A few steps after walking into the entrance of Thean Hou Temple, there is an area where a GuanYin statue is standing and the surrounding is decorated with beautiful garden landscaping.  There are waterfall, deer statues, bamboos, ponds, stones etc..

If you have been to Thian Hou Temple, can you guess where did I stand to take this photo of Guan Yin?

Although this is not a big open area, but it is a great place for taking photographs.  I have taken quite a number of photos here with SiewPeng as my model.  :)

This is the “Old Man Under the Moon“.  In Chinese, we called it “YueXiaLaoRen“.  He is the God of Marriage or a matchmaker.  You can read his story here.  In his hand, he is holding a book of marriage listing out who is going to marry whom.  Look on the red pack on his right hand side (on your left), it stores the strings to tie the feet of husband and wife.

See, Colin and SiewPeng are blessed.  :)

SiewPeng was hiding in the cave behind the waterfall.

Then, she touched the waterfall.

SiewPeng and the deers.

A big stone fish in orange.

The water that comes out from the bamboo.

Stones with word on it - “YiXinYuan” - translated directly it means the “garden that please your heart“.

There is a small Chinese pavilion behind the God of Marriage.

The conclusion is that this is a good place for taking photographs.  No wonder I saw quite a number of couples and photographers went there to take photos.

Once we entered the praying area, SiewPeng told me to look upwards to the ceiling and we found a concave hemisphere shaped circle decorated colourfully with a lantern-shaped lamp in the middle.  The decorations are extremely fine, and form some artistic patterns.  Maybe there are hidden image of gods within the patterns, and each pattern might have its meaning which represent something.

This is one of the goddesses in this temple called GuanYin.  I believe most of the Buddhist and Chinese know about Her.

This is how the whole area looks like.

In the middle and both sides on the left and right, there are a few multilayer structures which each of them made up by thousands of small statues of the Gods, and the lights for their believers to do light offering to their God.

I have waited there for a few minutes hoping to take some photos without human being, but the visitors and prayers came and gone non stop.  That’s why they all had been captured into my photos.  See, someone was holding incense sticks and praying there.  He must have prayed to the Thean Hou to bless him to have a good life.

Exactly facing the 3 big statue of goddesses, there are 3 huge doors with pictures of another goddess on each door.

Looking outside the door, I found that there were a couple doing the same thing as we did.  They were looking at the photo they had taken.

SiewPeng was showing you this is the old style door lock.

And finally before we left, we did not forget to take a photo of ourselves with the Guan Yin (right) and Thean Hou (left) behind us.  :)