A Visit to "Promise of the Dong"

Yesterday was a Sunday - the only day available in the week for Papa, Juan Or and Mommy to go for outings as a family. However, in wake of the current H1N1 flu season, Mommy decided not to go for shopping complex type of outings because Mommy doesn't want Juan Or to be unnecessarily exposed to people who may have 'played truant' on home quarantine. What's more, shopping complexes are confined places, so pose higher risk at encountering them. That was how Papa and Mommy decided to take Juan Or out for a long drive somewhere in the countryside.

So Papa headed for the Federal Highway, going down towards the Shah Alam direction, however, upon reaching the exit to Subang Jaya, Papa turned into Subang Jaya and headed into KESAS highway leading us to the Jalan Kebun area. Later on, at a crossroad in Jalan Kebun, Papa tried one of the crossroad turn which didn't look familiar just to see where the road led to. After much village-like twisty-turny road, finally we ended up in Jenjarom! And since we were already in Jenjarom, we decided to visit the famous Buddhist temple known as Dong Zen Temple. In Chinese, the temple's name is pronounced something like "Dong Jan Jze". To Mommy, that pronunciation sounds very similar to "Dong Janji" where 'Janji' in Malay means 'promise'. So that's how Mommy fondly calls the temple as "Promise of the Dong"!

What are the attractions of "Promise of the Dong"? Well, in a nutshell, the temple 'proomises' a large and beautiful garden compound and many sculptures of Little Buddhas, the Arhads and large size Buddhas, either in the garden or in the temple buildings.

Here are some snapshots of Papa carrying Juan Or while Mommy trailed from behind:

Later on, Papa asked Mommy and Juan Or to wait for a while Papa went to the washroom. So during the waiting time, Mommy managed to catch Juan Or in several sitting poses.

And here are photos of Mommy carrying Juan Or around the beautiful garden.

And in case you might be wondering why Mommy was doing the Japanese style (wearing socks on slippers) - we all went into the the part of the temple building called Holy Shrine of Buddha where some of His pearl remains are kept. To enter that place, visitors are required to wear socks. Visitors are not allowed to wear shoes, slippers or even go bare foot to enter. So Papa donated some money to 'pay' for the socks provided. After coming out from the holy shrine room, Mommy found it too troublesome to take off the socks. That's why Mommy went Japanese!