Georgetown is the capital of the island of Penang, and it's old town is designated a UNESCO World Heritage site (in fact it is a twinned UNESCO site with Melaka). Georgetown is a famous old port town / trading hub in Malaysia which was once under British colonial rule, and the town still has many British colonial style buildings. It is also a very multicultural place, with a strong Chinese heritage and also a large Indian community, both major influences on the local food.
More recently, Georgetown has also become know for its fantastic street art.
In Georgetown we spent time drinking coffee on Love Lane and wandering the old town, admiring the old Chinese shop houses and looking out for the street art tucked away down small side streets.
The Blue Mansion - this is a historical Chinese house built by the businessman, diplomat, and philanthropist Chong Fatt Tze. He immigrated to Malaysia in the 1800's with nothing, but put his smarts to use and quickly became very rich and influential. The house was kept in the family until the last of his sons died, which wasn't until 1989. When conservationists got hold of the house was full of squatters and it was in quite a state. It was lovingly restored throughout the 90's and its 38 room, 5 courtyards and 7 staircases now house a guest lodge, restaurant and is also open for tours. It is beautiful inside with a traditional open courtyard in the middle where the rain would collect and then drain under the house. We also saw a similar house in Melaka.
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| The Chew Clan Jetties, showcasing another traditional way of life here in Georgetown. |
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| Everyone seems to love Durian! |
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| The streets of Little India |
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| For giggles we also went to a cat cafe (where you can play with cats while drinking tea, #lifegoals), to the old fortress, the camera museum and also an upside down "museum". |
We also went out to Penang National Park and hiked to Turtle Beach. There were turtles there, but unfortunately swimming was prohibited!
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| To give them more of a fighting chance, all the turtle eggs get collected from the beach and are incubated at the turtle centre, then the baby turtles are released to the ocean when they're about 1 week old. |
No review of Georgetown would be complete without mention of the food. There are so many different kinds of food on offer, it's hard to know where to begin! The type of restaurants you will find also depends on the area of town you're staying in. We were staying near little India, and we tried the traditional breakfast of Roti Canai (Roti with curry for dipping) and Roti bakar (traditional bread with a half cooked egg for dunking). Nasi lemak was another traditional meal with rice and peanuts usually served wrapped in banana leaf. More in line with our expectations of Malaysian food, we also tried fantastic laksa, and other staples such as hokien mee and mee goreng. We also went to a famous cafe called China House where they had the most incredible array of delectable cakes!
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| I promise this meal tasted better than it looks (even the blue rice)! |
If I'm honest, while I did enjoy the Malaysian cuisine, I still don't think you can go past the beautiful freshness of Vietnamese. I think my waistline probably agrees with me on that one!
From Georgetown we went to Kuala Lumpur. We stayed in what was possibly the worlds smallest double room- barely bigger than the bed itself, such that getting in to the room required the other person to retreat to the bed (save climbing on top of our luggage)! Anyway, it was cheap and clean enough and in a central location.
We arrived amidst a Chinese festival. We went for a closer look at the crowds and the fireworks and discovered amongst the haze of burning incense a group of frenzied men slicing at their tongues on what looked like saws before dancing in a circle slapping chains against the ground. It was one of the most unusual and disturbing parades I've ever witnessed! Google has suggested that this is in fact the Taoist Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods (or Vegetarian Festival in Thailand).
While in KL we spent time browsing in the giant shopping malls (and enjoying the air conditioning), we went to the bird park, and also to an ecological park in the city with a tree top canopy walk. We sampled several of the fantastic array of street restaurants down Jalan Alor, soaking in atmosphere and pondering the juxtaposition of this old street market against the backdrop of giant skyscrapers.
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| At a street restaurant on Jalan Alor |
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| Making 'fried' ice cream |
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| Discovered that I'm not a big fan of Rojak, a sticky, salty, and vaguely fishy, peanut sauce served over fruit. |
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| I am, however, a fan of Cendol! It is shaved ice with green jelly and red beans served with sugar syrup! Yum! |
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| I wanted to go up the Petronas Towers, but my wallet protested. |
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| Canopy walk |
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| Feeding parrots at the bird park was my favourite. Also, the birds had lots of space to fly around, so the animal activist in me was mostly satisfied. |
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| Clockwise from top right: bustling Central Market; Some of the old buildings around Merdeka Square in KL remain from the time of the British rule; a mosque; a tree top selfie; a gigantic shopping mall full of nice things at European prices that we can no longer afford! |
We decided to break up our time in KL with an overnight trip to Melaka. We got absolutely drenched on the way to the monorail from our guest house, with our raincoats and umbrella proving no match for possibly the heaviest rain I've ever seen, which of course stopped by the time we had reached the train station...
Melaka is similar, yet also very different from Georgetown. The town has Portugese, the Dutch, and then British heritage, and there remains a distinct influence of the former two on the architecture in many parts of the town. We also happened to be there for the celebration of Merdeka, which is their Independence Day. It has been 59 years since they reclaimed the country from British rule.
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| Colourful rickshaws |
I enjoyed my time in Malaysia. It definitely felt like it had more of a western influence, and it is clear the economy must be thriving (as it was certainly the most expensive place we've visited so far)! If I were to visit again, I'd certainly like to explore more of the jungle and island areas, and spend less time in the big cities.
Personally, I also found this part of the trip difficult in the sense that I am itching to get home to my family and also quickly feel like I'm running out of steam, like the humidity is literally sucking the life out of me.
That said, I think we may have saved the best 'til last, as we head off to explore Indonesia for the next four weeks!
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