No Problems in Little China

I was a bit disappointed to see that even though Malaysia supposedly is one of the more developed countries in this part of the world, they still had not figured out how to drive on the right side of the road. Still, they had very nice roads, and the bus did more than a 100 km/h all the way from the border to Penang. Apart from the many stops at the road toll stations to pay for the nice roads, of course. I got off the bus in Lebuh Chulia, which is the backpackers' street in Penang. By the way, Penang is pronounced Pinang, except when people call it by its name from the colonial era; Georgetown.

For the first time since leaving home, a Sunday seemed like a... Sunday. Pretty much all the shops were closed, and noone came up to me in a rickshaw or carrying something to sell to me, while asking "Where you go?" or "Buy nice souvenir!". Great! I found a fairly nice room at Eng Aun Guesthouse, for which I paid 15.40 ringgit per night. At the time, 1 ringgit was just about 10 Thai baht or 25 US cents. The room had a fan and a bed, and like most Chinese guesthouses, walls that don't go quite all the way up to the ceiling. Which means there's quite an interesting show of conversations and sounds coming from the surrounding rooms every night.

There are quite a few bookshops in Lebuh Chulia, and before I got as far as figuring out how much a ringgit is worth, I bought a used Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Lonely Planet travel guide for just about what it would have cost me to buy a new one. At least I found out where I was.

Georgetown is a city where it is very easy to spend quite a few hours walking around with no particular destination. It was very nice to see signs written with a Latin alphabet, after the curls seen in Sanskrit and Thai. The language in Malaysia, bahasa Malay, is a constructed language, and was designed to be easy to learn, as the various people in Malaysia and Indonesia who were told to form rather large nations after WWII needed a common language. Today there IS a difference between Malaysian and Indonesian, but they're pretty similar. And the grammar is really basic. "Hamburger" in Malaysian is "burger". "Hamburgers", that is plural hamburger, is "burger-burger". I was delighted by this, having spent too much time lately among people who I had large problems with understanding.

I got my daily dosis of air-conditioning in Komstar, a huge mall in the center of Penang. Having cooled down, I went for a walk through history, seeing Chinese kongsies, that is family honour houses, hindu temples, islamic mosks, Indian streets and the old, British Fort Cornwallis with thousands of visiting US marines with basketballs and on rollerblades. Truly a strange mix of things to see within a few minutes walk from each other. Given the strategic position of Penang and its history as a center of events, it should not come as more than a small, pleasant surprise, though. I spent the rest of the day sitting on a bench in the park reading about the city and the rest of the country that I was to visit for the next few weeks.

Back in the backpackers street I had a late dinner in the Green Planet Restaurant, a very good place to meet other travellers and pick up recent information from a number of notebooks lying around, covering basically all of Asia altogether. The idea is that anyone can fill in their experiences, so that the notebooks at all times will be up to date. So I did. Thanks to a Danish girl I met, I also discovered that Malaysia is one hour ahead of Thailand.

The next morning I enjoyed the luxury of a fresh newspaper in English; The New Strait Times. Being the geek I am, I was happy to discover that on Mondays and Thursdays this newspaper has a very good Computers & Internet section. Pizza Hut knows their customers well, and advertised in there that every Tuesday after 6pm they have a buffet, eat and drink as much as you like for 10 ringgit. Good deal. With this in mind I decided not to have a large breakfast anyway, and got on the road instead.

I got on a local bus from downtown Penang and got off at the Snake Temple a bit further south. It's not worth visiting, I was really disappointed by it. I seemed to be the only one there wearing long trousers (which is what you generally have to do to get into temples in Asia), the rest of the people there were mainly US cruise tourists, going "OhmyGod!" and "Wow!", each time one of the snakes blinked. Yes, there ARE snakes in there, but not many, and they are all doped by the heavy incense in the room. For a few dollars (yes, they prefer it if you pay in US dollars) you can get a snake around your neck and have your picture taken. D'oh!

A bit depressed by having fallen into a tourist trap, I started walking along the highway southwards. I was stunned by discovering that just about ALL the giants in the computer and electronics industry seemed to have put up huge production plants one after another along the road. Apparently the Malaysians have given these companies very good conditions for working and doing research here, and the companies have happily accepted to put their Asian headquarters on this island in return.

One bus-trip later, I reached Balik Pulau. This is a fairly small village, a kampung, where the locals are really good at keeping the traditional building customs alive. There are lots of great examples on elaborate carvings, traditional roofs, long windows and verandahs. It's not only pretty, the houses are also very functionally built; They stand on stilts or posts, so that the house is above the ground, allowing free air circulation and hence making it cooler. There's also a very good spice garden in this village. A nice place to visit in the middle of the winter, as this is when the clove and nutmeg trees bear fruit.

What I found most interesting in Balik Pulau, though, was a real, Chinese funeral procession. In the front there were some guys with trumpets, playing some kind of waltz at half-speed. Then there's a group of people dressed in white, walking in front of a large truck filled with drums and drummers. Another truck carries the coffin, and all the relatives, also wearing white, hold one hand on the surface of the truck. Then follows friends and remote relatives of the deceased, and behind all this there's the traffic jam. The bus I was in stopped in the middle of the procession and picked up some passengers.

I got off the bus at Titi Kerawang, a very nice, small waterfall in the woods, with a small natural pool to take a dip in. Not far from there I found a small shack with a smiling man selling fruit and vegetables. This was my first durian experience. I will not forget. Believe it or not, but this large, spiky fruit smells, or I should say stinks, and tastes like sewer. Of course, it's an expensive delicacy in South-East Asia. I speak the fruit, the whole fruit and nothing but the fruit!

I hitched a ride with a waiter on a motorbike on his way to Georgetown to work. I got off in Teluk Banang, where I checked out a batik boutique and a butterfly farm. Both were nice but I had to evacuate them when the Americans from the Snake Temple caught up with me. I got on the local bus back to town, 1.60 ringgit. I went to the mall to get a Malaysian grammar and dictionary, so that I could spend the rest of the evening relaxing while studying in my room. My room, by the way, would be approximately three times larger if it was rotated 90 degrees so that one of the walls would be the floor. Strange architecure. I can hear a fan rotating somewhere up there, but I can't see it. Tomorrow I'm heading east. Selamat malam.