Hot and humid Penang

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Hot and humid.

Today we are in Penang .Malaysia. Penang’s colourful capital city, George Town, is named after King George III. The East India Company established the city in 1786 and it became the first British settlement in Southeast Asia soon after. It became part of the Straits Settlements, along with Singapore and Malacca, in 1868.

The city is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1957 it became the first city in the Federation of Malaya. Queen Elizabeth granted the royal charter in January of that year. It’s also Malaysia’s second-largest conurbation, with a population of almost 2.5 million people.

Jimmy Choos was born in Penang in 1948. The 74-year old is best known for his iconic handmade women’s shoes. Choo was born into a family of shoemakers and his father taught him the art of shoemaking. He made his first pair of shoes – a pair of slippers – when he was just 11 years old. He later moved to Hackney in 1982 to study at the London College of Fashion.

The island of Penang is on the west side of the Malay Peninsula and at the north end of the Malacca Straits. In days of Empire it was a major trading port. It still is.



We are signed up for the Treasures of George Town tour. George Town is the capital of Penang and was founded in the reign of George III, hence the name. During the period of British rule ethnic Chinese and Indians arrived in large numbers to provide the workforce. Seemingly the British wanted to charge taxes on buildings put up on the island. The Chinese solution was to build their houses, temples etc on piers over the sea.



Our first stop is one of these communities. Think Brighton Pier packed with houses etc and with several other piers immediately adjacent. The walk ways are approximately 6 feet wide and the rooms of the houses open up directly onto the boardwalk. You are looking into people’s rooms. At the start and end of the pier are Taoist temples, to ensure safety of the fisher folk. You can’t help wondering what they must be like when the area gets hit by a cyclone. I suspect many of the tin roofs get removed. Still the basic structure is well over a hundred years old so it must be durable.



The next halt is at a Chinese clan temple. One interesting point are the incredibly intricate stone pillars at the entrance. We are told they took 10 years each to carve from green granite. Given the designs of interwoven dragons and other mythical creatures you can believe it. There are six of these columns at the front of the building. Inside is if anything even more fantastic. Rich gold and red designs carved into the wood are everywhere. Coupled with the heavy scent of incense it is something to behold.



Last stop is a Buddhist temple. A different style of architecture and decoration. If anything even more elaborate and to our eyes garish. Twenty foot long dragons guard the temple entrance and they are covered in small mirrored tiles, primarily of gold, green and red colours. Golden domes surmount the subsidiary temples. We and there is a reclining Buddha running the length of the temple. Perhaps 60 feet long. Behind the Buddha in the walls are hundreds of niches. Each contains the funerary urn of someone. The temple is also a cemetery. We walk along the rows of urns and see one with a cross and a biblical quotation. The guide looks, shrugs and declares that Malayan Buddhists are “very accommodating”. Difficult to imagine churches / mosques / temples in many other parts of the World permitting that.



After several hot and sweaty hours we return to the terminal. It shouldn’t be a surprise as we are only 6 degrees north of the equator, but it really is very humid and uncomfortable. Ah well, next stop Kuala Lumpur, even closer to the line.

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