This is a post on my visit at Nine Emperor God (九王爷) Festival temple, Ampang on the third day of this festival, in reality there are many things to witness like welcoming the gods on first day and sending off on ninth day. You can see firewalking, blade walking and sitting on pin pedestal and Chinese opera show too. Devotees will stay as vegetarian for nine days and stay at the temple.
Smoky and quite crowded. There are many stalls there... Nickee tried the Vietnamese popiah, but she don't fancy it much. It's made of popiah skin with some brittle candy and coconut peels..Dunno why but it attracts loadsa people..RM 1.30 per roll..
The next interesting stall was clay/flour/ dough art.. hard to get a picture cuz it will cost you RM 5 to shoot them molding those cute figurines... This chinese clay dough art is a folk art origins since Han Dynasty.
Nickee spinned on a wheel and today is not her luck I guess, she got a whimsy clay fish instead of turtles or dragon.. :) RM 1 per spin... Instead of spinning, you can buy ur clay figurine, price start from RM4 to RM 15..
Tips: Go for the clay art by the main roadside, it's cheaper and got newer choices of characters like Pingu, Pikachu, Nemo and such..i can spot those Beijing 2008 Olympic mascot too.. cute! Nickee hope they have Kon the cute lion from Bleach anime tho.. maybe they can fashion one if we request...I think I will want a Wall-E or Eve... :)
Colorful windmills attracts passerbys too.. priced at RM 8 per windmill..I heard it can spin your bad luck away and replaced it with good luck!
Donate RM 10 to temple or more if you want to get amulet and some yellow strings to tie anywhere you like for good luck also. Nickee bought the joss stick package RM 3, you will get bunch of mantra prayers paper, two white candles, three huge joss sticks and loadsa small joss sticks. Pay more you get more stuff to burn! Price start from RM 2 to RM 5. Personally I feel it's not environmentally friendly at all cuz the moment you stick the sticks on the pots, some workers will removed it within seconds and threw it to a huge basket after dipping it into a huge barrel of water.
While we wanted to walk to the burning mantra paper furnace, a good "mister" reminded me to write my name on a piece of red paper...which is common for Chinese to write name on red paper to inform the gods of the offers. After writing my name, the "mister" read out long wishes and stuck the paper on coiled joss and asked me to pay RM 10!! I rather donate the cash tho, but it was too late! Watch out for this cunning trick..
After that we went to eat some vegetarian food, RM 3.80 for three dishes and RM 1.5 for a glass of cooling herbal drink. The aunty might charge more than RM 3.80 tho.. depends on the quantity of food you scoop.
Parkings available along the main road, RM 3 mostly.. if you park at roadside..I saw some jockeys standing by the roadside.. maybe you have to pay them tho.
It's a very good visit to pick up lost touch on Chinese cultures and belief in Malaysia. It would be more commercialize in future, go visit before you see this in documentary video. Next year maybe I will visit the same Nine Emperor God temple in Ipoh. Pictures in next post..
No comments:
Post a Comment