Monthly Archives: February 2009

It’s hot, oh so hot. Too hot to spend more time than absolutely necessary in the sun, so we keep to the shady side of the street and the galleries which line many of the streets in the historic district. Today we are exploring the heritage walks around the city. The city is an amazingly eclectic mix of styles from beautifully preserved colonial civic buildings – the Supreme Court, the Town Hall and the City Hall being some glorious examples – to complete streetscapes of faded nineteenth century shophouses with original shutters. Elaborately decorated Chinese temples vie with unadorned white mosques and classical churches at every turn. This is not the unusual sanitised, over-restored UNESCO site we have seen elsewhere; there there is a faded charm, a truly lived-in feel, and the tourist is not in the ascendency. In fact apart from the few guest houses around Love Lane and the streams of trishaws that leave and return from outside the Town Hall, the tourist presence is very low key. Such a pity that we have only a short stop here – this is definitely a place to come back to.

For lunch we make our way to Little India; an area lined with Indian shops selling saris and Punjabi suits, spices, Indian groceries and Bollywood music. We step into an open-sided neighbourhood cafe with stainless steel tables and plastic stools and are immediately taken in hand. No menus are produced, there are no ordering formalities other than to select drinks and ascertain whether we eat meat. Banana leaves are spread out before us in lieu of plates and a selection of dishes are served directly onto the leaves along with some rice, hot lime chutney. We have two dishes one of chicken and the other of tofu. Served on the side in stainless steel dishes. There is no cutlery – so we take our cue from other diners and eat with our right hands. The food is delicious. A feast for 16 Ringitts (£3)!

After lunch we do a little more sightseeing around Little India and stock up on some food for the next leg of our train journey which will take us to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur – a journey that will take 19 hours. The overnight sleeper to Kuala Lumpur leaves Butterworth at 9.15pm just 15 minutes late. We are travelling first class (the tickets are so cheap, at 81 Ringitts each (£16) it was seemed rude not to) which means we have a two-bunk compartment to ourselves with a wash basin and a chair (what luxury!)

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Around 10am we arrive at the border crossing into Malaysia. Unlike previous border crossing by train we have to disembark with all our luggage and queue through passport control and customs. When we return to the train it has been reduced to two carriages and allocated seat numbers are being disregarded as passengers squeeze into the available seats with their luggage as best they can. Seats originally allocated to one person for the sleeper section of the journey are now seating two. We arrive at Butterworth on time, the train having made up the 100-minute delay along the way. We are staying in George Town the capital of the state of Pulau Penang on Penang island, a 15-minute ferry ride from Butterworth on the mainland. The ferry terminal is only a few minutes walk from the station and a return ferry ticket only costs just 1.20 Ringitts (approx 20p). The ferry is a basic walk-on-walk-off affair with reversible backrests to the seats to afford a forward-facing view in either direction.

It’s a clear, sunny day and considerably hotter than Koh Tao. Penang island (also dubbed Isle of the Betel-nut and Pearl of the Orient) has a hilly interior and George Town sits on a wide coastal strip on the north-east corner. The old town is a designated UNESCO world heritage site in celebration of its religious and cultural diversity – the population is roughly a third Malay, a third Chinese and a third Indian (Tamil) with a smattering of other ethnic groupings – ‘expressed in the great variety of religious buildings (Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Tao), ethnic quarters, many languages (Malay is the offfical language and English is the second language), worship, religious festivals, dances, costumes, art and music, food and daily life’*. All of which makes historic Georgetown a charming, vibrant and fascinating place to visit and we fall in love with it immediately.

We are staying in Love Lane at the Old Penang Guest House. This is an historic colonial house beautifully restored with original shutters both on the street facade and on the upper internal landing walls and rooms facing the inner covered, double height public area. We have one of the two first floor shuttered rooms with wooden floor and tasteful decoration – only 50 ringitts (£10) which is a snip to be able to stay in such a lovely place. Love Lane borders the core heritage zone to the east and the ‘buffer’ zone to the west, and is in the heart of the Chinese district so is an ideal location from which to explore the heart of this beautiful and architecturally arresting city.

We haven’t been able to take any photos since Andy dipped our camera in the sea when we were in Koh Samui. So we head for the nearest shopping mall – Prangin Mall – and buy a Nikon Coolpix. We are hoping will be better than the Sony Cybershot which was useless at taking night shots.

Quite by chance we have arrived on the day of the Chinese New Year cultural celebrations and as the afternoon fades into evening more and more people are coming onto the streets until it is almost impossible to move at anything but shuffilng pace. Chinese lanterns decorate the streets and stages have been erected at various points around Chinatown on which a revolving programme of entertainment is taking place including martial arts displays, classical opera (although it proves completely impossible to get close to the latter) popular and traditional singing, dancing, dragon dances and more. In the main street numerous dragon dancers are accompanied by a cacophony of drums and cymbals.

It’s a delightful surprise to be able to experience these celebrations, particularly because Chinese New Year went completely unmarked at Black Tip. The most absorbing event is the balancing of 30-foot flag poles complete with flags. Performers deftly ‘catch’ the poles kicked to them, on their foreheads and then bounce them onto other parts of their body including shoulders, chin, mouth, the belt knot on their back and a single finger. A impressive feat!

We spend several hours taking in the intoxicating atmosphere until our legs and feet start to protest and our stomachs are growling and we need to eat. We set off to look for some street food, only we have left it too late and the stalls are packing up. So we wander towards the seafront and stumble upon a large food court. Once we have worked out the ordering etiquette – drinks are ordered at the table, food is ordered at the stands and brought to the table, we tuck into some very cheap (16 Ringitts – £3) and authentic food. A far cry from our western lunch in a German bar at 71 Ringitts – £22) which was a bit of an aberration; we have eaten hardly and western food since arriving in Asia, because it is so expensive and generally not very good.

*UNESCO World Heritage inscription 2008 (italics are mine)

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