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Whenever we mentioned visiting Penang during Chinese New Year, the first thing almost everyone bellowed at us was ‘Kek Lok Si Temple’. It was said to be *the* highlight of the festive season – and no way could we miss it.
I did my research and learnt that it was a Buddhist temple up on the hills, outside George Town. The reason this particular location is supposedly so photogenic is due to the Chinese New Year decorations – many thousands of lanterns and fairy lights embellish the ornamental buildings.
So, even though I’m not the biggest fan of taking photos of artificial lights at night while surrounded by huge crowds, off we went, feeling mildly skeptical.
Even from a distance, from the back of our rental motorbike, I could see that my skepticism was misplaced. This view was the reason everyone had been bellowing at me. The temple was colossal and lit up like a goliath, rainbow-toned beacon, sprawling up the forested hill. If aliens were to visit Earth, my guess is they would use Kek Lok Si Temple during Chinese New Year as a landing strip.
So, anyway, here’s our photographic guide to why you should visit Kek Lok Si during Chinese New Year, including some photography tips, how to visit, dates and more. (Prepare for an unimaginable number of photos of red lanterns and fairy lights).
For more photography in Malaysia, have a look at our Penang photo hotspots or our photo guide to Thaipusam in Kuala Lumpur.
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IN THIS GUIDE //
Chinese New Year at Kek Lok Si
WHEN IS CHINESE NEW YEAR IN PENANG?
WHAT IS KEK LOK SI TEMPLE?
GETTING TO KEK LOK SI AT CHINESE NEW YEAR
WHEN ARE THE LIGHTS TURNED ON AT CHINESE NEW YEAR?
IS THERE AN ENTRY FEE AT CHINESE NEW YEAR?
PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FOR KEK LOK SI AT CHINESE NEW YEAR
– PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUES AND TIPS
– COMPOSITION AT KEK LOK SI
FINAL THOUGHTS – KEK LOK SI CHINESE NEW YEAR PHOTOGRAPHY
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When is Chinese New Year in Penang?
Chinese New Year is celebrated on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which occurs on either the 21st or 22nd of December each year. This means that Chinese New Year typically falls between January 21st and February 20th.
In 2026, Chinese New Year in Penang will be celebrating the Year of the Horse from 17th February to 3rd March.
What is Kek Lok Si Temple?
Kek Lok Si is Malaysia’s largest Buddhist temple, located around seven kilometres outside of George Town, the capital of Penang. Its existence in Penang is unsurprising, since around 44.9% of Penang’s population is of Chinese descent!
The temple’s construction took place over four decades and the complex spans 30 acres. At the top resides a 99-foot statue of Kuan Yin/the Goddess of Mercy.
Getting to Kek Lok Si Temple during Chinese New Year
There are several ways to get to Kek Lok Si:
Self-drive/ride | the roads are excellent in Penang, and we found them extremely easy to navigate. If you’d like to rent a car, there is available car parking on several levels of the temple. If you ride a motorbike, it’s equally as easy.
Be aware that if you drive a car, the later you arrive in the evening, the longer the queues will be to get in for the Chinese New Year light celebration. (Motorbikes can avoid all this and are sent to the front!).
Taxi | Penang has a taxi app called Grab, which is just like Uber (you can even connect your credit card to it so you don’t have to pay in cash). Taxis are very affordable in Malaysia, generally, because fuel is great value. There is a taxi drop off spot at the bottom of the hill and from there, a tram can take you up for 3 MYR (Malaysian ringgit) (this can be quite busy at times during Chinese New Year).
Public transport | there are a number of public bus options from George Town to Kek Lok Si Temple. The 201, 204 and 502 all stop near the base of the hill below the temple. The bus journey to Kek Lok Si from George Town will take roughly 45 minutes and costs around 2 MYR, depending on where you get on.
Tours | tours run to the temple, have a look at Get Your Guide for representative prices and examples.
We have driven both rental cars and motorbikes in Malaysia. They are comfortable and safe ways to get around and we’d recommend them! For rental cars, we exclusively use Discover Cars all around the world – they have excellent insurance and great prices.
When are the Lights turned during Chinese New Year?
The Chinese New Year lights at Kek Lok Si Temple are turned on at 7.30pm, a few minutes after sunset.
We chose to watch the lights get switched on from the top, by the (huge) Goddess of Mercy statue. The statue’s platform is open, so you can stand above, looking down on the thousands of illuminated red lanterns strung across the upper level.
The lights are switched on like this for 30 days following the start of Chinese New Year. During the celebrations, the temple remains open until much later in the evening during this period.
Is there an Entry Fee during Chinese New Year?
We actually went to Kek Lok Si twice during Chinese New Year, once in the evening just before 7pm, and again on another day around 9am.
During the evening, we had to pay 2 MYR to access the area around the Goddess of Mercy statue at the top, and 2 MYR for parking on the mid-level.
During our daytime trip, we had to pay for access to Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Ban Po Thar) on the mid-level, but not the top-level statue or for parking. We don’t know if this is usual, or whether we were lucky that there was nobody there to charge a fee!
OUR CAMERA GEAR
We do exclusively travel and street photography (often these merge into the same thing), so we choose lightweight, flexible, high-quality equipment from Fujifilm.
The pictures are crisp, the lenses are small and perfect for travel, having survived some seriously questionable weather conditions. Our cameras are favourites with old-school photographers – the ergonomics are perfect.
We use two Fujifilm XT5 camera bodies combined with:
Fujinon XF 70-300mm f4-5.6 R LM OIS WR lens
Fujinon XF 16-55mm f2.8 R LM WR lens
Fujinon XF 18mm f1.4 R LM WR lens
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Photography Tips for Kek Lok Si at Chinese New Year
During the evening at Kek Lok Si, when all the artificial lights are on and there are crowds everywhere, photography can be really tricky. It’s very difficult to capture the temple’s sense of scale, plus there are few nice, tidy shots due to the low light, thousands of LEDs spattered across the skyline and groups of people moving about.
Photography Issues and Tips
Banding is a nightmare | this is a phenomenon where your camera will show large dark stripes across the screen. Artificial illumination in dim light is the primary culprit of this – we found it commonplace at Kek Lok Si Temple. (I think that here may have been the worst example of this I’ve ever experienced!). Adjust your settings manually to fix it (changing the shutter speed helps).
It’s just so dark | cameras just don’t see like the human eye. So, all those beautiful flickering lights look stunning in real life, but the camera doesn’t get it! It takes a bit of creativity to take a representative photo.
Crowds can be a nightmare | it’s important to visit with patience, and always be respectful of anyone praying or taking part in a ceremony.
Manual mode | I write this on all our photography guides, but try to use manual mode if you can. It’s a particularly good option at Kek Lok Si Temple because there’s nothing that fast moving and you can constantly adjust your settings if you notice any banding on your phone or camera. Also, since there are very bright white lights against very dark backgrounds, it’s just never going to be auto-mode’s finest moment!
ISO | don’t be afraid to whack this up when it’s dark. Dim lighting + moving subjects = accidental blur. Grain >> blur, every time.
Wide lens | these are great for the gardens, prayer houses, viewing platforms and the Kuan Yin statue. A wide lens (18mm or so) captures the grandness, but along with that comes the complexity of all those little LED lights which make an image look messy. We mostly tried to focus on the detail, rather than the overall (it’s easier to get an uncluttered photo that way).
Details | long lens/telephoto captures intricate details in statues, close ups of figurines and lanterns, all while avoiding the crowds. The majority of the photos from our evening at Kek Lok Si were taken on a 70-300mm lens.
RAW | ensure to take your photos in RAW at Kek Lok Si (if you don’t usually). Pictures of mega-dark environments *always* benefit from RAW shots because they retain more data in the shadows. This makes editing easier (which is often necessary in circumstances like this).
Tripod | so, we didn’t use a tripod and managed fine with handheld. However, I know other photographers would swear by a tripod, so we thought we’d mention it. They’re not ideal at Kek Lok Si because of the vast crowds during Chinese New Year, certain pathways are narrow and there’s not masses of spare space. If you find a nice quiet spot, it could work out well, though.
Phone cameras | although there may be no issues with phone photos, videos using a phone camera might show all the LEDs constantly flickering. To remedy this, change the FPS – switching between 25 and 30 (if you have that option) can alleviate the issue. If not, adjust the shutter speed in manual mode to stop (or at least reduce) the flickering.
Having said all that, if you decide to visit during the day, photography is really straightforward. There are few people, the light is bright in January/February (hopefully) and it’s such a photogenic place!
Consider Composition at Kek Lok Si Temple
As Kek Lok Si Temple is a complicated place to take photos at night, composition is more important than usual (and it’s definitely not my strongest skill, but I’m working on it).
All I can recommend here is to use as much imagination as you can muster to take photos that aren’t just flat, messy, LED-filled shots.
So many people at the temple will take the exact same photo in the same, flat way (with a phone or camera) and we’d recommend spending a little extra time on the quirky angles.
Depth of field | always be looking for nice options with a narrow depth of field (after all, most of your photos in manual mode will be shot wide open, so you’ll naturally gravitate to a narrow depth of field, anyway).
Leading lines | there are loads of options, like pathways, stairs and strings of lanterns (and use a narrow depth of field as, as per the above. By blurring parts of the photos, it declutters the images).
Scale | it’s tricky to capture this at night, to be honest. But use decorations like lanterns to frame your shots – for example in front of the Kuan Yin statue.
Variety | we chose not to take photos of people doing anything religious, out of respect. But even without people, there are imaginative options for capturing the blend of people, architecture, spiritual aspects and coloured light all together.
Key photography subjects | lanterns and lights, Kuan Yin Statue (and others, especially on the mid-level), temple architecture such as roofs and pillars, buddhas, offerings, flowers and fruit.
WANT TO TAKE A BETTER PHOTO?
There are three parts to travel photography –
◊ Planning your trip
◊ Taking the photo
◊ Editing the end result
To get the highest quality, most sophisticated photos from your travels, you’ll need to perfect all three (plus a tiny bit of luck).
So, we’ve written a lot of country-specific guides about planning trips to various destinations, and also collated our absolute top tips for taking photos on location. We’ve also written a dedicated post on how to take the best black and white travel photography. Check them out if you’re interested!
We also write about typical editing mistakes to avoid. To complement that, we’ve collated a more intermediate user’s guide to editing travel photography. This covers more elegant, advanced and refined skills, ones that will promote your photos to the centerpiece of anybody’s wall.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a dress code for Kek Lok Si Temple?
There is no strict dress code at Kek Lok Si Temple and it’s pretty lax compared to many other religious centres we’ve visited. However, it’s best to cover your shoulders and knees and don’t wear any controversial slogans on your clothes, out of respect.
Is there parking at Kek Lok Si Temple?
Yes, there is parking at Kek Lok Si Temple, for both cars and bikes. This can be busy, though, later in the evening. Parking costs 2-3 MYR.
Is Kek Lok Si Temple worth visiting during the day, too?
Yes! Kek Lok Si Temple is definitely worth visiting during the day. Although all the illuminations won’t be on, the temple is much easier to see and photograph during the day. We also did a little daytime photography project and visited at 9am, which was very quiet, bright and pretty. Also, there were no queues and abundant parking!
Is photography allowed in Kek Lok Si Temple?
Yes, photography is allowed at Kek Lok Si Temple. We didn’t see any signs around prohibiting photography in certain areas either (although I’d recommend always being on the look out in case we missed any).
When should you arrive for the Chinese New Year lights at Kek Lok Si Temple?
The best time to arrive to see the Kek Lok Si Chinese New Year lights is around 7pm, just before sunset. You can watch the sun disappear, the festive lights turn on, then wander through the buildings. Also, the temple is a little emptier at this time than later in the evening.
How long is needed to visit Kek Lok Si Temple?
For photography, we’d recommend planning on staying for at least a few hours. The temple of Kek Lok Si is so intricate and large that it could easily use up your entire evening (so plan in advance about what you’ll be doing for dinner).
Final Thoughts – Kek Lok Si Photography
Photographing Kek Lok Si Temple at night during Chinese New Year was definitely one of the more challenging things we’ve attempted (especially with our crop sensor cameras!). It’s a strikingly beautiful temple though and, even if we had failed to get any photos we liked at all, we’re still glad we went – it’s well worth a visit.
We spent two weeks zipping about Penang and had an absolutely magnificent time. This temple is definitely one of the photography highlights in the area – for more information, have a look at our post on our favourite photography locations in Penang.
We hope you have a fantastic trip!
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