One of our favourite places in Malaysia!
21 March 2010 | Penang, Malaysia
One of our favourite places in Malaysia is Penang. The people are friendly, the food is good and there is a lot to see and do there. The marina unfortunately is another story. It had been a year since our last visit to Penang with the Makani Kai and the marina had fallen into an even deeper state of disrepair, parts of the jetty had fallen off, the area had silted up to such an extent that at low tide the first couple of berths down the jetty were nothing but grey mud, the smell was awful and all the boats in their berths were surrounded by floating rubbish or as one of the marina boys said to me 'takeaway Indian food!' It's a shame because the marina is so handy to everything but on the upside it was the first time we have stayed there that it hasn't been really rolly, being in the Malacca Straits and next to the ferry terminal it normally cops quite a lot of wake from the ships and ferries, there is no breakwater to protect the marina and the boats in it but this time it was fine. In the past we'd heard it got so rolly in there that mono-hulls had go into the berths alternating bow and stern otherwise when the roll set in their masts clashed and their rigging got tangled together! The facilities there though are good, it's close to restaurants and shopping and the price is right, just over AUD $10 per day.
We always go on a feeding frenzy when we are in Penang, there is such a mix of cultures on this island with Chinatown, Little India, the Arab Quarter and of course the traditional Malay, that the variety of food available is endless. We have our favourites though and while our first trip through was one of discovery, this one is a farewell. We had arrived late in the afternoon and it had been a long day so after we had done the paperwork at the office and washed the boat down we headed to our favourite Chinese restaurant, Tai Tong Cafe. The restaurant is not much to look at, it's one big tiled room with round tables and red plastic chairs, most of the wait staff are older Chinese ladies who look like they should be retired and it's rare to get a smile from them. They gruffly take your drinks order and then you wait for the trolleys to come around serving bite size delicacies such as prawn wontons, Chinese spring rolls and sweet steamed buns. The place is always full, and not with westerners but with the local Chinese, the first time we came here it was 10.30pm and the place was packed!
The next day was boat job day. Sometimes there are things you just can't get done when you are on the water and so when you get in a marina there are often several jobs waiting to be seen to. So after we had been to the Indonesian embassy to drop off our applications for visas we headed straight back to the boat. We downed tools at 5pm and headed up to the Hong Kong Bar, this bar is a favourite with the Aussie servicemen who are stationed at Butterworth. Those who have read this blog before would have heard me mention the Hong Kong Bar, it has been operated by the same family for over 80 years, and the walls are covered in photos and army memorabilia from all the platoons that have been stationed here. Every night the owners of the bar take a photo of the people who are drinking in their establishment, they take down your details and the photo is put into an album, they have been doing this since they opened. Unfortunately, several years ago they had a fire which destroyed a lot of the albums but they continue to take the photo every night. Jay and I appear several times from 2008 to 2010. Arriving at the bar we were welcomed like family and while our host was getting us an ice cold Carlsberg from the fridge, a man at the bar introduced himself to us, his name was Frankie and he was the Carlsberg rep for the area. Frankie had never been to Australia but he watched a lot of documentaries and knew that we had that big rock there but couldn't remember the name of it. He hoped very much to go there one day. What was to have been one beer before going to dinner turned into a monster session with Frankie buying us beers and discussing the politics of Malaysia with us, it was a very interesting evening but one that we paid for the next day. Frankie had 16 more bars to drop in at before heading home but as his face became more and more flushed with each beer he consumed he decided to go home instead. Having not eaten we jumped into a trishaw and went to the closest Indian restaurant we could find, it was 10.30pm so we ate quickly and went home to bed.
The following day was supposed to be our exploring day but we were feeling a little worse for wear, so after a taxi ride to the Indonesian embassy to pick up our processed visas we went for a short walk ending up at a western style air conditioned shopping centre. The heat outside was doing nothing for our hangovers so we gratefully ducked into the air conditioning and sought out some fast food to make us feel better. The shopping centre was enormous and people had obviously dressed for the occasion, we were looked up and down a couple of times as we wandered through the myriad of designer label shops with our thongs and grubby backpack. We wandered for hours picking up a few items here and there (mainly Jay, he shops better than me) while I pressed my face against the glass and stared longingly at the high heels and designer duds but on a boat there is no need for those things and I console myself with the fact that my credit card will get a major workout when I arrive home! We finally reached the top of this never-ending escalator filled building where the cinema was, we had decided to spend the rest of the afternoon watching Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp in all his IMAX 3D glory but as the escalator rotated its last turn we found ourselves face to face with a wall of people, a never-ending line in a never-ending shopping centre. Damn school holidays! Fearing that our quiet afternoon at the movies was destined to be not so quiet we walked to the other side of the room and boarded the descending escalator, no shopping and no Johnny Depp, what a fabulous day this was turning out to be (sarcasm intended!).
That night we finally made it to our favourite Indian Restaurant, the hangover was leaving us and was replaced with a ravenous hunger. Our restaurant was vegetarian but they managed to use some kind of meat substitute that had not only the taste but the texture of chicken. We always over order here and leave feeling fat and happy, so after samosa's, curry puffs, cheese naan, onion paratha, mushroom masala, butter chicken and rice along with a couple of juices we paid our $10 bill and left to walk it off. The streets of Little India are hilarious at night, the lights come on, the incense is burned and the shops that sell Bollywood DVD's turn their music up so loud that your brain starts to vibrate and you expect all the women walking around in their colourful sari's to suddenly breakout on the streets into a choreographed dance. We finally headed back to the boat to enjoy the kind of sleep you can only have the day after a big night out and were starting to drift off when we heard an Indian man shout into a microphone, 'Are you READYYYY!!!' followed very closely by the unmistakable tones of very loud doof doof music, the kind where the base vibrates in your chest and feels like it is going to burst through like some kind of alien. We had forgotten about the disco that hangs over the water and the boats in the marina. It would be quite comical if not for the fact that we were tired and I'm sure more than one yachtie has had a breakdown at the noise and marched through to the DJ with hair askew demanding that the music be turned down only to be ignored. The guy doesn't stop, he yells and sings over every song and there is no break in the music until all of a sudden at around 3am he shouts 'Thank you, Goodnight!!!' and then there is blessed silence...
We decided to stay an extra day to do some exploring, we had seen just about everything there was to see on this island on our previous trips but just walking around the streets looking at all the old buildings is pleasurable, this is the last time we will be here for quite some time. We walked up Love Lane in the backpacker district and through the marketplace in the Arab Quarter where stall upon stall sells Muslim head scarves, into temples in Chinatown to admire the architecture and amazing carvings and on to the Komtar filled with stall like shops and cheap electrical goods. We walked past beautiful old derelict buildings where the gardens were taking over creating a magical looking place that you could appreciate through the holes in the fences that were keeping the public out. On to the Christian Cemetery where the first burial took place in 1789, the tree filled space is full of headstones covered in moss, the grounds being maintained by a lone Indian man who rakes up the fallen leaves and burns them in piles. Reading the headstones we notice that most of the grounds occupants are young, victims of disease in a new country, men and women, 20 - 30 years old. We stumble on a photo shoot taking place there, young Asian women dressed as vampires in their black gothic outfits holding red roses as they recline seductively on the old headstones. Guess the vampire craze has hit here too.
Another night of Indian disco man leaves us tired and irritable, we leave the marina to head to the end of Penang Island to give us a shorter trip to our next destination, Pangkor Island and hopefully a good nights sleep.