Road trip to Sitiawan, Perak and the Tua Pek Kong temple

Once on Humans of New York, an African man said that if he asked an American friend to follow him at night, the friend would ask why. But back home, if he went to his friend’s house and asked his friend to follow him, his friend would rub his eyes and do as requested. Maybe after 2km down the road, only then his friend would ask, “where are we going?”

I love that story. It spoke depths of trust in different cultures. Unfortunately I can’t find it again so you’ll have to bear with my feeble retelling.

I was reminded of it recently when one of my best friends asked if I’d like to go on a road trip to Perak. Not being African, I asked him why. He said to get a toy. So I said okay.

We ended up spending 13 hours together as we explored the trunk road leading to Sitiawan. Here are photos of some of the things we saw:

The best ad placement for tree cutting and to treat witchery. OooOoooOoo..

We ate ‘cendol bakar‘ in Kuala Selangor. Refreshing!

We stopped by Sekinchan paddy fields because the bright bursts of green and yellow were too tempting not to.

Tranquil scenes along the old trunk roads. Should please the camera-ready city folks.

I’d always wanted to go to Sitiawan as the Foochow people thrived there. I am Foochow, so… hey, connection! Thinking back, maybe it was misplaced enthusiasm on my part. I don’t read Chinese, I don’t speak Foochow and as it turns out, I don’t like kampua mee.

I didn’t enjoy the thick, rough texture of the noodles. The sauce was a bit sickly sweet for my liking; this says a lot for someone from Batu Pahat who grew up eating wantan mee in diluted tomato sauce.

KY’s loh mee – thick egg noodles in starchy gravy tasted a lot better. Wish I’d gotten that instead!

There is a massive Tua Pek Kong temple in Sitiawan. There was no way we were going to miss that.

And today I learned from Wikipedia that

Tua Pek Kong literally means “Grand Uncle”, is one of the pantheon of Malaysian Chinese Gods. It was believed the date Tua Pek Kong arrived in Penang was 40 years before Francis Light in 1746.

😮 😮 😮 Malaysia Boleh!

The sea-facing statues were massively impressive. Deity-fearing worshippers are a generous lot.

Next to the big statues was an inviting doorway to ‘Taman Monyet’, literally translated as ‘Monkey Garden’. The only monkeys you would see there are the ones in this photo:

It looked better in black and white.

Behind the giant statues was the actual temple. Now, I am not particularly religious but I thought it would be nice to offer some incense to the local gods. Beliefs shape strange and powerful things.

And did I? No way. Too complicated. You have to buy a handful of incense sticks for RM4 which I thought was reasonable. The catch is, you have to go to the front, offer x sticks. Turn to the left, offer x sticks. Turn to the right, offer x sticks…

Turn around back to the main hallway, pause just before you enter, offer x sticks to the right. Offer x sticks to the left…

And inside the hallway was a long line of unrecognisable statues of assorted deities, each with their own incense pot.

I asked the boy selling the incense to explain it all to me. He did, twice. Who the heck knew what he was talking about? I gave up.

So I took a photo with a statue of my Chinese animal sign instead.

The temple has an interesting sign for toilets. I bet Jacky Chan didn’t get royalties.

Though I’m not sure who the female is supposed to be…?

Leaving the temple, on the way to dinner. KY stopped the car and said that I have to take a photo of the boats.

We stopped at Lumut for dinner. The only thing memorable was the giant oysters, going for something ridiculous like RM5 each. KY blogged about the restaurant.

Thanks buddy for a fun day trip. And eating them oysters cooked because I don’t take ’em raw 🙂