Penang

Days 58 –60

The Straits of Melacca is our present location as we speed to the paradise island of Langawki of the very North West coast of peninsular Malaysia from Georgetown’s Swettenham jetty  in Penang.  Our stay in Penang has been interesting; an altercation with our bus driver was followed by gorging down the famous sea food in uncomfortably hot and humid conditions. 

Although we are still spending more than in India, the spending spree that we undertook in KL is now well reigned in. In hindsight it is easy to see why it happened. It is something that could never have happened in India, mainly due to their sales techniques. Securing the sale is not the primary objective of Indian retailers no; they are more interested in extracting as much money as possible from you simply because you are white and therefore very rich. A week in India teaches you this lesson very quickly and leaves you on edge when purchasing anything for fear you are being overcharged. The result is a stressful experience that you try to avoid so you end up buying only the necessities. Malaysia on the other hand has similar marketing techniques to the West, which involve trying to inform you (biasedly admittedly) into making your own decision. The sales assistants are just an extension of this and are purely there to help. The result is that you are more relaxed and will make a reasoned decision as to the purchase of the product, they will simply guide you towards the sale even if it involves giving the customer a better deal.  As an example the sales assistant for our netbook was only too happy to throw in a good sturdy case of our choice to secure the deal. My wife commented “Imagine trying to do that in India!” I laughed because in India it would have been a haggling and bartering session that would not have been worth the hassle, end result? Disgruntled customer, and no sale for the retailer. 

Our bus journey on Thursday (20^th) afternoon through the Palm tree oil plantations of the West Coast of Malaysia was punctuated by bus changes. I thought this irregular since our bus was supposed to be going directly to Georgetown, Penang and even more so since when on our third bus we eventually crossed the 8km long bridge onto Penang island, we turned left, instead of right for Georgetown, the main city. After a few kilometers travelling in the opposite direction from Georgetown, the bus stopped and the driver announced this was the final stop and all the other passengers proceeded to get off the bus. I knew that this was wrong so I started to question the driver about Georgetown. He told me that this was Georgetown and I rebuked that we were at least 10kms away. “Final Stop! Final Stop! Get out! Get out!” he retorted. This of course was like a red rag to a bull for me and I dug my heels in and told him I wasn’t moving until he took us to Georgetown. In the confusion my wife wisely got off the bus to check on our backpacks as she saw a man unloading all the luggage. Another tourist had caught on to my gripe as well and started arguing with the driver but she stepped off and immediately the driver closed the door and sped off with me still in the bus. My first reaction was “Great I won, he’s going to Georgetown” but then I quickly realised that I was minus a wife with luggage. Then the driver said, “When I stop you get out.” He stopped a few hundred meters up the road and after exchanging a few suitable words with the driver I got off the bus and made my way back to my wife with my tail firmly between my legs. She was wisely still standing there with two Australian ladies who were advising her about calling the police. My ego, temper, and pride were all the cause of my predicament when really I should have realised, “You’re not in your own country, it’s not just you here, cut your losses and get a taxi or bus into Georgetown.” The other problem of course was the driver who was a . . . . ( well you can see from my story yourself what he was!), and the bus that we caught. We didn’t catch it from the bus station itself rather from outside the station, so it was a private company and obviously a bunch of chancers at that. So my advice for travelling the buses in Malaysia is to take the bus from the designated bus stations.

Standing on the side of the road beside the obscure bus station on the outskirts of Georgetown my ever resourceful and calm wife found a bus that was going into the city. We were soon on our way into town for 2Ringitt (£ 0.40/$0.50) each, problem solved. The only long term damage was to my ego after the bus driver had quite easily, if harshly, dealt with my protest.

Despite being on an island and only connected by one bride to the mainland, Penang is a one of the most densely populated and economically successful states in Malaysia. It has a total population of 1.5 million of mostly ethnic Chinese with the Malays and Indian making up significant minorities. Georgetown was discovered by the British East India Company in 1592 using it initally as what was effectively a pirate base to plunder local comerical vessels. In 1786 they decided to establish a trading and naval base there and despite its role in the opium trade and being taken over by the Japanese during WWII it remained British until Malaysian independence in 1957. 

Our bus dropped us off in the city centre and we picked up a fellow backpacker on our quest for a cheap room for the night in Chinatown. The lady was from Curaco in the Caribbean and had been travelling in SE Asia for over a year and financed herself by selling products with designs inspired from her travels.  Pretty cool to actually turn travelling into a business and not a bad old lifestyle if you want it. You can see her website here: http://www.valerieparisius.com/

It seems strange for a Chinatown to exist in what is an essentially Chinese city, but exist it does and once again the enterprising Chinese help out the budget traveller. Our room was cheap, but didn’t have its own bathroom and you should hear a pin drop in the guesthouse making prolonged sleep difficult.

We had been starving all day from our exertions with buses and drivers, but Penang is a great place to quell your hunger and we headed straight for a food court. A food court is a covered seated area surrounded by food stands that serve up different types of food to the patrons. There are usually a few TVs and flashing neon light around and this one in particular also had a stage in the middle were a few singers were treating us to their talents.

Malaysian street food is unreal and Penang in particular is renowned the world over, combining unorthodox recipes with even weirder aesthetics to make delicious food. Our top picks are as follows:

Roti Canai: A type of Malay Indian breakfast bread cooked on a hot plate. Somewhere between a crepe pancake and chapatti, served with curry/dal dips. Greasy but delicious, keeps you going until lunch.

Fish Head Soup: Expensive and scary looking but this is seriously tasty. Served with eyes and all this has a surprising amount of meat in what looks like a snapper head. Cooked up with Veg in a tomato puree curry soup this will leave your taste buds and tummy totally satisfied.

Cendol: A crushed ice desert that at first sight and taste gives the impression this isn’t quite right. A few more bites though and the sugar cane flavoured ice and miscellaneous sweet green thingys that shouldn’t go with the beans left us ravenous for more

On Sunday we went sightseeing through Georgetown, first stop; the Peranakan Mansion. The Peranakan Chinese were the initial population of Chinese who lived on the island, they adopted elements of both Malay and British culture. Their heyday was the adjoining halves of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and they had an aristocratic outlook and appearance; the mansion is really a museum to their lifestyles. Set about a central courtyard with balconies it is adorned with intricate trimmings and furniture inlayed with gold and marble decorations. These days the Pernakan lifestyle is all but extinct after merging into mainstream Chinese society.

The humidity combined with the heat was totally insufferable; I was sweating profusely from energetically sitting in the shade of the mansion. A brief meander of the colonial district and its imposing buildings was followed by a walk around the octagonal sea garrison of Fort Cornwallis. We declined to tour the inside because I had visited 10 years ago and deemed it average enough and the cannons and stone walls were unlikely to interest my wife. Relief from stickiness started to break out as the ominous thunderheads rose from the mainland port of Butterworth.

Our saunter brought us around to the jetty before the downpour broke and we bought our tickets to Langkawi, a famed tropical island north from Penang. More street food followed and we were off to bed for a fitful night’s sleep followed for our early start Monday morning. Now as the twin hulled ferry glides us to Langkawi my wife catches 40 (or maybe 50!) winks and I have the chance to write my post on the net book instead of rushing this afternoon to do it at an internet café.