Travel By Photo – FGS Dong Zen Temple (东禅寺), Malaysia

Once again Happy Lunar New Year of Ox 2009! Lunar New Year of Year of Ox 2009 started on 26th January and the celebration is going to last for 15 days, from the 1st day of lunar calender (Nian Chu Yi 年初一) to Yuan Xiao (元宵), the 15th day of Lunar New Year. I had a long 10-day-holidays in conjunction of this our biggest event of the year… LoL ! During this period, we had endless lunch and dinner celebrations with our families, parents and friends, all were of course appetized with our proprietary Yu Sang (鱼生). Our friend Eunice wrote some interesting introduction on Yu Shang.

As usual, all my 4 brothers and sister gathered together at my parents house in K.L. on the 1st day, had our vegetarian lunch together, giving away Ang Pow or red packet (红包) filled with little pocket money to each other’s children, joining our uncles and aunties on poker games (‘Bet more… win more!’), and off course drink, drink and drink! While dinner in the evening was eating out with my in-law family (used to have it in Genting casino when I was still bachelor  ), we had our supper with my childhood friends at one of their homes!

On the 2nd day, we went to visit the ‘must-go’ travel destination during Lunar New Year, the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Dong Zen Temple (东禅寺)in Jenjarom, near Banting, Selangor. Operated by the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Malaysia Chapter, the Buddhist and charitable organisation from Taiwan, which is better known by its founder, Master Hsing Yun, the monastic order with millions of followers around the world.

The best time to visit Dong Zen Temple is during Chinese New Year. Additional lanterns are mounted and floral fests, floats, cultural exhibitions are staged.

Though the best hour to visit Dong Zen Temple is then to be in the evening when all lanterns are lit up, you would have to first be patient to follow other cars’ brake and flood lights in the massive traffic jam of the access road for hour!

We opted to visit DongZen temple at day time, for lesser traffic and different perspective. Without incandescent lighting, we had sun lighting instead…

At the side of the main entrance, there is a pedestrian access path way with a name called ‘The 33 Quan Yin street‘, which displaying 33 different perspective view of Guan Yin (观音) statues along the street.

Once entering the compound of Dong Zen Temple, you will see another Guan Yin statue in the middle of a lotus flower pond.

Next to the lotus pond, there is the Lumbini Garden, the main theme park of the temple with all sorts of magnificent scenes of flowers, statues, ponds, landscaping and lighting (at night)….

Here comes the main temple building. ‘Shhh! I need to send out a prayer….’

Wait a minute! I can’t believe it! It is the first air-conditioned temple that I’ve ever been to!

Opposite the temple is another square displaying a ‘paper’ feeled pagoda in the middle….

… and a ‘paper’ feeled buddha statue on top of a buddish showroom.

The second theme park of Dong Zen Temple, there are 2 rows of luo han (罗汉) statues stood as guardians at both sides of the side entrance.

The Meditating Luo Han…

You can’t have these kind of shots if you visit Dong Zen Temple at night…

These 2 devils really made Jean insane… at time.

Look at those sweat marks on my shirt, I was nearly soaking wet under the hot sun. You wouldn’t believe that I could still smile when posing for this shot!

The best part was, the sky turned dark and started to rain when we were about to leave Dong Zen… LoL !

Jenjarom is known locally as Ling Ka Long in Chinese (Hokkien). There are quite a number of seafood and Bak Kut Teh restaurants in town. Visitors could stay here for seafood dinner if they are too lazy to drive for another 20 minutes to Teluk Gong, a more well known seafood paradise of Klang. – Travel Feeder.

All photos above were captured with Nikon D60