A quaint, colonial town with a hint of charm, that's Georgetown, a.k.a. Penang, Malaysia. I don't know why I really wanted to make a stop here on our way to KL, but I really did. My motive was the Heritage Trail, for which I was mocked mercilessly by my dear husband. I discovered later, while reading The Lonely Planet Story, that Georgetown was one of the Wheelers' favorite little towns, so I chucked that back in Travis's face. If people as well-travelled as the founders of Lonely Planet really like this place then it's got to be worth a little stop.
Travis seemed unconvinced, but at least Penang would make a good stopping point before we continued onward. We spent all day getting from Krabi to the little island, found a hotel, found food, and found sleep (although this last was difficult - we were in Chinatown, but I had no idea that would mean a reversion to Chinese spitting).
Our first day in Penang was bright and sunshiney. We found a bakery with delicious cinnamon buns and set out to achieve our respective goals. Mine was still to do the Heritage Trail. Trav's was to sample all Penang's signature foods. Although it seemed we'd have to walk all over creation to do Travis's goal, it actually turned out to be easier than accomplishing mine.
Our first stop was at the Kompleks Komtar, a giant and impossible-to-navigate shopping center. This is because when you enter you think you're in the Kompleks, but you're not. You're in the mall. In order to go to the Kompleks you have to go to the fourth floor of the mall, cross a skybridge that takes you down a floor, and enter a significantly less shiny building. But we didn't learn this today. We walked around aimlessly and looked at cameras because our little well-loved Cannon kicked the bucket. Turns out cameras are as expensive in Malaysia as in the US. Eventually I found an information desk. The information lady was confused and told me that the tourist information office was closed that day. I asked if maybe she had the map I was looking for. She did not. We walked back to the hotel circuitously, passing a lot of bakeries in the process. But none of Trav's foods yet.
Having accomplished no goals (except for eating one of the foods at dinner last night), we debated where to eat dinner. Turned out that we needn't have done so. There was approximately one affordable restaurant on our street. There were two unaffordable ones. I got the same thing as yesterday while Travis discovered one of his food items on the menu and ate that. All in all, we really liked Georgetown, but it wasn't working with us as far as accomplishing anything at all.
Next morning we woke up with a plan. We would return to the Kompleks, find this elusive Tourist Information Office, get bus tickets to the Cameron Highlands, and then scurry over to the Lavender Mansion for the 11:00 a.m. tour. Again we were slammed with troubles. Bus tickets were more expensive than expected and we had to go to some mysterious place on the south of the island to catch this bus with no help from the people who sold us the tickets. This caused much grief until I persuaded Travis to let me handle it, and if I messed it up he could say "I told you so." I didn't mess it up - we caught the right bus and the driver told us when to get off - but when we arrived the tickets were two ringgit more expensive than if we'd bought them in Georgetown. Travis gloated. That is to say, he gloated until we saw that the actual ticket price if you just bought it on the bus was almost 5 ringgit less than we paid. So HA! But how is a tourist going to figure out that they can just sit by the bus and buy a ticket there? It's rather deflating.
Anyway, our bus troubles came first, so we decided to take a break from them and look for the obnoxious office. It took an hour for us to find it, but we did, only to discovered that it is no longer open at all. Lovely. By this time LP was on my list. Sometimes...
And we hadn't had breakfast because our bakery was closed. We went to McDonalds and there we found exactly what we were looking for. They had a bulletin board with tourist information for Georgetown, including a Heritage Trail pamplet. It was stapled to the bulletin board, so we couldn't take it, but at least we'd finally found the rabbity thing. Neither of us were expecting it to be what it was - a list of unrelated places to stop and see or eat various cultural things. Most of them were over by noon, so we missed out on those. We scribbled a couple things we wanted to try on scratchpaper and then continued in search of breakfast. You see, McDonalds had the Heritage Trail, but it didn't have breakfast, which is why we went there in the first place.
We finally found an open bakery and grabbed a bite before scurrying to the Lavender Mansion. At first we debated not entering because the sign outside said there were no tours on Saturday and the price had gone up a dollar, but we bit the bullet and went in anyway. Only to discover that there was a tour and that it would be the best tour in the history of the universe (probably an exaggeration, but it was highly entertaining).
Our tour was led by a flaming, Chinese Malaysian with an English accent. For the first five minutes of his speech I thought, "Is this guy for real?" Travis thought, "Holy crap." He was for real, and it was hilarious. The tour was informative, but it also took on the quality of a gossip fest about the Cheong family. Cheong Fa Tze was the "Rockefeller of the East" and had more money, wives, and houses than he knew what to do with. This, however, was the best house because his favorite wife (number 7) lived in it. The house itself has piles of Chinese symbolism within it, mostly having to do with the obtaining and retaining of health, wealth, and longevity. Because the house was his favorite, he gave it to his favorite son (along with everything else), with the stipulation that the house could not be sold until his son's death. This is how a two-year-old got enough money to take care of 9 generations of Cheongs quite comfortably. Except that all good Chinese know that this doesn't happen because all wealth disappears in three generations. As our guide told us, "The first generation works hard and earns it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation squanders it utterly." Anyway, it was a lot of money, and it didn't even last until the little Cheong died.
The house, built in 1880, also combines Eastern and Western decoration, and it works really well. Our most interesting factoids... The indigo paint that was the house's signature color came from Jodhpur, the indigo capital of the world. This is where the term "blue collar" comes from, because the dye workers would be immersed up to their necks in blue dye that stained their skin. The house contained a common box on wheels for escaping from bandits. It worked this way: bandits are only the way to the house, the family packs up all their worldly goods, the servants pull them by foot while the family escapes. This apparently worked because the servants would also be slaughtered by bandits. Last factoid: upon the marriage of the first son, his parents would give him a bed that could be assembled and disassembled easily and without nails. The son and his new wife would use it until their first son was born, at which point it would be taken apart and stored. Then, when their son got married, he "got the bed he was made on." Our guide also pointed out to us that it had to be made without nails because all the holes caused by using and removing nails would destablize the bed, meaning it could break "at an inopportune moment." If only you could have heard our guide. It was a great house and a fun tour. You can do a homestay there if you've got the money and the inclination.
The rest of the day was spent walking around town. We managed to taste nearly all of Travis's foods. I ate most of the desserts, though, because he just couldn't stomach the squishy green wormy things. Please see photos of all the stuff we ate. It all tasted really good, too. Malaysia is all about the food. Food tourists should come to Malaysia on holiday. Forget Italy. And most of it is street food, so most of our food cost $2 or less. Food at restaurants starts at at least twice that.
Our last stop of the day was at Fort Cornwallis, a star-shaped creation of the English and the first East India Company fort in Southeast Asia. There wasn't a lot to it, but after beaches and cities it was nice to do some old school museum programming. And we learned a lot about the beginnings of the little island. Surprisingly, there's no real animosity evident toward the English occupation of Malaysia. Maybe Malaysians are just too laid-back to get their knickers in a knot about it. Who knows.
Anyway, after a day and a morning of little success, our stay in Georgetown turned out to be quite successful, and we were both charmed by the town without really having any particular reason. It was just nice.
Erin
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