Further Wanderings

It’s always so nice arriving in a city and already knowing your way around.

Since we’d spent a day on the island of Penang in transit between Thailand and Indonesia, we had no troubles finding our way to a nice hotel, getting booked in and setting about enjoying the place.

Lens at the Penang Lighthouse

Most of our time in Penang was spent just walking around Georgetown (the largest city on the island) and its surroundings. There weren’t a whole lot of real “highlights” but it was a generally pleasant place, and a few things stood out:
Historical Penang: Because of its prominent position in the Straits of Malacca, its position as the first British trading post in Southeast Asia, and the large numbers of immigrants that these factors attracted Penang had a lot of history behind it. Whether it was brightly coloured Chinese shophouses to ornate south Indian temples to impressive Acehnese mosques, to beautifully preserved colonial residences, to postmodern highrise hotels, a wander around Penang pretty much always produced architecture worth stopping to take a closer look at.

While many of Penang’s colonial era houses were well preserved, many others were crumbling or had been put to use as used car lots, recycling depots or for other incongruous purposes

Chinese immigrants have played a large part in Malaysia’s history, perhaps nowhere more prominently than in Penang where dozens of their spectacularly ornamented temples are still actively used

The Kapitan Keling Mosque at night

All of Penang’s history was also on show at the Penang museum. I’d actually been there on my previous (very short) trip to Malaysia in 2004, but due to a tight schedule and near exhaustion after an uncomfortable overnight train trip, didn’t remember it that well. The museum wasn’t huge, but had interesting, well presented exhibits with loads of interpretive text that was interesting enough to keep one from wandering off in the middle of a paragraph. If one were to criticize the museum, it would only be for portraying an unrealistically rosy view of the island’s history (and for the audio-visual /interactive section being closed. I’m not sure if this was a continuation of its 2004 closure, or a new one though…)

Sarah climbing the steps to Penang Lighthouse. Penang is more about a lot of little (free) attractions like the lighthouse, with nice views out over the town, than one or two big ones. I’m convinced that one of the reasons Penang has made itself into such a successful tourist destination is that it doesn’t try to grab every cent from visitors, and allows their numbers and the money they spend on food, lodging, transport, etc. for a financial contribution

Aside from the city itself we also took a wander out to the botanical gardens. Or attempted to anyway. We didn’t have a good map of the outskirts of Georgetown, so we ended up wandering into a large park adjacent to the gardens on the slopes of Penang Hill. Which was actually fortunate, as it meant that we ran into a group of Malaysian walkers who encouraged us to climb a bit higher (Sarah was getting a bit tired by this point) to “Point #3,” from where we enjoyed great views out over the island and joined them for DELICIOUS Malaysian coffee, Chinese tea, deep fried jackfruit and local biscuits. We were also invited to join their card game, but given that the extent of my understanding of the rules was “it’s kind of like baccarat. Or maybe Blackjack. Or something,” we took a pass.

Penang from near “Point #3.” Development near the ocean did tend to sprawl a bit, but the forest its centre still kept much of its wild feel

Though we’d seen lots of monkeys on our trip by this point, I couldn’t resist including a picture of the tiny baby we spotted on our way down from Penang Hill

As you may recall from reading previous entries, we’d actually re-arranged our route to bring us back to Penang in time for the Asian Dragon Boat Championships and the World Dragon Boating Club Championships. Although there was plenty of ocean to paddle in, the events were held in a lake behind a dam, well out of town. There wasn’t really any place to sit near the water and watch the races, but you did get a nice overview from up above the lake near where the team tents (dozens upon dozens of them) were set up. I’d always known that dragon boating was popular in Canada, but had never really realized the extent of it until noticing that some 39 of the 200 or so teams competing in the club events were from my home country (they did pretty well too: the first event we saw medal presentations for was swept by Canadian clubs.)

Dragon Boats by the pontoon

A race in progress! There were dozens upon dozens of team tents, but not really any arrangements made for spectators. Still a fun time though

While the activities above pretty much filled up our days, the evenings were, as usual, spent on the quest for the best of Penang’s cheap eats. Although it’s a bit misleading to call it a quest, as we ate at the Sri Ananda Bahwan vegetarian restaurant our first night there, and for more than half of our subsequent meals as well. The south Indian thalis (set meals,) dosa (thin crepe-like bread with dipping sauces) and roti canai (paratha with a thin curry sauce) were all very, very good and cheap as well.

Georgetown’s Little India. Every night on our way to dinner we’d pass through this lively part of town, with the video/CD stores blaring Indian music, and the Bollywood film posters and silk saris in shopfronts decorating the streetscapes

Other food highlights were a tasty (and very “authentic”) dim sum brunch at a Chinese restaurant near our hotel (complete with “no spitting” signs on the walls) and coffee at a traditional Kedai Kopi (literally “coffee shop” but really more of a collection of food carts set around the walls of an indoor premise with a collection of round, marble topped tables in the middle.)

Mmm… Dim sum

While our three days in Penang were spent at a relaxed pace, they seemed like enough to get a nice taste of the place before moving on to our next stop: the Cameron Highlands.

Headed back to the mainland from Penang. Interestingly, I’ve now seen the sunrise from the deck of this ferry twice… once on arrival in 2004, and this time on departure

While we’d enjoyed some lovely cool weather in the Sumatran hills, returning to Malaysia had also returned us to the stifling sea level heat and humidity. The Cameron Highlands, an old British hill station some 1300m above sea level were a welcome relief from this.

The bus trip from Butterworth (the mainland town immediately opposite Penang Island) to Tanah Rata in the highlands took about 4 hours (the wonders of a smallish country with good roads.)

Me holding some rambutan (they grew yellow ones in the Cameron Highlands!) Note the giant vegetables, including a cabbage in the background. This was the second giant cabbage in under a week! (the first being in Berastagi, Indonesia)

Me and the “steamboat” of the entry’s title. This cook-it-yourself hot-pot soup type meal (available with chicken or mmm… tom yum broth) was spectacularly popular at the Cameron Highlands’ restaurants

Our room in Tanah Rata. Obviously we made ourselves right at home

Given its popularity with both foreign and domestic tourists, finding a place to stay once we arrived was a breeze, and we were never at a loss to find a good, inexpensive place to eat (the 7 ringit (about $2.25) tandoori chicken set meals at several different Indian restaurants on the main street were very tasty and a great deal.)

Some places are just made for lazing about doing nothing. Tanah Rata wasn’t one of them. Despite the relaxingly cool weather, the pleasant gardens at our guesthouse, and the well developed tourist infrastructure, I often felt like I was struggling to find something to do while in Tanah Rata.

While it wasn’t flush with sights and activities, there was just enough in the surrounding hills to keep us busy for our couple of days there:

Our first day we took the bus to the neighbouring town of Kea Farm (whose name I loved, because it sounded as though they bred New Zealand alpine parrots there) to have a look at the nearby rose garden and butterfly farm. The roses weren’t really heavily in bloom at that time of year, but the owner still trotted out of his house, excited to have some visitors, and kindly showed us around the grounds, pointing out this and that interesting plant.

The butterfly farm wasn’t quite as advertised either, being more of a zoo than a farm, but the hundreds (thousands?) of butterflies and the many other insects, arthropods, amphibians and reptiles on display actually made it more enjoyable than I’d been expecting (particularly memorable were the HUNDREDS of scorpions in a big enclosure near the entrance.)

Sarah petting a three-horned rhinoceros beetle

A butterfly feeding. There were HUNDREDS of this one big, beautiful species at the butterfly farm, most of them obviously on their last legs… er… wings. Apparently they’d just finished mating and laying eggs and were all expiring at once during our visit

Beyond being a tourist haven, the Cameron Highlands are also known for their agriculture. From flowers to strawberries, to tea, just about everything was grown there. And while many of the farms (especially the strawberry ones… there were even strawberry parathas for sale, for heavens sake) had some tourist element, the only ones really worth visiting were the tea estates.

Picking tea. Unlike in Bangladesh (where it was harvested by hand) Malaysian tea was cut or mechanically trimmed from the top of the pruned and manicured “tables”

This was especially true of the Boh estate. The tea garden was pretty, and while the factory “tour” consisted of being let into the building to look at the machines for a few minutes then watching a video, it was still pretty neat. In addition, the walk there and back was at least the equal of the estate visit, following a well maintained path through the Malaysian jungle alongside a rapidly dropping stream and its several waterfalls, as well as a few kilometres of winding country road through the agricultural heart of the Camerons. (Though if you are planning to walk out there yourself, keep in mind that while the walk is pleasant, it’s considerably farther than the Lonely Planet Malaysia guidebook would have you believe.)

Robinson Falls on the way through the jungle down to the Boh tea estate

Jungle flora alongside the path on the way to the tea estate . The easier of the jungle trails in the Cameron Highlands see a lot of traffic, but step onto one of the tougher ones and you’d never realize the place sees tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors a year

While the Camerons weren’t the most exciting place I’d ever been, they were a very pleasant retreat from the heat, which I suppose is what a hill station is all about. And, with this in mind, and given my soggy, diesel breathing, illness suffering times in Darjeeling, I suppose the Cameron Highlands are tops as far as Hill Stations go

We never quite figured out quite what these huge fluorescent incense sticks in Penang were about… doubtless connected with the (closed at the time) Chinese temple nearby

Tags: Cameron Highlands, Llew Bardecki, Malaysia, Penang, Tanah Rata, Travel

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