I’d booked one night in a nice hotel to stop over on the way to Thailand, but by the time I’d walked to the hotel off the ferry, wandering past a half dozen cafes, random street art and bakeries, I was regretting my onward plans. When I got to the hotel it was adorable – built in the old servants quarters (“mews”) of the townhouses along the street. It was an awesome room, delightful verandah with nice seating areas…and then I read the tourist info in the room, with maps to the best street food and the murals around town…definitely wanted to stay longer!
I’d gotten the number of the South African girl I met on the ferry and suggested we go to the night market at Batu Ferringhi together, and she texted me as I’d finished making a plan off these maps, so I headed out to eat before meeting her – but ran into her outside my hotel as I left! We wandered around for a bit and I went into a little noodle place to get lunch (she’d already eaten, so I wanted something quick). Due to communication failures, I ordered two types of noodles and managed to eat my way through some delicious curry noodles and some more bland mee goreng, with a refreshing drink of lime and plum juice. We got down to the jetty and found the (closed) train ticket office, then noticed the free city bus and tried to catch it but were probably at the wrong stop. So we walked to Kompac, the local tallest building, to try and go to the viewing platforma but it was closed for a couple months of construction. So we caught a bus out to Batu Ferringhi instead, since it was almost 7pm anyway.
The market was much larger than I expected, but not that interesting – tons of handbags, wallets, watches, tourist t-shirts. We did buy some nice watercolour postcards eventually, and stopped for dinner in a food court filled with western tourists presumably staying at the resorts surrounding it, quite funny to see a dozen elderly (OK, middle aged!) Australians around a table. Far more concentrated tourism than I’d seen in a little while, as well as many more Australian accents! Both of us being decrepit elderly backpackers ourselves, we caught the bus back and were home by 10pm 🙂 I enjoyed sitting in my glamorous hotel room and then slept well on an incredibly comfortable bed.
Friday
So Friday morning I was planning to get up, try and call the Thai resort I’d booked and change my reservation, and if they would then stay here. Turned out I couldn’t get through on the phone but decided that worst case I’d be out $50 and I could handle that. So I walked down the street and looked at a couple places offering rooms for about $10 and picked one – I ended up picking a place with an air conditioned dorm room that I had all to myself (bonus of travelling in the off season, frequently paying dorm prices for a room to myself!) It was surprisingly nice with a common area cooled by fans and a pool, free breakfast, lockers in the room and free coffee always on – and a small shared book collection 😉 Downside was that the air-conditioning in my room felt a little stale, but oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t dangerous? I hung out at my original hotel for a bit then walked my bags down the street to check in and headed out to buy my train tickets for Sunday. I stopped at a bakery for a delicious chicken floss bun and egg tart, and taking random pictures, then successfully bought my ticket. It was steamy and hot so I meant to find somewhere cool to sit, and stopped in a food court and tried the local dish chee cheong fun, a sticky rice noodle with sweet sauce – interesting, but not a new favourite. I planned to go to the 2pm tour of the Blue Mansion but as I mentioned, it was stupidly hot so I sat in the lounge of my new hostel and read one of their books until the 3.30pm tour instead.
Blue Mansion
Entertaining tour guide, like with his story of a kung fu master identifying the central energy point of the house for him, which is supposed to be the center of the main courtyard. The whole house is carefully built on feng shui principles – like the front of the house is lower than the back so that you are always ascending as you enter the house as you want to ascend in life. People who live in low places will have poor luck in life (never live underground!). The central courtyard allows light into the house which is positive energy, people in dark houses are unhappy and sick. It also cools down the house by allowing hot air to rise out! They also have indoor plants and pools to help with this. The house was actually noticeably cooler and less sticky than outside! What about rain? (Here he mentioned that it was going to rain in a couple hours) Well, water represents money (probably a symbol from farming days when it was a real link). So its good to let the water fall into your house! In fact, the roof here was designed to channel all the rainwater into the courtyard through a system of pipes (shaped like some special symbol, I forgot) and drain out through a small hole to symbolise that much money is coming in and only a slow flow is going out.
Interesting that even this very Chinese house is built with Scottish wrought iron and English stained glass windows. Apparently it was built partly as a symbol of Chinese power in what was then a British colony, it was the Chinese embassy (the owner being the ambassador, built it with his own money). The servants quarters were across the road – according to the story, he bought the houses across the road to make sure the government could not tear them down to build a road (seems like this was pretty common at the time, I saw some streets named for the houses they replaced).
The owner, Cheong Fatt Tze, sounded like a pretty interesting guy. When he was refused a first class cruise ticket because he was Chinese, he bought the shipping company. He was richer than China. He grew up in Indonesia, married the boss’s daughter and became a tycoon across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. He spent a lot of time with Westerners – the Chinese pigtail used to be a symbol of loyalty to the Emperor, so you couldn’t cut it off, but to appear more Western he used to sometimes hide it wrapped under a bowler hat. One thing I didn’t understand is why would all the British colonies go to half mast for his death? He did a lot of charitable work, but that doesn’t seem like enough reason. When he died, the house was left in a trust so it could not be sold until all his children were dead, I think the idea was that the children couldn’t just get rich off it and the grandchildren would have an inheritance. But the house was left to become a ruin, after ‘the war’ (which war?) it was a slum housing about 200 people (including our tour guide’s mother!) It was finally sold in the 90’s when the last child died, and purchased by an architect to restore.
The restoration project was one of the first of its kind and was done using original techniques and materials, hence the recognition by UNESCO. Meanwhile around it, a 1980s government modernization project in Georgetown called Komtar was leading to the destruction of many old buildings until the ’97 recession saw more attention to tourism and revival of interest in the old town heritage.
The original lions from outside the house are now in Australia (Melbourne), taken with one of the sons against advice that it would be terrible luck to remove them from the house. Nobody is sure where the lions went because he died the day he landed.
And for some trivia, The Blue Mansion features in the Catherine Deneuve movie Indochine, which is ahem not suitable for children.
On the way back I stopped in at the Camera Museum, mildly interesting display of actual antique camera models since before I knew they had cameras, and a knowledgeable tour guide who explained how they all worked. I also noticed some abandoned street car lines on Penang road, wonder what happened to that!
The South African girl I’d met texted to say that she and two other girls were going to look for a nearby night market for dinner so we arranged to meet at the nearby shopping mall first. When we found the market it was just food, not souvenir stuff, which I think disappointed the others. I grabbed some hokkein mee, which was OK but more spice than flavour – the others had apparently eaten recently so didn’t even get anything. Then we headed home, stopping at McDonalds so they could all get icecream. It turns out McDonalds in Malaysia serves a spinach pie, perhaps instead of the apple pie? Weird.
After the others had got to their hostel, IÂ walked past a Chinese festival on Armenian St, firecrackers and dragon dancing, didn’t see any women (even locals) in the crowd so felt a little uncomfortable. I noticed tons of little burnt offerings on the side of the street, then I saw police directing traffic and a fire truck and realised that various incarnations of these fires were probably why we had been seeing firetrucks around all evening. I got a little turned around and so ended up at another night food market and bought some delicious pork dumplings for supper, totally successful evening.
And some of the street art I saw on my way home:
Saturday
One of the two German girls had mentioned she was heading to Loh Kok Si temple this morning, so I’d arranged to meet her at the bus station at 9 to go with. I was a bit late, but she was still waiting for a bus! I saw a while family in a motorbike – dad driving with mum and two small children. She said she’d gotten an iced coffee for breakfast and it was served in a plastic bag, not as cup – later I saw an old man on a bike carrying a similar drink. I noticed that the bus stop ads were in English, curious –Â I had read that many schools teach in English and people generally seem to speak it comfortably. We went past a couple schools with lots of kids in sports uniforms, one looked like a house sports day, one perhaps just regular Saturday morning sport? Made it out to the suburbs down streets with big nice houses down one side and sad fibreglass shacks on the other. Quite a few nice cars outside dilapidated houses though.
The temple was quite impressive, fantastically detailed decorative work in a large complex. We took the lift (more like a funicular? Ran diagonally up the hillside)Â to the giant buddha statue and you could see the ruins of the old staircase underneath it, would have been a pretty tough climb! In the garden at the top there was atmospheric monk chanting coming from a stereo cleverly disguised as a rock. At each temple area within the complex there were lots of wish ribbons for sale with various sentiments like “reading smart” or “happy working conditions”, about 20 options? Interesting to see what got its own topic!
Headed back to the hostel for a midday break, decided against a nap and read a book instead. I feel like I’m coming down with a sore throat, for which I blame the musty smell in the room. Hmm. On the bright side, I heard back from the Thai place and they have no problem with changing my dates, so I’m only out $17 for a ferry ticket for my sudden stay in Penang. Worth it!
I decided to leave the state museum for tomorrow morning if I wake up early, and went to find a couple more postcards, street murals and a Chinese house museum. Successfully walked through a couple of streets with souvenir stalls, managing to even buy stamps off one guy, and then found the Chinese house, Khoo Kong Si. It’s a clan house, and contained a small museum talking about the history of the clan from about the year 1500, and specifically the branch that came out to Penang and funded this house. Interesting way to learn a little more about local history, and a pretty stunning building.
When I came out I stopped to see if there was anywhere particular I wanted to eat nearby, and realized I was standing in front of The Owl Shop.
I walked into the cafe across the street hoping for some tea for my incipient sore throat, but it was 8 ringgit and I was trying to live off about 30 ringgit for the next three meals so no. I wandered a little further, meeting an old woman who told me I should visit a designer souvenir shop nearby that I’d seen signs for around town, and when I was a block or so from the tourist attractions stopped in a cafe for some asam laksa and a cup of tea and some nonya kui for 8 ringgit instead. The nonya kui was delicious and I’m sorry i didn’t try it earlier! It’s basically a boiled rice dessert with different colouring for different flavours (I assume), mine was blue and came with jam on top. I chatted with the guy running the place for a bit about how long I was in town and where he’d travelled to – his last trip was to Siem Reip and he thinks his next major one will be to Rome.
Then I went by the little designer souvenir place and went in to look – it was actually quite nice stuff and i caved in to buy a T-shirt. (I thought about a coffee cup but nope too heavy). The little old lady I’d met earlier turned up while I was paying and was very happy to see I’d come, it looked like she worked there.
I had thought I’d have time to go to the chocolate and coffee museum, but all the wandering aimlessly had taken too long and it was closed, so I dropped my new T-shirt at the hostel and went back to the Red Garden Food Paradise and Night Market that I ate at last night. I’d read about a great roast duck place here and when I saw it it did indeed look appetizing, so I got a taster plate of duck, chicken and pork with rice. The chicken had a bit of a weird sauce, basically not BBQ when that’s what I was expecting, but they were all pretty good. I really wanted to try some other dishes, since there’s so many delicious looking ones, but I was kind of full and thought I’d save the cash for a nice lunch before getting in the train, so I headed home. It was raining slightly, and as I got to the hostel the sky cracked open and poured rain – very satisfying to have beaten that!
Here are some cat pictures I collected around town over the couple of days:
Sunday morning I (surprise) did not get up early and go to the musuem. I went for a walk before checking out to find somewhere to exchange my money for the train, but hadn’t thought about it being Sunday – and all the money places were closed. I got some chicken korma and a roti for an early lunch and figured that with my water, a couple of oranges and a bag of candy I could survive a 12 hour train trip…