Penang Snake Temple

This guide to the Snake Temple on Penang Island opens with a Scottish planter named David Brown, gravely ill in the eighteen hundreds, and the monks who prayed him back to health in the name of Chor Soo Kong, a Fujian monk famed for sheltering the sick and wild creatures. It follows how Brown's donated land became a temple in 1805, and how wild pit vipers began settling inside its halls soon after, coiling around the altars and potted plants. Look closely at the potted greenery near the altar frames as you walk through, where the vipers tend to drape themselves.