Kek Lok Si Temple

The Chinese have the biggest, blingiest, most extravagant temple in Penang, which says a lot about who has financial control here. Staggered up the steep hillside it has numerous side temples, subsidiary temples, courtyards, flowering plants and a turtle pond overcrowded with turtles. People buy green vegetables to feed the turtles, some of whom lie on the bottom of the pond, especially the bigger ones, for long periods of time, apparently not needing to breathe.

A cheerful gang of Tamils are dismantling scaffolding from one of the subsidiary temples
The whole temple complex is festooned with thousands of red and yellow lanterns and enormous paper dragons, that will presumably light up during the new year festivities.

An inclined lift takes you to the main temple, a towering edifice above a giant bronze statue, in a wide courtyard. A stall sells roof tiles for the temple and different coloured wishing ribbons:

red       for support from eminent people; auspicious wishes; booming business; constant happiness
orange for continuous run of wealth luck; wishes come true; all things as wish for
green   for bodily health; world peace; favourable results
purple  for successful career; increase in prosperity; longevity
pink     for family to be safe; coming and going safely
yellow for smooth working conditions; success in everything; being together forever; being coupled and paired
blue     for living together harmoniously, academic progress, excellent academic results

People buy the wishing ribbons and, in another part of the temple, tie them to a wishing tree

When I emerged from the temple I asked a few people the way to the train to go up Penang Hill. They all pointed in the same direction. So I set off on foot, up a steep, winding road, shaded by dense jungle. I sweated and walked. Eventually a car stopped and gave me a lift.
"No train up here" the Chinese driver said. "We're going to look at a lake, then we take you to the train."
"The Chinese control the economy in Malaysia" I said
"The Chinese pay 95% of the tax in Malaysia. All the rest of the nationalities pay the remaining 5%"
"So all the major businesses are Chinese" I said " but I want into a bank and all the cashiers were Muslim Malays."
"It was probably a State Owned bank" he said. "Malaysia is not a very civilised country. They are not civilised on the East coast. They all live in villages."

If it were not raining and flooded on the East coast I would go there and up into the Cameron highlands. But too many people have told me how cold it is there.

The train goes up to about 800m, near the top of the hill. The air is cool in the shade, hot in the sun.
The Penang hill hotel was built by the British a hundred years ago, with a wide verandah that looks out over Penang, the coast, the sea and the mainland beyond, and beyond that the misty hills in the distance. The verandah is full of green leafy plants and a snake lies curled up asleep in the rafters. Apparently the hotel staff feed the snake.

Chinese new year

Shop houses in Penang

Chinese new year is not until the 23rd January but preparations start early.
In a Chinese temple in Penang I across a Chinese couple, sitting on two low stools, with a little table between them. On the table was a pile of pieces of paper, printed with gold squares on one side. They were rolling these pieces of paper into tubes, then folding in the ends, to make loose packages, which they dropped into a box.
"What is that?" I asked
"Difficult to explain" the woman said "Money for the next world.
Because it is the new year we come to the temple to  honour our ancestors. Then we must ask if they are happy for us to offer them this money. If they are happy we burn the money in a ceremony."

 They had finished folding the gold money and now started on a pile of "silver money".

In the evening an inflatable green dragon advertising Calrsberg went past the restaurant where I was eating with some friends, accompanied by a line of cheerful young Chinese men with drums. A few Malay men were joining in.

Yesterday evening I went to the cinema in Penang, to see a Tamil film, much to the amazement of the Indian (mainly Tamil) audience. "Can you understand?" several people asked me.
"I can read the subtitles" I said.
The screen in the cinema is enormous, the seats comfortable and the air conditioning too cold. The audience laugh uproariously all the way through the film.  We went into the cinema at 9pm and came out at half past midnight.

A Little Penang History

Penang did not suffer under colonialism in the same way as Melaka. It was never invaded by the Portuguese or Dutch and the British snuck in without causing alarm.

Neolithic people lived on the island of Penang, 5,000 years ago, not many, but the island was continuously inhabited by a few people up until the eighteenth century, when Arabs, Japanese, Jews, Armenians and Europeans all decided to come and live here. Syed Sheriff Tengku Syed Hussein Al-Aidid, an Arab from Acheh (Sumatra), one of the wealthiest Arab spice traders, built the Lebuh Acheh mosque in 1808 and allocated land and houses for the Muslim community. He encouraged Moslem traders from all over the Malay archipelago to join his entrepreneurial community in Acheen Street in Penang.

The Europeans grew spices in large plantations, employing people from Java and from India. The Javanese came to Penang in the early nineteenth century and gradually over time assimilated into Malay culture and religion. Refugees continue to arrive today, stealthily, by night, in overfilled boats. They are not particularly discouraged by the Malaysian government, who welcome the opportunity to increase the proportion of Muslims in Malaysia. Burmese refugees are not welcomed with open arms since a) they do not look like Malays and b) they are not Muslim.

The Siamese invaded Kedah in 1821and also came peacefully to Penang to trade and farm.
Indians migrated to Penang, where they traded and lent money.

The first wave of Chinese were traders who came to Penang in the late eighteenth century, married Malays, giving rise to the Baba Nyonya (Chinese/Malay) community. Their religion was a fusion of Tao/Confusion/ Buddhist and they spoke a fusion of Chinese, Eglish and Malay. They traded with South China, South Siam, Burma and the North and West Malay states of Kedah, Perak, Selangor as well as Sumatra.

The second wave of Chinese came in the mid nineteenth century, as indentured coolies, free labourers, traders and artisans. Rich Chinese merchants had opulent country mansions, sent their children to school in Britain or China and chose to marry among themselves, occasionally improving the breeding stock by acquiring a brilliant son-in-law from a poor background.

Today the Nyonya are becoming assimilated into the modern Malay Chinese.

The Malays came from Kedah, Sumatra and southern Thailand. They were fishermen and boat builders. The current government is Malay, so Malays work in the civil service.

The East India Company, set up in 1600 to develop Asian markets for Lancashire woolen products, was focussed mainly on India but by the eighteenth century, when they realised that the Malay peninsular had tin, they became interested in Malaya. Francis Light arrived in India in the mid 1760s, later moving to Phuket, where he set up an East India Company base for trade between India and Siam. Fluent in Siam and Malay, it was he who managed to persuade the Sultan of Penang to let the British occupy Penang temporarily, in exchange for military protection. Of course the British didn't leave. In 1800 the East India Company agreed to pay an annual fee of 10,000 dollars to his Majesty the Sultan Dhiauddin Mukarram Shah II of Penang.

According the the museum in Penang, the British never signed a treaty or agreement with the Sultan of Penang. The Sultan, afraid of the Burmese and Siamese, who were making threatening noises towards Penang, was swayed by the dulcet tones of Francis Light.

Back to Penang

When I came back to Penang yesterday I found Carl still here, still downloading music and now living in the dormitory, where he has secured himself a bed next to the door and, more importantly, to the electric socket. "Now I can download music all night" he told me, handing me my kindle, which he had looked after, carefully since I left. "No thanks, I don't want to share that room. I got a bit fed up with the graffiti on the walls."

The usual band of old men, washed up in Penang, were still hanging out around the guest house. But there was some new blood:

I met some French women today, who were working in China for several years, teaching French, and learning to speak fluent Chinese. One also studied Chinese medicine and now lives in Penang. A Japanese woman who lives in Penang told me, with a sigh, that she earns her living teaching Japanese. There is a huge demand for Japanese teachers here, it seems, but her real profession is graphic design. "Absolutely no graphic design here", she lamented. There is also an Iranian staying here, who also lived and worked in China and learned Chinese, studying at the University to learn it properly.

It's very hot and I'm off the the Cameron highlands tomorrow.

Penang National Park

I took a slow, tedius bus past endless white, high-rise buildings along the coast to Teluk Bahang, catching glimpses of dirty sea along the way. At the entrance to the national park they ask you to sign in, (they don't ask you to sign out) then let you loose in the park to wander the paths in the forest. Picnic tables and benches overlook the sea where the path is still paved and easy. But the path soon becomes a beaten track, with boulders and tree roots to step over, steep steps up and down, swinging wooden bridges over mangrove swamps and low branches to crawl under. In places they have built wooden walkways over the more difficult parts of the terrain.The paths are cool and shady, dense multilayered rainforest covers the hills, right down to the shoreline.

Out to sea there are floating villages, long tail boats and fishing boats. further round the coast there's an old jetty, lines of wooden poles sticking out of the sea - decaying remnants of old Penang. Fishermen were mending their nets in a blue and red striped boat. Troops of Malay Muslim girls, covered from head to toe, were walking the paths, their men walking ahead of them with huge pots of food. They didn't walk far. They found a place to picnic on a little beach, shaded by trees. The women sat demurely in little circles on the sand, round mats for the food. The men stand some distance away, minding the barbecue, chatting and smoking.

A group of young Chinese men and women, all dressed in shorts, teeshirts and trainers, come along, all chatting together, laughing.

Giant lizards scuttle away into the bushes when people approach. I saw one lying on a beach under some trees. It waddled into the sea and swam, like a miniature Loch Nes monster, with its nose sticking out.  It crawled onto a rock and lay there, turning its head, as though it was aware of me looking at it, then it slid into the sea, swam to the shore and dissappeared into the undergrowth.

Botanic Garden in Penang

Yesterday Carl and I set off early and walked to the botanic gardens (one and a half hours) through the old part of town and into the suburbs, where walled mansions are surrounded by green lawns and the streets lined with big, old trees, with brown, brittle, peeling bark. The suburbs were as immaculately manicured as the old part of town was shabby and run-down.

Leading up to the botanic gardens are a series of off-road paved walkways, covered by dense vegetation, shady and cool. A whole area is dedicated to youth, with fountains spurting out of a paddling pool, a waterfall splashing down a staircase, picnic tables and benches. The monkeys had congregated here, hopefully eyeing the picnicking families.

We got very hot walking back and then in the old town I managed to lose Carl, and then get lost. I spent hours wandering about, because I couldn't remember the name of the street where we were staying. I had brought the lonely planet with its miniscule map, but forgotten to bring a pair of glasses, so I couldn't make out the names of the roads. During my wanderings I came across a scuffy second hand market, muslim temples, Buddhist temples and rows of derelict shop houses, destined for demoliton. One shop house in the midst of all this dereliction still bravely carried on trading. The Chinese shopkeeper invited me to try umeboshi plums, spiced, sugared, salted dried mango, sugared, salted dried ginger, out of large glass jars. I bought some dried ginger. He gave me a bottle of water as a present, since all this tasting had made me thirsty. "No good government of Penang", he said, "destroying everything. You should go to Melaka. They know how to preserve old buildings there."

Conservation in Penang

Shop Houses Destined for demolition

These shop houses do not fall within the preservation area. All over Penang whole streets of old shop houses have fallen prey to devouring property developers, who, when they have succeeded in evicting all the tenants, bring the buldozers in, then build more ugly tower blocks.

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion

14 Leith St, George Town, Penang

Cheong Fatt Tze 1840-1916, left his home in China aged 16 and travelled to Java, where he worked at every menial job he could find until one day he met and wooed the daughter of a rich merchant. He married her and his father in law, who had observed how  careful and hard working his son in law was, decided to fund him as a trader. Cheong Fatt Tze observyed the Dutch traders, for Java was a dutch colony at that time and followed in their footsteps. He soon became rich, acquired property and more wives, each one of whom benefitted his business. After several years he decided to try his luck in British colony of Malayia. He moved to Penang, where he bought a piece of swamp land in Georgetown, the capital of  Penang.

He was a Chinese Mandarin of the highest order, Consul General of the Ching Government, Special Trade Commissioner for South East Asia and director of China's first modern bank and first railway.

He cleverly incorporated European techniques into his typical Chinese Courtyard house, with 38 rooms, 5 courtyards, 7 staircases and 220 windows. The windows are art nouveau stained glass with Venetian shutters, the timberwork is Gothic, the cast ironwork Victorian and the latticework covered with gold leaf. The roofs, gables and verandahs are decorated with Chinese ceramic shard mosaics.  Fatt Tze imported artesans to carry out the work and the whole house was built according to Feng Shui principles. He designed it to impress the British and to provide an ideal environment to brin gp his sons. 5 shop houses opposite formed the original domestic annex for the mansion.

He had the outside of the house painted indigo blue, a beutiful calming colour and he made sure that everything in the house was beautiful, harmonious and representative of nature, abundance, peace and tranquility.

Leith st was once a beautiful avenue, lined with tall palm trees, with great houses sheilded from the street by walled gardens. Now most of these mansions have been destroyed. One or two have become hotels and restaurants.

A shop house in  Old Penang

Art Nouveau Building in Georgetown, old Penang

Penang

While I was staying at Apple guest house in Bangkok I met a well-travelled man called Carl, who told me about a cheap train to go south. "There's a train," he said "that goes from just the other side of the river from here, at 7.30am, to Luang Suam. It costs 90 Bart and it's very slow, stopping at every single station on the way. From Luang Suam you can get an overnight train to Hat Yai, which is right near the border with Malaysia.

I decided to go with him, since he knew the route. So on the 3rd Jan we set off early in the morning and caught the train (the only slow train) to Luang suam. All day we sat on the train, that gradually filled, until people were standing in the corridoor. The space between the two carriages was packed. It was a challenge getting to the toilet, which didn't lock. The toilet door slid open when the train braked, so one had to hold onto the door, while squatting over the toilet and holding onto one's trowsers with the other hand, to stop them slipping into the wet.

Just when the train was full to bursting, women selling every kind of food, except vegetables, climbed into the train and pushed their way through the crowds calling their wares in high fluting bird-like voices. Four women hauled up four large plastic cooling containers and several sacks of crushed ice. They proceeded to fill plastic tube-like bags with luridly coloured sweetened coconut milk and crushed ice. People bought and bought and the four women took it in turns to fill the bags and to take them up and down the train. In a few hours they sold almost all their ice. Other women were selling sausages cooked inside bamboo canes, steamed buns with meat fillings, grilled meat and rice and all manner of sweet jelly. The only things that looked safe to buy for a vegetarian were the fruit and nuts. We survived on a diet of tangerines, dried bananas, nuts, biscuits and a couple of squashed current buns that I'd bought the day before, all washed down with tepid water.

We noticed that the sky train was being extended to the south of Bangkok and the high rise buildings were already sprouting up. The countryside at this point was scrubby and desolate. Eventually we came to an area of emerald green rice fields, studded with tall palm trees. By afternoon we were travelling through a national park with jagged topped hills, like rows of broken teeth, brilliant rice fields and forests.  Later in the afternoon we entered a land of agribusiness with wall to wall palm oil palm and rubber plantations. It started to rain.

 The rain grew heavier and heavier and we began to pass flooded fields, rivers bursting their banks, trees under water, flooded roads and at one point the floodwater came right up to the railway track.

We arrived in Lang Suam in the evening and caught the night train to Hat Yai. We booked reclining seats - which turned out to be the worst possible way to spend a night on the train. Carl was next to a Thai man who kept sliding across onto Carl's seat and I encountered the same problem with a Thai girl in the next seat to mine. We spent the night trying to push our respective companions back onto their seats. the train stopped at numerous stations, where loud announcements would have woken us if we'd been asleep, and people getting on the train opened the door to the corridoor, letting in a howling gale and failed to shut it, so I had to keep getting up to shut the door.

Hat Yai is the last city before the border with Malaysia, so it caters for all the Malaysians who want sex, alcohol and general depravity that the Thai know how to provide so well. At 6.30am the city was dead, most of the shops and bars shut, the revellers asleep.

We walked out of the station in Hat Yai, looking for a bus. We walked a good hour before spotting one - or rather a bus saw us - and stopped and picked us up. It was going to the last town before the border. The driver looked exhausted with bags under his sad eyes. When we left the bus we went to buy drinks. A car stopped as we were drinking and offered us a lift to the border.

At the border, foot passengers follow a covered walkway, surrounded by smooth lawns, picnic tables, trees and flowers. The Malysian official stamped our passports with 90 days visa at no charge. It was the most painless border crossing in Asia that I've ever made.

Penang

Malaysia is governed by Malays but the banking system is run by the Chinese. Penang has the highest concentration of Chinese anywhere in Malaysia. There is also a large Indian population. Most of the Indians are Hindoo, the Chinese are Christian, Shinto and Buddhist but the official religion, and that of the Malays, is Muslim. So Mosques, Buddhist, Shinto and Hindoo temples justle for space, while on the bus veiled Muslim women stand next to Chinese girls in shorts and high heels.