Words (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

To better appreciate the words to be found in the photos above, one should click on the photos themselves and view the enlarged versions of them. Of course, I can't guarantee that you can read the bulk of the words on them since the first photo shows Manchu and Chinese writing and the second photo has Chinese and Burmese along with English writing on it!

For the curious, this Photo Hunt's first photo was taken inside Tai Fu Tai, a Qing Dynasty
residence located in a far northern section of Hong Kong's New Territories. Dating back to the 19th century, it is the sole remaining Mandarin's mansion in the whole of Hong Kong.

The second photo was taken outside one of two rival Buddhist temples and landmarks located opposite each other in my home state of Penang, Malaysia. The Burmese Buddhist Temple has expanded considerably in recent decades -- and often in such a kitschified way that I like to joke and say that it's like a Penang Buddhist version of Disneyland. In many ways though, it still remains in the shadow of the Wat Chaiyamangkalaram Thai Buddhist Temple on the other side of the road which boasts, among other things, one of the largest reclining Buddha statues in the world.

(For regular visitors, I've already put up an entry on polyglot Penang on this blog but am still contemplating one devoted solely to Wat Chaiyamangkalaram -- the temple I used to regularly visit with my mother when I was a child -- somewhere down the road... ;b )