trying to get information in and around Kota Bharu. I had several conversations in which people were delighted by the level with which I could speak Malay. It’s still not good enough to have interesting conversation-conversations, but I can be a pretty good tourist 
Most of this week will be spent working out the details for Earth Camp (no, the name is not a coincidence), and the end of the week will be another vacation as I go to the West Coast (probably Penang or Perak).
K
Posted: July 20th, 2008 under Malaysia.
Comments
Comment from Deepani
Time July 31, 2008 at 1:17 am
Jeff,
I was able to get some got some pretty decent photographs of Kota Bharu temples before my camera died (and unfortunately it died *just* as I was about to take a pitcure of the Kevin posing like a slightly muppety version of a fearsome Chinese dragon next to the fearsome Chinese dragon itself… they had matching growly paws and everything). Anyway, the temples in the area were of the Chinese Buddhist variety, most with explicit Thai influence. A couple of them included grand, imposing (about 40 m tall) statues – one in particular was all done in a gold/bronze-colored tile, which was my personal favorite. One temple was fully Chinese, with red and gold pagodas and flowery dragons and the laughing Buddha featured prominently, while others we came across had more of the serene, meditative Buddha statues. While it seemed to me that most of the temples lacked proper upkeeping (in one of then, statues depicting the 7 positions of the Buddha under 7 small pagodas were all missing), they all seemed to have signs of humans living in them, and one of them we came across happened to be right at the time when a group of monks were chanting in front of an altar. In the more Thai-styled temples, I noticed there were statues of female boddhisatvas and statues of creatures that were half woman, half animal — in addition to the standard male statues of course.
In addition to Kota Bharu, I found that Penang had a number of lovely Buddhist temples (Chinese style), with one of the most impressive ones in the entire country being on a hill in the middle of the island. (Kevin, if you end up going to Penang, it’s called Kek Lok See – don’t miss it!)
In any case, if you’d like to see any pictures of the Kota Bharu (or even Penang) temples, I’d be happy to send them to you, since K didn’t have his camera with him in KB.
Deepani
Comment from andrea
Time August 7, 2008 at 12:10 am
did your camera take a water balloon to the face?
Comment from Jeff
Time July 24, 2008 at 11:55 am
any cool temples in Kota Bharu? I am interested in your experiences there…