Malaysia – Hindu Temple,brief stop beaches

Malaysia – Hindu Temple,brief stop beaches
Kuantan, Malaysia

Kuantan, Malaysia


Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, meaning that while it has a king or queen, the power of the government lies in the parliament. Like the US, Malaysia has areas called states. There are two types of states in Malaysia, Federated and Un-Federated. There are 5 Federated States, which were originally under strong British control, and four Un-Federated states which historically had more independence, and did not develop as quickly.

The Malaysian language is a combination of various forms of Arabic, Tamil, Hindi and Sanskrit from long ago. For us, it is interesting that it took on the western Latin (Rumi) form of lettering under the influence of the Dutch and English during various colonization periods, though there is a version that uses Arabic lettering. So most of the signs in Malaysia are readable and pronounceable by English-speaking people, though they might not understand what they mean. And some words are historically misspelled compared to their “correct” English counterparts (e.g.: “servis”=”service&#82 21;).

Malaysia is very important historically because it lies on various critical paths of seaborne commerce from and to important places.

The primary religion is Muslim, adopted in the 15th century as various sultans passed through and created “sultanates”, the most important of which was Malacca, which we will visit later. Or at least we will be visiting the modern city!

It is interesting to note that Singapore was originally part of Malaysia, but in 1965 was expelled due to some political disputes. More about that later too…

Our first stop (that’s today!) in Malaysia is Kuantan, the capital of Pahang state. The main reason the tour guides on the ship give for picking this city to visit is that, though it certainly has seen its share of western tourists, it compares favorably with other similar places in terms of being inundated by Chinese and Californians in shorts carrying large cameras. Here, you can still see a relatively basic Malaysian city that is not LA.

We took our tour bus through the city, visiting (by this, I mean driving by) the Majestic Masjid Negeri, the State Mosque. We “drove by” because it was Friday. Friday is the Muslim holy day, so instead of the typical one hour lunch break, many, many people take a long 2 ½ hour lunch on Friday, so that they can go to the mosque to pray and they park as close to the mosque as they can get.

In addition, since they are out already, and have found a parking place in front of the mosque, and the police are taking the afternoon off, they just leave their cars in front of the grand mosque while they go out to lunch later – and maybe to do a couple errands. This leaves us with a situation where there is absolutely no chance for the bus to park in front of the mosque, not even for a simple photo opportunity. Nonetheless, Carol got a good photo!

Right after that, we visited the Kuli Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple, which is absolutely fantastic, though only about 80 years old. It is a fantastic example of some very ornate and colorful temples which were influenced by Hindus from the southwest of India. I wish we had enough bandwidth to upload ALL the colorful pictures we took; the place is like a small jewel.

Next was the Esplanade Tanjung Api, a beautiful docking area for local fishermen and site of a fishing village. We were able to take some great photos of local fishing boats. We noticed a strange formation of leaves on a nearby tree, which was explained as a nesting area for tailor or weaver ants, who make nests by using larval silk to weld the large leaves together. Then they fend off would-be usurpers! Note: they are LARGE ants.