Penang

We love spending some time in a city after months of islands, small villages, and beaches.  Georgetown, the main city of the island of Penang is vibrant, and full of surprises.  Every street an unexpected mixture of old and new, crumbling and well maintained, up market shops next to tiny filthy workshops.

This marina is fairly typical of the city.  It has a wonderful central position between the cruise ship dock and the busy ferry hub to the mainland.  Only a decade or so old, it was built on a grand scale and has excellent facilities,  including a comfortable air conditioned lounge with flat screen TV and lovely solid wood locally made tables and chairs.   However from the start the actual berths have had problems.  There is no protective wall, and too much wash from the 24 hr ferries coming and going, too much fast ebb and flow of the tide, and silting up.  About half of the docking piers are no longer usable – pieces have come adrift and are tied up with rope.  Only the outermost ends have enough depth, and even so, at spring tides all boats sit on the mud at low tide.

But it has position, and we have had a wonderful few days here exploring the city.  The only really touristy thing we have done was to take a bus to the base of the funicular railway going up the near vertical slope to a colonial hill station built by the British in the late 1700s.     Indian prisoners were used to cut horse trails up the hill and there are still a few of the original bungalows.  Wonderful views, definitely a few degrees cooler, and some lush tropical flowers and trees.  But rather full of tourists, restaurants, craft shops and golf buggies for those not wanting to explore on foot.

Most other days we have walked the city on foot.  There is an Indian area, a Chinatown and many streets with Malay, Chinese and Indian shops mixed up together.  There are ornate Chinese and Thai Hindu and Buddist temples and many shops selling shrines, and everything required for the little shrines in each house and store.  Yesterday evening we walked past a mosque with groups of white clad muslim men chatting outside after prayers.  The British of course set up Anglican churches, attractive white buildings set in green lawns.

Georgetown is a World Heritage Site, and many colonial era buildings have been beautifully restored – as government departments, banks and company headquarters and houses.  But many haven’t, and it is sad to see buildings almost past repair.  They are not abandoned though, little shops below, and people living above with electric cables trailing everywhere, and great streaks of damp down the walls.  

As we found out in Kumar, swiflet nests for birds nest soup are a very valuable business, and the upper floors of many buildings have been mostly illegally boarded up and converted to nesting buildings.  The swifts like a moist atmosphere so the rooms are sprayed with mist continually which doesn’t help the state of the walls, and causes problems of damp for those living in other parts of the building.   There are also quite legal and well maintained ‘swiftlet houses’ which have been properly adapted, and many have been in use for decades; but the rapid proliferation of illegal ones is causing health problems including an increase in the rat population.  Difficult to control when a kilo of birds nest can fetch anything from US$700 to 3,000.

Whenever we are in town we have a hunt for a few things we need for the boat.  This time we have been successful in in finding a bulb for the diving torch which we were told was obsolete in Australia.  (Maybe it is, but these little shops have stock that has probably been sitting there for years).  We have bought some strong PVC to make a rain catcher.  That shop was run by a very beautiful young Indian man with kohl make up around his eyes, a white turban, and chunky rings on every finger.  He also runs a perfume business and gave us free samples.  The plastic was cut (by one of his minions) out on the pavement, there was no room in the shop which already had a sewing machine, a desk, and the rolls of plastic in an area about 6 ft by 10.  In another shop selling hardware each assistant had an abacus, and used it.  There was a calculator as well, but evidently only used for converting metric to feet and inches and vv.   The shop selling sewing haberdashery had little drawers like an old fashioned pharmacy containing wrappers of pins, needles, press studs etc.  A wonderful Aladdin’s cave for me.  And in front of the shop a large bowl of mangoes for sale off the owner’s tree.

The pavement is only incidentally used for walking along.  There are shoe menders, coconut shredders, people mending everything from TV’s to motor bikes.   Nothing is thrown away here (except plastic wrappers, another story), and little workshops have spare parts old and new somewhere in their depths.   There are shops selling sari silk, gold jewellery, dried fish, enormous piles of eggs (one pile of egg crates measured about 6 foot square, and  G said he was tempted to take a running jump into the middle of it!), plastic flowers, lots of mobile phones.   And lots and lots of eating places.

People eat out in Penang, breakfast lunch and dinner. A couple of gas rings attached to a propane bottle with a table to put out the bowls and trays of food when cooked make a kitchen – no health and hygiene laws here, and the washing up facilities are often a cold tap and a bowl of water with the plates left to dry on chairs or a bit of wall.   It may be Indian, Chinese, Malay, or western, and is nearly always delicious.   We have eaten at a night food market.  A huge covered area of tables and chairs is surrounded by dozens of little food stalls selling a huge variety of food.  You order what you want, give your table number, and wait for it to arrive.  Then you pay.  So you can try dishes from lots of different stalls, and stay as long as you like.  Just need the appetite! And it is cheap.  No tax, no tipping no service charge.  In a hotel or up-market restaurant you would get china plates and serviettes and a table that doesn’t wobble, but it is doubtful that the food would be any tastier.

We do eat on the boat too – caught a good kingfish on the way here, and invited friends in the marina to share it with us or we would have been eating it all week!  This particular couple are old friends from the Pacific crossing, and we stayed on their boat in South Island New Zealand when we were travelling around by car.  Good to catch up with them.

Our few days here has extended into a week, and we are not in a hurry to leave but we know we have to do some hard work stripping antifouling off the hull in the boat yard before flying out at the end of May so will have to move on next week. Also the water in the marina is warm and polluted and if we stay too long the barnacles on the propeller will be giant sized and we won’t get anywhere.