Culture

Penang... what to say about Penang. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. You could walk down the street, smells of strange fish roasting on carts stood at the croner of every street, past big warehouses and markets, then suddenly a beautiful, British colonial building which used to be a bank, or school or administration building or similar would spring up, then back to the shops and shacks of the rest of the city. It was surreal.

The guesthouse i had found on the internet, for pennys i may add, was very nice in a wonderful sort of mini-manor style to it. I*t was set back from the road with a crescent driveway which swept up to the pillars oif a porch, leanding through into an entrance hall. It was painted a rather bright yellow which made it stand out even more from the metal shutters and grills of the surrounding shops.

When i saw short-cut i don't mean little back street only the locals know about. I mean ignoring the obviously tedios one way system

I was in a dorm room of three beds. Only one was occupied when i arrived. and it was by a malay woman who had just divorced her husband who she had been living in sweden with for 5 years. She was nice enough but she smelt of olbous oil and had strange sleeping patterns. such are the people one meets on the road. If i was Dylan i think i could write quite a song about her.

That night I went for a wander around, get my bearings. As part of a money saving drive i had spend most of the past few days, save for the train meal, living on oreo cookies and cereal which for pennies would see me through several meals. I was famished to went looking for a restaurant. I couldn't find one anywhere. Street stalls and cafes seeling suspicious looking chicken which i darent touch were in abundance, but restaurants? no.

Eventually i found a small indian restaurant which looked very nice. so i stepped inside and ordered a meal. It was served up in its constituent parts in bowls etc with a leaf as the plate. i could tell the waiter found my reaction amusing as i waited for a plate before he came back to inform me the leaf was the plate.

the next day i wandered around an enormous shopping mall to kill time. it was just like the streets outside; a hilarious mix of shops of all kinds. high street chains like starbucks, the body shop and samsung shops stood beside, what can only be described as glorified market stalls. A lot of the escalators didnt work or were under repair so i had to put up with the dizzying experience of walking down an escalator which wasnt moving. for anyone who has done this, they will empathise with how disconcerting this is.

Day three and i had deicded to stay an extra night and get the bus back. I know i said i was looking forward to the train journey, howwever the train station was a long way out from the city, so it worked out cheaper and easier to bus is instead. With an extra day i decided to get to the historic area at the north easter tip of the island. The heart of Georgetown. I wwandered for a bit until i found the most beautiful cemetary i had ever seen. Pere lachaise would have ruffled its feathers in contempt at the idyllic wooded christian cemetary. It was like something out or Narnia the way the dappled light fell onto ornate angels and tombstones of past famous residents of Penang. Including Captain Francis Light, the founder of Penang. Just past this i found an old school. Set in a large playing field it was completely derelict, a swing still hung on a tree in the ground which gave it an eerie serenity. Clearly it hadnt been used for many years, but it held onto its charm and stood as one of the many reminders of Penang's colourful past.

I got into a rickshaw and asked him to take me to the Penang museum. He drove around for a bit first, pointing out old chinatown and new chinatown. I was staying where the old and the new met, hence struggling to find any restaurants, it was all chinese food markets. He drove me down Love lane, and after every comment he made he would say 'see i speak english, i speak english', frequently making me repeat things he had said to make sure he had pronounced it as spectacularly as he was convinced he had. I must confess his english was good, but having to assure him as such every few moments was somewhat tedios. Comic in hindsight though.

Penang museum is the sort of museum in which you can spend hours, learn useless things without realising you've been there 4 hours. It has writing and explanations everywhere with various shop mannekins dressed up in the customary dress of the respective communities being explored in that section. I learnt many useless things which i shall refrain from boring you with. But it has to be said, Penang's history makes the rest of the world look somewhat plain. More races and nationalities have lived in Penang than you could ever begin to comprehend. And most of them have a street named after them. Armeen Road for the Armenian. Chinatown for the chinese. George Street for the British. India Street for the indians. As you can imagine, the list of creative names goes on.

After leaving Penang museum my rickshaw driver decided to take a shortcut back to my hostel. When i saw short-cut i don't mean little back street only the locals know about. I mean ignoring the obviously tedios one way system. Thus i found myself sat in a basket on the front of a bike being driven by an old man named jon the wrong way down a two laned, one way road. And not just on the hard shoulder either, i mean down the middle of it, straddling the two lanes. Buses, cars and motorbikes went beeping past me with looks of contempt at Jon, but i got the impression they were used to it. I dread to think what the accident rate is on one of them.

by the time i got back to my hostel i decided the time was right to leave this beautiful city and head back to the buzz of Bangkok. I left at 12 on the friday, arrived back in Bangkok at 7 in the morning on saturday. I assume it would have been much earlier had the immigration system on the malay-thai border been so ineffecient. We had to get on and off 4 times for various things. Once for leaving malaysia, then again for leaving malaysia, then to collect our thai arrival cards, then to have the thai arrival cards checked. my word did it drag on!

but still. I'm back in Bangkok now, 10 fingers and 10 toes. I also feel considerably more cultured. something i have no doubt my parents and relatives will be pleased to hear. Penang gets a massive thumbs up.