Georgetown - Historic Buildings and Indian Food

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We had a very comfortable bus trip to Georgetown in a super VIP bus, armchair seats, plenty of legroom and no dvd at full volume. We still had 3 nights prepaid accommodation to use up so headed to our hotel - another Air Asia Tunes hotel, with some reservation remembering the size of the rooms at the airport that we had previously stayed in. We were however pleasantly surprised as the room was much larger, the showers just as powerful and the beds as comfortable. The hotel exterior colour scheme was the same as well, vibrant red and white - pretty ugly! The bus terminal had been moved to the outskirts of the town so, though buses are supposed to run in they never seem to turn up, so we negotiated yet again with a taxi driver. It's become a battle - some drivers are not registered and try and charge outlandish prices! Many places now have a coupon system - you prepay, get a voucher which you give to the driver who then takes you to your destination with no more bartering or requests from us to use the meter.
After checking in we walked into the city. Georgtown is on Penang Island and is a very historic area as it has been UNESCO heritage listed. Penang City itself stretches along the island and is a mess of high rise apartment blocks and Georgetown is the old city centre. The streets were lined with hundreds of Chinese shophouses - some immaculately restored but most quite shabby and in various muted and vibrant colours depending on hor recently they had been painted. Even in China we didn't see streets of old shophouses - I guess most have been pulled down for redevlopement. The houses are very large and all have central open areas allowing rain to come in which gathers on a granite courtyard and cools the houses. They all would house 3 or 4 families and businesses would operate from the front of them. Many of the streets closest to the beachfront were lined with buildings built by the British, very elegant to look at and quite imposing. Particularly so the Eastern and Orient Hotel, a massive structure straddling the seafront and built by the same family who built Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Everybody who is anybody has stayed there over the years, judging from the photos in the lobby and we decided to have breakfast there before we left the city.
Next day I spent on my own - I was grumpy as the heat was really getting to me - and though I spent a lot of the day with a book I toured one of the renovated shophouses. A fortune had been spent on the house, every room was decorated in either the Nonya (Malay Chinese) stayle or as a British Home. In the early days the wealthy traders had three living areas, one for family, one for British business people and
another for the local traders. The man who had renovated the home had been collecting for years and I particularly enjoyed the large Chinese silk embroideries and the beaded shoes. It was a truly amazing house and a real insight into how the wealthy lived. They were preparing it for a private function that evening - decorating in swathes of pink and white organza - a 30th birthday party for Eddie. A strange colour scheme for a man. We walked past that evening and Eddie was there, all dressed in white and getting out of his black BMW convertible. We knew it was him as his photo was hanging above the entrance and it was 6 foot square. Another example of how the modern wealthy Chinese live.
Next morning we headed to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel for our buffet breakfast and got another taste of wealth. Amazing buffet in a truly scrumptious setting and all for around $20 AUD each. Well worth the money. I headed straight for the fruit platter and cheeses before enjoying the pastries. No eggs were eaten as the standard western breakfast you are offered in all hotels here is eggs and white half toasted bread and very sweet jam.I am thoroughly sick of eggs already and have never eaten fried eggs anyway in Australia.
We had been looking forward to visiting another impressive mansion which had been built in traditional Chinese style with the peaked gables and heavily painted decorative trims, however were disgusted with the offered tour as we were subjected to a 45 minute talk on Feng Shui and a cursory glimpse over a couple of the main rooms. A real disappointment after the glorious home of the day before. Jerry left to go and visit the beautiful mansion I had seen previously and I retired into the aircon. Later that day we hired a rickshaw driver for an hours tour of the city and it was a lot of fun weaving in and out of the traffic. The poor drivers get so hot pedalling but all seemed so cheerful. Our man took us down to the Chew Jetty where Chinese people still live in stilted houses off a central jetty out over the Straits. Many of them are fisherman still. We sat and chatted to a group of young men at a lovely cool verandah at the end of the jetty and watched all the ferries go backwards and forwards to Butterworth.
Our last day in Georgetown was spent checking out a couple more of the local temples. They are all fascinating places to sit and observe people and we're always made to feel very welcome. I actually left my hat on the ground outside one of the temples and when I went back an hour later it was still there. I wander whether that would have been the case in Australia. We also visited the house of Dr Sun Yat Sen who was the father of modern day China as he planned the Canton Uprising in Penang which led to the formation of The Republic of China. Later that day we caught a bus out to visit a mosque which was set out over the sea. A much longer bus trip than we expected and most uninteresting as it followed the coast which had been totally built up with highrise buildings. The mosque was beautiful and set into a bay full of fishing boats and a shoreline of little wooden fishermens houses, though it was still surrounded by tall buildings. It would have been a beautiful spot 20 years ago. The mosque was only new and sat next to the old mosque which was only made out of tin and wood and very tine. Malaysia is dotted with similar mosques as every tiny community has one.
It is quite humbling to observe how religion plays such a natural and important part of most Asian peoples lifes. In Georgetown it was particularly interesting as the whole cummunity was so accepting and interested in each others religions. We saw many streets where mosques where virtually side by side with Buddhist temples and because of the British influence there are also many Christian Churches. There is actually a heritage walk in the tourist brochure called the Harmony walk which went past all the different religions places of worship.
We also loved the very distinct districts - Little India was really vibrant and made me look forward to visting India. It was full of flowers and brightly coloured saris and Bollywood music. We found a great Indian restaurant to eat in and most times we were there they would light incense at the little shrine near the front entrance and just about smoke you out! We had our last rickshaw ride with a little tiny Chinese driver who giggled the whole time and had a great sense of humour. At one stage he had to get off and push us up a small incline - we wanted to get out but he told us he needed the exercise!
The following morning we were picked up in a mini bus for the 4 hour drive to the Cameron Highlands. It was a winding drive up the mountains and the start of another few very pleasant days of cool weather and mountain scenery.

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