After some climbing, we met Racki’s friends Anja and Miri who had arrived on Penang a few days ago, relaxed a bit in a pretty fancy hotel, and were now ready to go on a road trip through Malaysia with us. And of course they brought some Baileys 😁

First stop: A mangrove forest park with lots of green, …

… monitor lizards, …

… mud slippers, who were seem to like fighting with each other, … …

… or settle conflicts of other species, …

… and a new kind of friend we had not seen so far in Malaysia.

Anja and Miri booked a very nice accommodation in Ipoh for all of us and especially the view for the sunsets was awesome.

Racki found a promising waterfall tour of the main tourist attractions on Google Maps and so we went for a nice jungle hike.

No tourists, only locals working and living.

Nice bamboo!

Huge, palm-sized …

… and beautiful butterflies and after some challenging terrain, a fall on slippery stones …

… we arrived one of the most beautiful waterfalls we’ve ever seen!

Happy waterfall hikers! Here is our tour on komoot.

Next stop at one of the most disturbing places I’ve ever visited in my life! From the outside it looked mostly like a chocolate museum. Nice chocolate dinosaur head at the entrance. Inside there were some more chocolate dinosaurs and all kinds of chocolate to buy. So far, so good. There was a lot of crappy plastic toys to buy as well and you could watch some guys making special chocolate pralines. In another room, there were all kinds of fancy teas, fancy ice cream and all kinds of souvenirs. But everything with kind of an ecological branding. Then there was a restaurant as well and then the crazy stuff started: they had all kinds of animals in cages or in very unhealthy types of enclosures. There were lots of goats, rabbits, European hedgehogs, different birds etc. And all of them looked very sweet and cute. Ready to get cuddled and die in a few weeks because of their living conditions. To me it was disturbing and pretty much fucked up.

After the sadness of the last stop, we went to our new accommodation. We shared the outside with a lot of monkeys! One clever monkey mother managed to steal a whole bag of chips from Anja 😁

These monkeys looked like the Grinch and the ai bot made them look like him even more.

We did a boat trip to see some bioluminescent plankton and that looked pretty awesome.

Some more graffiti art.

And a trip into the largest population of fireflies. There were millions of them!

And after that, we did a small trip to some local springs.

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 too 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 and a nice final experience with the Kleinis before the left for Kuala Lumpur.