Penang, Malaysia – Monday 26th March

Penang

Penang is an island off the northwest coast of Malaysia, now joined by a 13.5 Km bridge.  It was claimed by Captain Francis Light of the East India Company in 1791 – he got an agreement from the Sultan of Kedah that the Company could have the trading rights in return for military aid against Siam.  When the military aid was not forthcoming the Sultan  tried to take the island back, but succeeded in losing another strip of land on the mainland, now called Seberang Perai.  The East India Company did agree to pay him 10,000 Spanish Dollars per year and the State of Penang still pays the sultan of Kedah 18,800 Ringgits per year (about 3750 pounds).

The ship docked in Georgetown, the island’s capital, and we spent our time there, but it does also have a major beach resort and several other beaches plus Malaysia’s smallest National Park.  We were hoping to at least get to the funicular railway that goes to the top of Penang Hill but ran out of time – a good excuse to go back and explore some more.

Town Hall

The dock was at Swettenham Jetty, right on the tip of the Colonial District of Georgetown and next to the Victorian Clock Tower, built to 60ft. to commemorate the diamond jubilee.  We walked around Fort Cornwallis, admiring the cannon, and passed some very impressive old buildings such as the Town Hall, the City Hall and the Penang Museum.  We stopped for coffee in a very traditional Chinese shop (high ceilings and wooden beams with a narrow road frontage due to the British tax on width of frontage) then continued to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel which was built by the Sarkie brothers in 1884 prior to Raffles in Singapore – like Raffles it fell on hard times but has now been renovated to its former glory and looks like a magnificent place to stay and much cheaper than Raffles.

Next we visited the Cheong Fatt TzeMansion  - or The Blue House – built by a famous Chinese entrepreneur in the late 19^th century.  It is a lovely house with 38 rooms and was built in Chinese style  but with western influences such as stained glass windows and a tiled floor from Stoke. The owners acquired it in 1990 and are still carrying out restorations – they have some rooms to rent – they looked amazing – full of period features and antique furniture. 

Typical old buildings in GeorgeTown

Tight squeeze in a trishaw

 We carried on with our tour of China Town,  a fascinating mixture of shops, workshops, temples and backpackers hostels (saw the mandatory old hippies who must have been there since the 60’s), called in at the atmospheric Protestant Cemetery (1792 to 1890)  - and looked  in a few hotels contemplating a future stay -  then took a trishaw ride down to the shopping mall as I needed a new phone battery.  That became interesting when we started going down a dual carriageway the wrong way, but the traffic seemed to flow around us so they must be used to it.  All  the trishaw drivers seemed to be old men so I guess it doesn’t appeal to the younger generation. Following that we visited Khoo Kongsi, the clan house of the Khoo – this was built in 1906 and is magnificent, decorated with dragons and lots of carvings. 

Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi

We continued our walk through Little India up a street full of money changers, stopped for a beer then made our way back to the ship exhausted as it was very hot.  Georgetown is certainly full of history and culture and deserves its world heritage site status, but it is annoying to see some really ugly modern buildings in the centre and some old ones crumbling away – it could easily get swallowed up.

We were expecting to visit Phuket, Thailand,  tomorrow but the captain announced that the officials  were insisting on doing a face-to-face immigration inspection and only providing 3 officers – he calculated it would take 5 hours to cover all passengers and crew so apparently after attempts at negotiation all day they decided not to call there and have arranged for us to visit Langkawi instead.  It was odd because we have already made two stops in Thailand with no problems at all, but maybe they have local rules in Phuket or there is a heightened security threat – anyway I expect there will be a lot of disappointed taxi drivers and tour agents.