Tan By the Sea: Malaysia 2017: Chinese New Year Edition Part II

Terengganu, your go to state for beautiful islands, beaches, nature, and turtle central! We arrived in Kuala Terengganu on a Friday afternoon. Sounds like a great plan except Terengganu is a strong Islamic state where Friday is an off day! Don't worry, we got our fair share of adventure in the form of "gatecrashing" a Malay wedding!

Because Chinese are a minority in Terengganu (polar opposite of Penang), it is makes you (and in this case your wedding) look cool when you have Chinese guests! My dad's godbrother and his family were invited to one, so naturally they brought us along!

The wedding couple has literally never met us, but because of our relationship to their friends, they treated us as though we were their friends. You will definitely not experience that in the city, talk about unexpected Terengganu hospitality! Not just the couple, but everybody was asking us if we had enough to eat, we took photos with the married couple, and they gave us each a thank you bag! The worse part is I still don't know their names!

p.s. the thank you bag consists of a tiny bottle of sweet soy sauce, a biscuit, and my favourite part, a boiled egg! Adorned boiled eggs or Telur Bunga (egg flower) is commonly handed out during Malay weddings because it symbolizes fertility!

Food we had in Kuala Terengganu include...

Chicken Rice! But nothing beats Ah Boh's chicken rice!

(Ah Boh refers to elder aunt and in my case is my dad's eldest sister)

Stuffed crab and unique vineger-ed Loh Mee at Restaurant Kampung Cina

Steamed Keropok Ikan (fish sausages?) from On the Way Restaurant

Again, food aside, I did some fun things within my 3 short days in KT:

Bukit Puteri (Princess Hill)
The hill, measuring at 200m tall, is Kuala Terengganu's highest point (which tells you how flat KT is). It acted as defense fort/lookout point by several Sultans during Terengganu's civil war in the 19th century. Nowadays, what remains on the hill is a huge brass bell (Genta) that was used to warn citizens or mark religious festivals, a lighthouse, a royal flagpole, some cannons, and Sultan Umar's throne that is constructed from honey, egg white, bricks, and chalk! Still looks good if you ask me - his throne area is particularly cooling too! Best of all, admission up the hill is RM1!

Crystal Mosque
Despite its name, the mosque is mainly constructed of glass and steel. There are however 4 pillars on the outer corners of the mosque, with a crystal ball close to the tip! If I remember correctly each crystal ball costed RM20 million. Which if you think how much crystal went into it, it is probably not expensive at all.

My family and I went into the mosque itself where we got a guided tour explaining the origins of the religion and how it is connected to Judaism and Christianity!

Terengganu State Museum
Technically you have to pay to go into the Museum building itself, but being Asian we prefer not to pay. The Terengganu State Museum is perfect for all the cheap Asians in the world because on the museum compound, there are exhibits of fishing boats from different eras and 5 traditional real Malay houses that were moved to the museum compound, and those are all free! Coolest part, it took us about an hour and a half to stroll through the entire "free museum park"! P.s. this part of the museum is known as the Seafaring and Trade Gallery, totally recommend it!

The Museum building

Steps to one of the traditional Malay houses

To be completely fair, I heard the museum itself is quite a sight but we actually did not have enough time this trip (it is a HUGE building, like 75,000sq m big, or Malaysia's largest museum big), so that's something for my next trip back to KT! In case you're also wondering how it took us 1.5 hours just looking at boats, please also note the entire museum spans 27 hectares!