The day started off with a rough start, as the taxi arrived over 20 minutes late and Alma and I may have both slept in a little, but we made it on our Plane on time and arrived at the beautiful island. Penang, spelled Pinang by locals after the Malaysia word for areca palms. As we left the airport in our pre Paid taxi, as taxis aren't as prevalent as other cities in the region, we drove to a temple, Kek Lok Si. The center of the island is forest, and is very hilly. Beautiful tall peaks covered with jungle and steep rock cliffs were everywhere, with stores and apartments snuggled along side of thrills and valleys. Much of the buildings on his part of the island were very old, dirty and in a bad need of a paint job. There was construction everywhere. There aren't large towns near the airport, so many it was new construction but most of it looked like reconstruction. The airport sign called this city he pearl of the orient, but I really wasn't seeing it.
The temple we can to was beautiful, and also under construction. It's called the largest active Buddhist temple in south east Asia. There is a famous bronze statue of one of the deities that is well over 100 feet tall. It was under construction, as they were building a structure around her maybe from weather protection. I was surrounded by Indonesia high school girls who lined up to take photos with me. They had all the temples and pagodas of a typical temple, including the 1000 Buddha hall. Large beautiful gold colored deities were everywhere. The whole temple was on the side of a hill, so you got a wonderful view of the city below and jungle above. There was lots of places saved for worship alone that we couldn't go into, but we talked down the numerous stairs into the town and found the bus stop into Georgetown, the World UNESCO British colonial town we are staying in near the coast on the north east of the island.
I have read the bus, RapidPenang, is the best mode of transportation throughout the island, and I completely agree. For a maximum of 4RM (a tad over 1usd) you can get ANYwhere on the island. So we rode the bus for about 30-45 minutes for 2RM. Can't beat that! We arrived at the bus stop, overlooking the teal water of the Straits. After a little confusion on how far down to go, we stumbled on Love Lane, and found our guesthouse. There is a little sign at the start of the road of a fat Chinese man, saying the Chinese called it Love Lane because the old rich men used to keep their mistresses hidden here! Throughout the day, we just kept getting a little harder and longer stares than most places, and I can see that as this isn't a huge tourist destination compared to the surrounding areas. We went walking into the heart of Georgetown and saw beautiful old buildings.
The Church of Assumption, built in 1786, was one of many churches built on the island when the Brits came to occupy. Immediately following it was the Penang State Museum (more on this later), the old Town hall, St. George's Church, also built in the early 1800s. We noticed that there were no windows in the churches (as well as many others we saw during the day). Maybe glass just wasn't an imported island, we couldn't figure it out. Our first real stop was to Ft. Cornwalis, an administrative fort, being built in a star shape, meaning it was not meant for defense. They also later figured out that the Navy couldn't get their ships in, so this fort had no real military/defense significance throughout its life. Built in 1786, it originally had 17cannons and 32 pistols on its outer wall for protection. There is a lighthouse inside, a prison, and the first Anglican Church built ever (as the sign claims) with the first recorded marriage the ex-wife of the British founder of Penang, Fransis Light, in 1799. Inside some of the rooms of this tiny fort, were photos and artifacts from the original renovation. Even though this island has always been inhabited, somehow over time the fort got buried into the mud and had to be dug up. Archaeologists found blueprints from 1893 and using them, managed to dig up everything from the old buildings, walls, bridges, even motes! They found more cannons, as throughout the years more cannons were added to the exterior walls taken from pirates who invaded the Johor dynasty when the Dutch took over. The Japanese attacked and occupied this island during WWII as well, using the fort for weapons storage. The first bombing was Dec. 11, 1941, and the British surrendered and soldiers and civilians fled the next day. We walked around the northern coast for a minutes. The beaches aren't on this side of the island, but there was a park to see into the beautiful and shallow ocean. It's very close to mainland (theres a bridge which I want to find to take a photo of connecting it) and we saw anchored barges in the bay.
We turned around and went into the Penang State Museum. The area, being a well funded UNESCO site, had very well preserved buildings and numerous artifacts, which made for a pleasant reading in the museum. It went through chronological order of the history of the island, as well as customs of the numerous emigrants that came to the island, from literally everywhere in SE Asia. The island was originally names Single Island, Pulau Ka Sata. When the Brits came, Light was in the doghouse with the king for some reason so he named the island Prince of Wales Island. Later, Pulau Penang was adopted. 90% of today's population is an ethnic mix of Chinese, Malay, and Indian, just like Singapore and they have a Little India and Chinatown. Being Malaysian, there is a large population of Muslims and mosques around as well. The British acquired the island in Aug 11, 1786. The Sultan Abdullah of Kedah was being attacked by the Burmese and Siamese and did this for protection, brokering an agreement of mutual use with British rule. Immediately Light went to work to build the forts, etc on the island. There was a large exhibit in the museum of 40s music. When the Japanese occupied the island for 3 years and 8 month, there was a large ban on radio music and news, therefore music became even more important to the population. The Japanese kind of "let the island go"", allowing opium smoking, amusement parks, 'dance"bars, lots of bars, etc to keep the population happy during the occupation. The museum itself used to be a school. It was heavily damaged during WWII, the east wing being completely demolished by bombing which was never rebuilt. The original plans had a beach street running along the coast, which is a good block away from the beach now, due to land reclamation and clamming beds along the east coast.
I learned a little about ethnic weddings in the areas. Muslims would pick set up marriages btween their children. The most sought after trait of a woman was not her beauty of domestic skills, but her ability to recite the Quran in a beautiful voice. The Baba Nyonya people, Straits-born Chinese, had a 12 day wedding, complete with numerous rituals and different dresses on each day, including even a hair combing ceremony! They had elaborate dress as well as crowns and head dresses for the bride. Chinese funerals are just as elaborate, with a continuous ceremony and prayer on the 7th, 49th, and100th day anniversary of the death of the loved one. They would burn life size paper replicas of the decease's worldly possessions in order to hasten the wealth in the afterlife.
We walked around just a little longer. It was ver hot today and there is no protection from the sun out here. We were about to walk into the famous mosque of Georgetown, but the call to prayer went off and we couldn't go in. In front of mosques are large towers what broadcast call to prayers and sang a song, which i recorded. At once, Muslims slowly started to filter in for the 5pm prayer. We went and sat on a bench, and quickly got yelled at for relaxing around the mosque not in proper dress.
Our guesthouse is nice, its an old colonial building. Our mixed room has about 12 beds and heavily AC-ed which is awesome! There is only one computer, one bathroom, and one shower. They are nice, but small. This is a very different kind of place that we had visited before. There are pick pockets who like to steal tourists purses, we were getting screamed at by some random guy in a shop, only to find out he wanted to warn us to turn our sling purses away from the roads for men on motorbikes who snatch them. Tomorrow we hit the flea market and jungle and beach, so it will be a different kind of adventure for sure!
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