Penang October 2007 – Day 4 & 5
If you feel like skipping this post, here’s the executive summary – day 4 = lots of temples and Buddhas, day 5 = the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion. After yesterday’s bumper post full of photos, I thought I’d slim it down to Cliff’s Notes today.
Alrighty, so I visited a total of four Buddhist temples on Day 4 – 2 Thai, 1 Burmese and 1 Chinese. I saw many Buddha statues on the day and I got all Buddha-ed out. The most impressive one to me was not the biggest but it has an awesome presence and is located inside a Burmese temple.
The outside of the temple is also v.pretty.
On Day 5, I paid a visit to the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion. You are not allowed to wander on your own, and the guided tour cost RM12. The tour guide certainly knows her stuff and we saw the more prominent parts of the mansion. However, what I felt was missing was a tour of the kitchen. We saw where the family would have ate, slept and bathe. So not seeing where their servants would have cooked was a glaring omission for me.
And we weren’t allowed to take photos once inside the main areas. That privilege was reserved for those who pays for a room in the two wings of the mansion which has now been converted into a boutique hotel (around RM200 per night).
Nonetheless the tour was worth it just for the step back into a lost time looking at the architecture and rescued personal artifacts, and for the historical insight into the man himself – Cheong Fatt Tze, who came to South-East Asia in mid-19th century with nothing and made himself one of the richest man of that era.
The photos below are taken around the exterior.
Even if you are a weary explorer of all things Chinese, and you already had enough of Chinese specific things and buildings, this place is definitely worth a visit because you’d be hard pressed to find another example of such architecture with its blend of Anglo and Chinese influences, anywhere else in the world.
More photos not shown here can be found in my Flickr set for this trip.
8 Responses to “Penang October 2007 – Day 4 & 5”
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You know…can you tell me WHY they painted it blue??????
btw; the rooms look great (on the internet). I am so tempted to just stay there for one night..
and you are making me wanna go back to penang. Strange huh,seeing that I had never appreciated the place of my birth (other than ckt & laksa) until I start seeing it through eyes of tourists. Now I understand why my parents are retiring there
ooh i love visiting such places, esp those in suzhou….the guide will tell u why & how the hse was built in such a way…etc etc….
love it!
sourrain: it’s blue because I think it was the original colour. And sorry lah I can’t tell you how the room looks because they were all occupied.
I’m the same – it’s only recently that I suddenly feel like capturing all these things that I see.
mf: yeah it’s living history.
Wow, the pictures are awesome. Must be really nice to be there in real life. I love the blue buildings.
blur ting: yeah it was great being there in the flesh – photos, even great ones probably can’t convey the sense of history.
the blue always remind me of the indigo that is painted on you when you have mumps
I remember it being restored many years ago and thought; oh, what an absolutely ugly color to paint the house in.Funny how I’ve always thought it was some sort of nightclub. Only found out what it was last year.
HeeHee.
sourrain: hahah night club? Actually I think the style is most excellent for one. I don’t mean using an existing old building to do so – the wood and fixtures might not be able to handle it!
But if built from scratch as a nightclub, using these designs as inspiration – I think it’d be an awesome nightclub.
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