Giveaways
From Phuket, I travelled south by bus to Penang, just across the border in Malaysia: a country formed in 1963 by the union of the land traditionally known as Malaya, which was for a time ruled by Britain before gaining its independence in 1957, and remaining British colonies in northern Borneo.
Penang is a famous, historic trading port often spoken of in the same breath as Singapore. Penang consists of Penang Island just off the western coast of Malaya, or Peninsular Malaysia as it is now called, plus a mainland territory called Seberang Perai, to which the island is joined by two bridges. Together, the island and Sebarang Perai form the Malaysian State of Penang.
The island has a historic old town called George Town, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
As in the old town of Phuket, a lot of older architecture survives in George Town. This includes some grand colonial buildings and memorials from the days when the island was a British military and commercial outpost in Southeast Asia, second only to Singapore.
Plus, a lot of graceful street architecture of the older sort, which escaped the kind of wholesale demolition and replacement by tower blocks that happened in Singapore, as a result of a greater degree of post-World War II prosperity.
The architecture of the Phuket old town is often described as Sino-Portuguese. In a similar vein, that of George Town, which also has a strong Chinese presence, could perhaps be described as Sino-British.
Penang was founded as a trading outpost in 1786. Its most prominent founder was a man named Francis Light, the father of William Light, who in his turn went on to found the Australian city of Adelaide.
In those days, the British called the island Prince of Wales Island, as on this gravestone I saw in an old colonial cemetery in George Town.
Penang was the second-oldest of four so-called Straits Settlements founded by the British in the Straits of Malacca, between Malaya and Sumatra. The oldest was Malacca, an old Malay kingdom taken over by the Portuguese in the 1500s, and then taken over by the British. Malacca, or Melaka in modern Malay, gives its name to the Straits of Malacca.
The four Straits Settlements are shown in red in the following map of the administrative divisions of British-ruled Malaya in 1922.
The Straits Settlements were directly ruled by Britain until the independence of Malaya in 1957. The rest of Malaya, incorporated into the British Empire after the founding of the Straits Settlements so that they would not be menaced by some other empire, was ruled indirectly via traditional rulers sworn to be loyal to Britain’s King or Queen but otherwise left in charge of the states shown in blue in the following map, or to serve as joint rulers of a region called the Federated Malay States.
Three of the Straits Settlements, Penang, Malacca, and Singapore, became successful trading ports while a fourth, Dinding, did not, and was returned to local Malay rulers in 1935.
Another difference between the Straits Settlements and the rest of Malaya is that, as the architecture and signs in George Town suggest, the British trading ports soon attracted large Chinese populations. Indeed, it was characteristic of the three successful Straits Settlements that they ended up with Chinese majorities, unlike mainland Malaysia.
One of the oldest and most historic buildings in George Town is the temple dedicated to the Chinese goddess of mercy, Guan Yin. It actually predates the coming of the British by almost eighty years, and was originally dedicated to a sea-goddess, for the protection of a pre-existing but rather small population of Chinese seafarers on the island. It is also decorated with images of other Buddhist and Daoist (or Taoist) deities.
Penang Island also has a lot of wild nature on its hills, including the smallest national park in Malaysia, and a cable car that leads up into the rainforest, where you can also do forest canopy walks. As you can see from the second map, above, there are also some nature-parks on the mainland nearby.
Here’s an excellent video on the attractions of Penang, including (of course) its street food, born of a blend of several cultures.
I spent a lot of time in Penang many years ago, when most of the hotels seemed to be full of drug addicts. So, it was a relief to see that it wasn’t like that now.
The city is not so seedy anymore, but still has plenty of quaint disorder.
Along the waterfront, there are several traditional Chinese jetties, the so-called ‘clan jetties’, built in the 1800s by clans of Chinese traders.
To this day, the clan jetties are entire waterfront communities on stilts and an important part of the World Heritage Site. The largest and most famous is Chew Jetty.
Here is a video I recorded in a Buddhist temple where I also took the two photos just above. The most restful music imaginable was being played in the background.
Speaking of life on the water’s edge, there are some excellent beaches on Penang Island as well, such as Batu Ferringhi. But, as in some of the northern parts of Australia, going in the water is not recommended by most because of deadly stinging jellyfish and other dangerous wildlife, including the occasional saltwater crocodile. These warm-water hazards aren’t unknown at Phuket, either, but they don’t seem to be as great there.
And another prehistoric species as well. When I was on the waterfront, I saw a huge lizard swimming in the water, presumably an Asian water monitor.
The longest Asian water monitor ever caught measured 3.21 metres (10.5 feet) including the tail. I don’t know if this one was that large, but it was still pretty big.
With fearsome mouths and powerful claws, monitor lizards, also known as varanids, are related to a group of prehistoric marine predators called the mososaurs.
I had no idea that there were such creatures. To this day, the water monitor swims about just like its extinct cousins looking for prey to devour.
The word lizard comes from ‘lazy’ and means a creature that lies about in the sun all day. That might be true of most sorts of lizards, but monitor lizards aren’t like that. A friend of mine who saw an Australian monitor looking for scraps in an outdoor cafe (the guests gave it a wide berth) said it was really active and inquisitive, almost like a dog or a bear.
Water monitors rarely bite or claw humans but can do a lot of damage on the rare occasion that they do.
So, while you have several reasons not to go in the water at Penang, I can recommend the beaches to sit on and admire the view. And the jetties. And the night markets near the waterfront of which there are at least ten, as well.
I caught up with an old friend I hadn’t seen since my trip to Sikkim. He was staying in in Love Lane, just around the corner from my Airbnb, which was in a three-storey building downtown and only cost me $15 a night with air conditioning.
I seriously needed a nice place after getting food poisoning from a spring roll on Koh Phi Phi and an indoor cafe in Bangkok.
There were many whimsical murals in George Town. This is another thing for which the town is famous.
Here are some more images of the charming old town.
A taxi driver told me that they were trying to clean up the food area of Penang because of food poisoning. But I thought it was really charming, and never got food poisoning from any of the street food. The taxi driver also told me which Chinese herbs to procure for my existing food poisoning, which worked.
The Malay population, which is indigenous to the region and unrelated to the Chinese, is mainly Muslim, as are many among the local Indian population as well. So, there are mosques in Penang as well as Chinese temples and Christian churches and cathedrals built by the British. The oldest mosque in George Town, apparently, is the Kapitan Keling Mosque (rebuilt in 1916).
One thing I found amazing was the fact, for it is a fact, that the Malay and Māori languages are related to each other. A 1962 account in the bilingual Māori/English magazine Te Ao Hou/The New World describes the experience of Māori soldiers in the New Zealand Army, posted to Malaya as it was then:
For a Maori, Malaya is a novel experience. . . . We found that we could often pass ourselves off as Malays, with very much cheaper shopping as a result! . . .
For a start it was embarrassing for people to come up and start talking Malay to us, but after a while many of us picked it up and found it very similar to our own tongue. . . . Pronunciation is almost identical and we were thrilled to find that many of our words were similar to theirs. For example ‘pai’ is ‘bai’ (spelled baik) in Malay, ‘ika’ is ‘ikan’, ‘rima’ is ‘lima’, ‘tangi’ is ‘tangis’, ‘mata’ is ‘mato’ and so on.
Another word that speaks to common ancestry is ‘bukit’, meaning hill, the equivalent of ‘puke’, pronounced pukeh, in Māori. In both countries, a locality is very often named after the nearest hill. The landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand is therefore covered in placenames beginning or ending in puke and so likewise with many bukits in Malaysia.
Here are some more photos of the old town’s humble but wonderful Sino-British architecture.
The lands that are now part of Malaysia were conquered by Japan in World War II. Thereafter, Penang became a major Japanese submarine base, visited by German and Italian submarines as well.
During the Japanese occupation, many cruel persecutions were also visited on the Chinese majority in Penang, which had supported Chinese guerillas resisting the Japanese invasions of China over the previous decade, and thousands of Penang Chinese and others were murdered, as was also the case elsewhere in the region.
In Penang, it seems that almost everyone is familiar with the predominant local variety of Chinese (Penang Hokkien), with Malay, and with English as well, as in this display for the local emergency services and another sign advertising a festival called the Malaysia Urban Forum.
These days, there is also a growing Chinese influence, as one might expect. Chinese warships berth regularly at Penang’s port, including when I was there, and there is a lot of Chinese investment in real estate, industries, and palm oil plantations.
All in all, Penang is a very good place to stop for three or four days, especially if you are a history buff, or for longer if you want to explore the nature parks in the area.
To round off, I found that Airbnb was the best option for finding affordable places to stay in Penang. I also recommend the Grab app.
Next stop: Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia.
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