Penang -- Week 10, Part 2 -- Wesak Day

Week 10
THE WEEKEND, May 17-19
We don't have our crap together enough to get to Lankawi again. Man, are we ever going to go? We spend Saturday sort of relaxing and catching up on laundry and it actually feels good to be doing something totally routine and constructive. Sunday is our sight-seeing day, and I have things planned, but I'm feeling lousy all day so we just hang out at the apartment some more, playing video games and watching movies. Monday is a different story. Since it's still our long weekend, we take advantage of Monday to get back out of the apartment before our weekend is over. We go to the wet market in the morning, which I still really love, but the smells of the meat section are starting to really get to me. In the future, I'm vowing to only buy meat in the wee hours. After 10am, it makes me nervous and the smells don't help.

Today (Monday) was the Wesak Day celebration. It's a Buddhist holiday and and I believe it's like their equivalent of Christmas. There are two Buddhist temples right by us (that gold one in our view is one of them). They are immediately opposite each other on the same street, so I guess that is the major hotspot for Wesak Day celebrations. There is a Wesak Day parade that and begins and ends right there, and walks right in from of our apartment! We've already missed some other religious holidays, and that's one of the major things to experience in Penang, so I was adamant about making it to the parade. Shanti told us it was in the evening, so we walked to the temples at around 6, fearing we'd already missed it. When we got there there were people still going into the temples, but more were leaving, and many of the street vendors were packing up.

We asked one street vendor about the parade. He had apparently taken a vow of silence and signed to us that the parade would be here in front of the temples at 7pm. We also asked a taxi driver, who told us that the parade had already started and it was going to walk around and return to the temples at 7. We were confused, but we figured that the parade would go on Gurney, since it's a major road. We walked there and saw no signs of a coming parade. We asked some people. They said it would be on Kelawi instead, a bit later. We decided to eat. At 6:45 we looked at the time and decided we better hurry. We turned the corner and it was already well under way! I ran to the end of the street and began taking pictures.

What a long parade! I don't even know how much of it we caught. The beginning was long gone before we got there, and there was no end in sight when we finally called it quits for the evening. It was a great parade with beautiful floats. Some were pulled by vehicle, and some by manpower.

Most contained some sort of Buddha or Buddhas, and some contained religious leaders who were blessing people and flinging (presumably holy) water onto the crowds.

There were Wesak Day flags.

And lots and lots and lots of people walking to the temples carrying flowers, mostly yellow flowers.

Some of the people were singing as they walked. One of the groups was singing, "Oh a happy Wesak Day to you all!", to the tune of "If You're Happy And You Know It" and after each line the crowd would shout, "WESAK!" and wave their flags.

Sometimes the parade would stop, and we'd all wait for 10-30 minutes before it got going again. George was told that each person in the parade goes into the temple as they reach it to pray or get blessed or something, so that's what all the waiting is about. It's no wonder the parade is so long!

A couple of random shots:

Just to show you how close it was, here is our apartment and the Shell station that is a block from us:

I wanted to stay for more, and I wanted to go to the temple and see some of what was happening there, but my boys were so very tired -- Regin was sleeping, and George's back couldn't take holding Regin any longer -- we had to go home.

I'm so glad I got to see some of it though!