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Published: October 11th 2005
Wet market
Here is the chicken counter. It's a pretty dark picture, I will take more later with our good camera.***Pictures are up, YAY!!***
Welcome! Our third week started out with our first Bahasa Malaysia language lesson. As part of the relocation package we were given the option of having language lessons, so we said yes. Roger is our teacher. He teaches at a local school and also does private lessons. Monday night he came over to our apartment and we started learning the basics: good morning, good night, reading road signs and some food words. We also got some interesting insight on the culture of Penang and Malaysia, mostly on the government and which
Phil joined the badminton team at work. Most of us in the US think of badminton as a fun picnic game but it is taken very seriously over here. Pro competitions are shown on tv all the time. The group plays on Tuesdays after work at a grade school gym. The gym has air conditioning, but they don’t use it when playing because the air movement might cause the shuttlecocks to move. He came home soaked from head to toe!!! Despite the sweat he had a lot of fun and suggested that I join them next week. We’ll see. That morning I braved
Karaoke I
Phil and co-workers singing their hearts out! the wet market alone for the first time to buy some veggies and chicken. It was so cool!!!! Not at all stinky like the one we visited in Singapore (this was also at 8am, not 2pm) and quite clean and dry. The market wasn’t crammed with people, but it was definitely bustling. People were everywhere buying everything. Fruits, veggies, flowers, meat and seafood, spices, housewares, just about anything you could want. I was thrilled to find a couple small heads of lettuce for a salad. Salad doesn’t really exist in the cuisine here, so the stuff you do find is small and not the freshest. Then I went to the chicken counter. I pointed to the chicken breasts I wanted and the butcher asked if I wanted it skinned, yes, and he did it right there. Chop, chop, chop, into a bag, hand over the money and away you go. Very cool. The pictures I took turned out dark, the chicken counter came out the best. I will definitely be going back and will take better ones with the digital.
The rest of the week was pretty normal. Phil’s work group takes extra long lunches on Friday, 2-2.5 hours,
and this week they decided to go karaoke during lunch, and they invited me along. Ok, karaoke is very different here, it’s not just done in bars by intoxicated people belting out off-key songs. We went to a place called Red Box in the basement of a mall in Georgetown. When you walk in there is a desk you register at, then beyond the desk is a labyrinth of hallways. Off these hallways are separate soundproof rooms that you rent for karaoke. It’s very cool! Instead of having to get up in front of strangers you are in a room with all of your friends, no one else can hear you, even if they are standing on the other side of the door. For about US$5 we had lunch and karaoke’d for over 2 hours. I wish there were place like this in the US, I think it would be a big hit! It’s nice to have the privacy and security and not feel like you have to get drunk and hang out in a bar just to sing. This also means that it can be all ages. We had tons of fun with Phil’s co-workers! That night we had
Karaoke III
The gang..with me. dinner with the same group of people at a local Chinese restaurant. For large groups they had set menus and we chose a Thai menu. Pretty good, though the service was surprisingly slow. Normally the dishes come one after another, but you would have thought this was a fancy French restaurant with how much time they allowed between courses. In all it took almost 2 hours for all the dishes to come out. After dinner everyone came back to our apartment for dessert and to play games. We introduced everyone to Munchkin, one of our favorite games, and ended up playing until 1:30 am! Granted we didn’t start playing until after 10, but still that’s a really long game. Everyone left and we passed out.
Saturday morning we decided to go see Kek Lok Si, a Buddhist temple on a hill west of Georgetown. I called my friend Carla to see if she and her husband wanted to come along. They had plans for the day so we decided to get together on Sunday. Before going to the temple we headed downtown to have lunch at a hotel near Komtar. Komtar is the tallest building on the island and
Interesting boulders
On the way up the hill to the temple used to be the premier shopping destination, but it has fallen into disrepair and is difficult to get to and to navigate around. We successfully got to Komtar and found a parking garage. Then we just needed to find the hotel which was a couple blocks away according to our map. We started walking, and walking, and walking. There was no hotel in sight. Downtown Georgetown is mainly 2-story buildings so you would think that a multi-story hotel would stick out. After walking for a while we finally saw a street sign and figured out where we were. Normally I am pretty good with directions and knowing how to orient myself in an unfamiliar city, but this time we were truly lost, frying hot and I was on the verge of tears. Anyway, we found our location on the map and we were only a couple blocks off. Apparently the hotel is within the huge Komtar complex and we really only needed to walk to the other side of the complex from where we parked. Oh well. Lesson learned. We arrived at lunch a half hour late, but it was a buffet so no worries. Lunch was lovely, thank goodness
for air conditioning. We left the complex, looped around a couple more times and finally got headed in the right direction towards the temple. The temple is located on a hillside above the village of Air Itam. Built between 1891 and 1905 the complex consists of prayer halls, gardens and a monastery. Here is a link for more information (there is too much history to relate)
Temple To get to the temple we parked in the village below and started walking up a road. Along the way we saw an interesting area of boulders with water running below them. Not sure if it belonged to the monks but it looked like some kind of meditation path had been carved through the rocks. We continued up the road even though we were unsure whether it really went to the temple or not. The road was narrow and the drivers here are crazy so I wasn’t thrilled about having to walk up the road, but after the first switchback we came upon the driveway to the temple area. It was just beautiful!! Everything was so brightly colored and topped of by the golden roof tiles. Well, you can see the pictures for
your self. All of the temples and prayer areas are free and open to the public, except the pagoda. We wandered through and began climbing the hill via the buildings. There are so many little buildings, it really like a maze. We paid the 2 ringgit fee to go into the pagoda. It was very nice and each floor afforded a better view of downtown than the last. We made it up to the second to last floor of the pagoda; the last one was gated off probably because it put you out onto the roof! The last stop on the temple tour was the statue of the "Greatly Compassionate & Sagely Kuan Yin Bodhisattva" or Goddess of Mercy at the very top of the hill. The temple has recently completed an inclined elevator to reach the top, much nicer than climbing the hill on foot. A project to build a huge canopy over the statue has also been started along with building several new temples. It’s a very ambitious and will probably take many years. The scary thing is that they have already started building the granite columns around the statue but they have not restricted the area. Essentially
Pagoda fountain and shrine to Buddah
Each point on each tier of the pagoda had a tiny chime so when the wind blows it makes a beautiful sound. we were walking through a construction site. We even saw the crew craning a huge chunk of column up to the site. We headed back down through the site and down the hill to our car and headed home.
Sunday morning we were scheduled to met Carla and her husband Steven at Penang Hill at 9am. On the way there we decided to stop by McDonalds for breakfast. Unfortunately this particular McDonald’s is on the other side of a very busy street with no good way to get there. There is an open space in the barrier between the lanes for the traffic from the other direction to turn. This space is not meant for turners from my side, but when has that ever stopped a Penang driver. :-) I pulled in to the space and waited for traffic to clear and pulled a U-turn. This was my turn to exhibit some “fancy” driving. Our car doesn’t have a very good turning radius and I didn’t turn the wheels far enough. As I sped up to get ahead of an approaching car I rammed the front left tire into the curb on the opposite side of the road. Oops!!!!
Pagoda of One Hundred Buddahs
This is the one we climbed. Inside, that is :-) Luckily the McDonald’s was close and I pulled in to inspect the damage. Phil got out first and looked, he frantically called me to get out. This really freaked me out because, well, I don’t know. My mind went irrational for a moment and I though the tire was going to blow up. Ha ha! The tire didn’t look that bad, but it wasn’t great either. The wheel was chewed up in one spot where it hit the curb and the tire had a chunk taken out of the side. It could have been worse. We ate our breakfast and got up to the hill. I told Carla and Steven the story which they found quite amusing. We bought our tickets to take the funicular rail road up the hill. You can also hike up the hill, but it is a difficult hike. The top is 2400’ and the base is only 100, maybe 200’ above sea level. That’s a serious hike in my book, combined with the heat and humidity it’s an even bigger challenge. The railway is much easier and faster, kind of.
Penang Hill Most people here have little concept of first come first serve. They will push
Courtyard Buddahs
Please don't be alarmed by the swastikas on the buddahs. The swastika has so much more meaning than what we initially associate it with (nazis). The Buddhists believe it is an auspicious symbol that attracts good luck. You will see it everywhere in the pictures if you really look. and shove themselves just to get ahead of a couple people. Same with driving. It took several rounds of pickups to make it on to the train car because of people cutting. We finally stood at the head of the line and blocked the entrance so no one else could get past us. Very frustrating. The train is interesting. It’s a cable train that travels up the hill at a 45-degree slope. Half way up the train stops and you transfer to another line for the second half. On the way up you see huge bamboo, beautiful plants and the granite boulders that the hill is comprised of. At the top of the hill there are many things to see. There is a tea house (it was closed), amazing views of Georgetown, a Hindu temple, mosque, several houses, a hotel and countless hiking trails. You could spend a lot of time up there or just a little. The trip is worth it and is an experience in itself. We walked around the sites and ended up at the hotel for a cold drink. We were going to sit outside on the terrace but were put off by the pit viper
warning signs. These guys like to hang out in the overhead arbor. The proprietor pointed out a couple to us and we headed inside. The drinks were nice and the conversation even better. We had a really great time with Carla and Steven. We talked, and talked, and talked and it was great! It was almost like being on a date except it was with a couple, not a single person. After drinks we decided to get back down the hill because lunch was quickly approaching. The train station was packed with people when we arrived!! There were two “pens” where the people heading down were “herded” into to wait for the train. One side went, then 15 minutes later the other side went. We ended up waiting 45 minutes just to get on the first half of the trip down. In all we spent almost two hours waiting for trains and getting down the hill. We probably could have walked down in that amount of time! For lunch we headed into town to the E & O hotel and then out to Batu Ferringhi to see the famed north beaches of Penang. We had already been out there twice
but had never stopped to go to the beach. We didn’t miss much. The beaches look nice, especially on a sunny day, but once you get down to the beach you realize why all the tourists are hanging out around the hotel pools and not on the beach. The sand is really coarse and not much fun to walk on bare foot and the water is not safe to swim in. Add to that the “beach boys,” the locals who harangue you all the way down the beach trying to get you to rent their boats or skidoos or horses or go parasailing or stop for a massage. Phil and I had already been warned about them and the fact that they will take you out in any sea or weather condition regardless of safety or concern for your life. We walked down to where a stream cuts through the beach to the ocean and decided to stop. Looking up the stream really made you not want to go in the water. Eew!! After a couple photos we headed back to the car and back to town. Carla and Steven took us back to our car and thankfully the tire
Buddah, Buddah everywhere......
Inside one of the temples. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with these nooks containing Buddahs and each has a light. Can you immagine what that would look like at night? had not gone flat. The parking attendant, however, had decided to use our car as his rest spot and we found him and some others leaning against our car with motorcycles parked all around it. Grrrrrrrr…….. At least it’s not ‘our’ car or I really would have had a cow. We headed home. There ends our most eventful weekend so far. And you get pictures this time. Lots of ‘em!!!!!! More soon.
Phil and Selina
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