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Local female colour
As with the rest of Asia, anyone posing for a photo has to put two fingers up. This lady hasn't quite got it right. 20 June 2006
Georgetown, Malaysia
Wandering around Chinatown
Waking up on the train, I met Alex and Teresa, and English couple, and wasted an hour and a half watching The DiVinci Code on their portable DVD player. Probably the worst Tom Hanks movie since his last one, The Terminal. Movies are so overrated as far as constructive pastimes are concerned. More constructively, I read most of The Postman, a novel Kevin Constner turned into a passable but financially disastrous movie. Naturally, the book was far better then the movie.
Upon arrival at Butterworth, best known in Australia as having once been the home of our only overseas airforce base, we jumped on the ferry to Penang and arrived at Georgetown forty minutes later.
The hotels ranged from very basic and dirty to very basic and clean, so we took the obvious choice and spent the afternoon wandering around Georgetown.
I don’t recall whether it’s the second or third biggest city in Malaysia, but it’s a reasonable size and boasts a 60 story office building (although few others exceed five stories). It’s pretty cosmopolitan, although tripolitan would be a more accurate description - Chinese, Indians, and Malays, which can again
be sorted into religious groupings (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, none) or subdivided into family groups or groups of origin. However you cut them up, everyone here seems to belong to some grouping and knows his place.
Wandering on the outskirts of Chinatown before returning to our hotel in the centre, we came across the most amazing market I have ever seen. At an intersection on a quiet street, beggars, trishaw drivers, and others of the wrong end of Malaysia’s economic miracle set up mini stalls on the pavement and grass trying to flog bits of flotsam and jetsam they had come across in the streets. It was a flea market where even emus would have difficulty finding something they could use.
Several pairs of old shoes, some of which were undamaged, power cords for mobile phones they no longer exist, broken torches, plastic containers, odd bits of clothing, and other assorted paraphernalia made up the bulk of the offering, although my favorite was a collection of over a hundred 5¼” floppy disks. Priceless.
Being in the middle of Chinatown means being in the middle of the cash economy. I didn’t notice any banks in the vicinity of our hotel,
but there were at least a dozen money changers within fifty metres.
I found that the food at the food stalls was on par with Thailand in quality and cost, and everything else seemed to be pretty good as well, so I was wondering why I didn’t enjoy myself here, especially considering the excellent company of Tim, another Australian from the train, Alex, and Teresa. Finally, late in the evening while watching Germany thrash Costa Rica, I realized that nobody smiles here. Something to do with the culture? I’m guessing the religion. Islam.
After realizing the reason, and remembering having an almost identical experience thirteen years ago in Georgetown, I decided to head to the Cameron Highlands as soon as possible.
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