Day 20: 12/8/23 - A day of temples 

Beginning the morning with going over the budget thus far and planning how best to keep track of it moving forward, we rewarded ourselves by returning to SUPE for their lunch special. Not having experience as a food writer, I will not attempt to convey to you how every course gave me pause with how amazing it was, and will only report that it did so. 

Our postprandial stroll took us to a local temple, which ended up being more of a historic home with a temple inside of it? The Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi was built in the early 1800's by some of the original Chinese immigrants to Malaysia of the Cheah family. In addition to an elaborate second floor shrine to family protectors, it has a door they claimed Sun Yat-sen used to evade capture by local police in 1910!  

After walking some local markets (and stumbling on a historic Buddhist temple that was still in use) we debated an early return to the hotel and a lazy day, but settled on a grab back up the hill Kek Lok Si temple. I am forever grateful that Kaia pushed us to go on! Temple is an inadequate descriptor for this expansive temple complex that flows down from its largest statue. As we worked our way down the hill (many sets of stairs and two (2!) funicular rides just within the complex) we were met with beautiful statues, buildings and gardens within the temple complex, and stunning views of the landscape and cities below.

After a ride down the hill with a very friendly Grab driver, we partook of some aic kacang, shaved ice with flavor syrup topped with red bean, sweet corn, and seaweed jelly (weird! but good!). We enjoyed our kacangs on our walk home before packing up and walking to dinner in little India. Woodland's vegetarian provided us with amazing south-Indian cuisine, with intense flavors and delicious masala chai. We don't know if we were saved from over-ordering by our waiter forgetting or correcting our order to not include the vegetable biryani, but either way, we were grateful.