Day Three - Wednesday 26th October: Dim sum, temples and tonic water

 

Up early to be ready to head for a Dim sum breakfast at 7am ....and it was worth losing some sleep to get there early. Towers of steaming aromatic yum cha baskets greeted us as at the Yon Pin restaurant as we walked amongst the locals enjoying breakfast.  So many choices and all very fresh and made on the premises. Delicious! As I contemplated the array, one of the local men informed me that this was the best dumpling restaurant in Penang and he had tried them all! 

Anne and Jenny pondering their choices!

Peering into the kitchen on the way to the loo I was fascinated by the process for making soft noodles wrapped around prawns. Huge metal trays of thin layers of watery noodle mixture topped by prawns were steamed and scraped into rolls, and topped by a tasty sauce. You can see them on the metal plates in this photo: I had to take a quick photo as they didn't last long!

Just to top off a fabulous breakfast the appearance of trays of hot egg custard tarts was too tempting to resist. One variety had sweet cheese on top of the custard but both were delicious. 

Next stop was a Thai Buddhist temple that was dazzling because of millions of coloured mosaic mirror tiles adorning huge dragons guarding the doors. Its major feature, apart from the dazzling tiles was a huge reclining buddha. It took us some time to walk around it!

Lots of buddha statues and painted buddhas everywhere: I think there were 10,000 buddhas painted on the walls!

An old statue of a venerated monk
covered in gold leaf placed there by worshippers

The temple also served as a crematorium
 with decorated urns and a photo of the deceased

For a complete contrast we crossed the road and entered the grounds of a very modest and far more peaceful Burmese Buddhist temple.

And threw money unsuccessfully
into donation bowls rotating around a giant water lily:
 it took far too many coins before
 any of us reached the bowls at all.
All in a good cause I'm sure.

We amused ourselves trying to identify a lonely animal sheltering under a deer statue: rabbit or guinea pig? I'm still not sure we know!

You can tell by the colour
 of our faces that we really needed a cold drink!

Walked past a few more pieces of street art and had a refreshing lemon drink made more interesting by the addition of sour salty dried plums. 

Finally we made it to a mansion painted a beautiful blue that we had driven past a few times. It was the home of Cheong Fatt Tze who began life as a penniless shop boy in the 1800s and created a vast financial empire earning him the title of 'Rockerfeller of the East'. He had 8 wives in various parts of Asia producing many children and grandchildren.

The doorway to the accommodation.

 Following the death of the last grandchild the mansion was sold and became derelict until the 1990s when it was beautifully restored. 

These days most of the mansion is a boutique hotel and a restaurant so there were only a few rooms to see. The challenge to fill in 45 minutes describing very few spaces was filled by a slightly painful guide describing films made in the mansion. 

(Although a couple of our group did watch 'Crazy Rich Asians' on the plane on the way home to catch a glimpse of the mansion).

We gave up and headed for a swim and poolside lunch. 

After considerable research we decided to walk to the Red Dragon night hawker market for dinner. Every type of Asian cuisine was available and proved to be both cheap and very tasty. Jenny enjoyed two giant grilled prawns whilst Jan`s papaya salad was very chilli hot. The char kuay cheow was very tasty (and incredibly cheap - about AUD$2.75!)

We managed to achieve the almost impossible feat of buying some real tonic water at a tiny convenience store. Gin and tonics sorted for a couple more nights!