Looks nice, right? Well, it isn’t. The idea of putting a temple in a steep valley that you can only access via a cave is a nice one, and the fact that the religion of the temple is so inclusive and incoherent is nice too. But… OK, there’s this scene in the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth where the intrepid travelers are walking through a cave and then they meet a bunch of vicious prehistoric turtles, right? I always thought that scene was puzzling since the turtles were a) turtles and inherently not scary, and b) hissed like geese at the explorers.
Well, it turns out that when that really happens to you it’s pretty damn scary. I was very glad that the turtles were behind a fence, and that I had bought a bag of croutons to distract them with.
I usually like turtles, but I did not like these turtles. The pond also stank of death, I guess because no one ever cleans it and the turtles don’t care. The turtles are here because they’re meant to be an auspicious omen. Turtles live forever, and so visiting them represents and/or confers a long life on the viewer. To me, though, the combined effect was more like “Your life will wink out in an instant while these hideous beasts endure, indifferent to your fate.”
On the way out I checked out the fish pond. Instead of containing Koi, though, it had big scary arowana and a couple of these guys, who also (to me) immediately represented death since they’re eyeless and anatomically upside-down such that they look and act like reanimated corpses.
Also, among the interior photos I took there were these gems.
