A wonderful temple and the impressive Thaipusam festival with more than one million visitors (January 2026)

Next we went to the biggest temple on Penang, the Kek Lok Si Temple. It was so beautiful!
Getting some good spirits.
Made of jade.
About 10.000 buddha statues in one of the buildings.
After the temple, we joint the Thaipusam festival. It is one of the major Tamil Hindu festivals with one two one and a half million visitors and it was crazy, colorful, and interesting. The main things going on are two wagons going through the city. One silver and one golden one.
Holy cows.
At the wagons, people donated money, food, and all kind of things and got blessings for themselves and their children in return.
Smashing coconuts was one of the main activities for a fortunate live. The coconuts actually have a deeper meaning. It’s interesting. Google it.
Small temples all over the place.
More coconut smashing!
And then we reached the area of the main activities! It was crazy! People carrying dragons, dancing, praying, super loud modernized, electronic, Indian chanting-style music, …
… some carried big, self-made things (about 30 kilos heavy) on their backs, …
… some put weighs on hooks through their skin, some carried blessed milk, and more dancing, chanting and everything! See the video at the end of this post.
We had a good time! It was fascinating and kind of magical.
And a lot of food: a lot of the companies of Penang were offering food of all kinds for free.
And of course there were more temples.
And then we reached the destination of all the visitors of the festival: the Arulmigu Sri Balathandayuthapani Temple (Waterfall Hilltop Temple). Everybody went up the big stairs with hundreds of steps.
And in the temple on the top of the hill, after waiting in line, the ones who carried the blessed milk, gave it to the helping people, …
… who then were pouring the milk over the main deity statues of Lord Murugan (the Hindu god of youth, war, and virtue). Thousands of liters of milk.
It was fascinating!

To Penang peninsula in Malaysia and encountering the nasty monkey (January 2026)

Our luxurious bus brought us on the Penang peninsula which was a pretty touristic and crowded place.
But we found a very nice accommodation: Tony’s guesthouse. It was such a nice and calm place with a big community kitchen, eating table and everything. There were very interesting guests and the atmosphere was just nice.
Especially meeting somebody of the rainbow family gave us a nice and interesting perspective on life and the balancing and struggling between planning and just flowing and positive vibes.
And there were a whole lot of graffiti arts at the whole place.
Of course we went to the beach on which some interesting things got stuck …
… or constructed.
And the famous cat beach, a medical station and temporary accommodation for cats which helps them a lot.
About ten cats per visitor.
In the canals there were a lot and very big monitor lizards.
But we sticked to the mango, sticky rice with coconut sauce.
The other day, we went to the monkey beach.
A touristic, but still beautiful place.
With a lot of monkeys who looked kind of nice and innocent like always …
… until they attack you to steal your food, drinks or whatever. One grabbed me on my leg which let me to improve my defensive strategy: louder yelling, rising and waving the arms, and walking towards them until they back off.
We visited a beautiful botanical garden.
Had our feet cleaned.
And almost got stuck in the children slides.
On the way to a hike, the door of the bus broke down and we helped our thankful driver to repair it and were able to continue our ride.
The hike was interesting and nice and it felt very good to have some exercise-like movement again.
The locals stayed mostly at the artificial swimming ponds in the river and we tried the hiking paths.
And met a beautiful lizard.
And found a pretty much broken viewpoint structure from which we had a good overview of the small town. Here is our hike on komoot with many more photos.

To the east coast of Malaysia (January 2026)

We took a long distance bus to the east coast of Malaysia. This time it was a really luxurious bus. A lot of space, adjustable air condition. We were flying of the roads 🧈🚀
We arrived at the coast and this one was very different. There were waves which reminded us of the Atlantic.
Our accommodation was still ok for us but more things than usual were broken and the balcony they praised on booking.com was not really existing. But we got used to it pretty fast.
Now that we were at the east coast of Malaysia, Racki and I wanted to see a nice sunrise and so we went up early, took our breakfast to the beach and … there was no sun. The clouds were blocking it.
So we started picking up trash from the beach. It was in fact one of the trashiest beaches we had seen so far and so we filled two dustbins in no time.
The locals were observing us and two men started to collect trash as well and dealt with it in the Malaysian way: burning everything right at the spot.
In the end, we had a nice, clean, big area without any trash laying and flying around. But again its interesting how this changes how we perceive a place. I mean, the trash is still there and all of us are producing more and more. But it just feels just better when we don’t see it.
An elderly lady came by and was very motivated to take a lot of photos with us. She was very cute and it was interesting that she was so happy to take photos with tourists in bikinis. Most Malaysian women wear full body suites when they go for a swim.
We took a nice walk in the town and saw all kinds of interesting things.
Scooter benzene in glass bottles at the mini market.
And we were always on the hunt for mango with sticky rice and coconut sauce.
Once, when we had lunch, the locals from the hardware store on the other side of the road did a bit too well in burning there trash and had to move there cars and get a lot of water to get the fire under control.
Nothing to special in Malaysia but interesting for us.
More graffiti streets with beautiful …
… sweet …
… political …
… and creative graffitis.
And of course there was a lot of very delicious food and …
… cute kittens!
We visited a Buddhist temple …
… with a beautiful statue.
A colorful interior.
Interesting paintings.
And then we wanted to visit the big local mosque. It turned out that it was not a very touristic one.
But the locals there were super friendly and after we had waited for there ceremony to finish, they gave us a tour.
They were very eager to take photos with us and we loved that they were so open and happy to show us their holy place and tell us how they are deciding who becomes the next Imam and all kinds of things.