sunburnt and dosa-stuffed (two days in Penang)
It's 2 a.m. and a late-night cup of teh tarik [sweet, milky tea "pulled" from one metal pot into another before being served] has left me unable to sleep. I'm back in KL--my last night at the guesthouse I've called home here. The facilities are very basic, but the owners, Jo and Suzy, have been incredibly welcoming and have made my stay here really lovely (the most recent of many examples: when I arrived from Penang, starving, at 11:30 this evening--three hours late due to holiday traffic--Jo took me out to the hawker center on the corner and sat with me until my food came just so that he could be sure that they gave me the best kind of fried rice). The short version of the last few days: Penang has its charms but is generally kind of an awful place. The longer version follows.
I arrived in Georgetown, the main city on Pulau Pinang (Penang island) and Malaysia's second-largest city, at 10:30 on Monday night. To get to the budget hotel area, I shared a cab with Leo and Paul, two Czech guys vacationing in SE Asia before heading to New Zealand (oddly, I've met more travelers from the Czech Republic than from any other country on this trip). They were sort of like a Czech Penn and Teller, except that instead of one being small and silent they were both very large (one affable, one silent). Also, no magic tricks. When we got to Lebuh Chulia, one of the main thoroughfares in central Georgetown, I was very glad to have their company--it was immediately clear that the street, in addition to housing most of the city's backpacker-friendly accomodations, was also the heart of the red light district. In SE Asia, this means large groups of very young prostitutes on every street corner and many, many 50-something white guys with bad hairpieces--a depressing and disturbing picture, and one that I was (perhaps stupidly) surprised to find in Malaysia, although it came as no surprise to me in Thailand last year.
Having been dropped on a streetcorner, Leo, Paul and I began our own Long March: one hour, ten guesthouses, zero empty rooms. Initially, I was slightly concerned about our collective inability to distinguish legitimate backpacker lodgings from brothels masquerading as hotels. However, it quickly became clear that my concern was completely unfounded; no one had any empty rooms anyway. We finally lucked out when we ran into a group of tall, alarmingly blond backpackers who suggested that we try a hotel a block away. We were lucky to get there in time to secure the last two empty rooms--and while the hotel had thin walls and depressing, windowless rooms, it was extremely clean and had both real toilets and hot water.
The next morning Penang looked totally different, the prostitutes having been replaced by vegetable hawkers and fried noodle stands. Apparently Penang is much more Chinese than most of Malaysia, and almost all of central Georgetown could be considered Chinatown--full of somewhat ramshackle two-storey wo0den houses with brightly-painted shutters. I imagine that for most of the year this neighborhood is a vibrant and interesting one. Unfortunately, it being Chinese New Year, the neighborhood was mostly a closed one. I wandered the streets for a while, noticing the lovely old buildings and the piles of shit on the street, the delicious smells from the hawker stands and the rotting garbage in the deep, open gutters. I've read that Malaysia hopes to achieve "first world" status--whatever they mean by that very vague term--by 2020; while the nation's rapid modernization is easy to see in KL, in Georgetown it's far easier to find examples of just how much still needs to be improved.
Penang has some lovely historical sites--an excellent history museum housed in an old colonial school building; the stunning, recently restored Cheong Fatt Sze mansion, former home to the "Rockefeller of China"--and my visits to these were the highlight of my two days there. I also enjoyed wandering around Little India--two streets contained within the borders of Chinatown--watching vendors construct flower garlands, munching on delicious masala dosas, and flipping through crates of pirated Bollywood DVD's. On the edge of Little India stands a beautiful Indian-style mosque dating from the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century. The call to prayer--issued through megaphones--fills the surrounding streets with sound, making them seem almost to pulsate; it was gorgeous and overwhelming as I walked nearby on Tuesday evening, and a beautiful wake-up call, muffled only slightly by the walls of my hotel room, early this morning.
I arrived in Georgetown, the main city on Pulau Pinang (Penang island) and Malaysia's second-largest city, at 10:30 on Monday night. To get to the budget hotel area, I shared a cab with Leo and Paul, two Czech guys vacationing in SE Asia before heading to New Zealand (oddly, I've met more travelers from the Czech Republic than from any other country on this trip). They were sort of like a Czech Penn and Teller, except that instead of one being small and silent they were both very large (one affable, one silent). Also, no magic tricks. When we got to Lebuh Chulia, one of the main thoroughfares in central Georgetown, I was very glad to have their company--it was immediately clear that the street, in addition to housing most of the city's backpacker-friendly accomodations, was also the heart of the red light district. In SE Asia, this means large groups of very young prostitutes on every street corner and many, many 50-something white guys with bad hairpieces--a depressing and disturbing picture, and one that I was (perhaps stupidly) surprised to find in Malaysia, although it came as no surprise to me in Thailand last year.
Having been dropped on a streetcorner, Leo, Paul and I began our own Long March: one hour, ten guesthouses, zero empty rooms. Initially, I was slightly concerned about our collective inability to distinguish legitimate backpacker lodgings from brothels masquerading as hotels. However, it quickly became clear that my concern was completely unfounded; no one had any empty rooms anyway. We finally lucked out when we ran into a group of tall, alarmingly blond backpackers who suggested that we try a hotel a block away. We were lucky to get there in time to secure the last two empty rooms--and while the hotel had thin walls and depressing, windowless rooms, it was extremely clean and had both real toilets and hot water.
The next morning Penang looked totally different, the prostitutes having been replaced by vegetable hawkers and fried noodle stands. Apparently Penang is much more Chinese than most of Malaysia, and almost all of central Georgetown could be considered Chinatown--full of somewhat ramshackle two-storey wo0den houses with brightly-painted shutters. I imagine that for most of the year this neighborhood is a vibrant and interesting one. Unfortunately, it being Chinese New Year, the neighborhood was mostly a closed one. I wandered the streets for a while, noticing the lovely old buildings and the piles of shit on the street, the delicious smells from the hawker stands and the rotting garbage in the deep, open gutters. I've read that Malaysia hopes to achieve "first world" status--whatever they mean by that very vague term--by 2020; while the nation's rapid modernization is easy to see in KL, in Georgetown it's far easier to find examples of just how much still needs to be improved.
Penang has some lovely historical sites--an excellent history museum housed in an old colonial school building; the stunning, recently restored Cheong Fatt Sze mansion, former home to the "Rockefeller of China"--and my visits to these were the highlight of my two days there. I also enjoyed wandering around Little India--two streets contained within the borders of Chinatown--watching vendors construct flower garlands, munching on delicious masala dosas, and flipping through crates of pirated Bollywood DVD's. On the edge of Little India stands a beautiful Indian-style mosque dating from the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century. The call to prayer--issued through megaphones--fills the surrounding streets with sound, making them seem almost to pulsate; it was gorgeous and overwhelming as I walked nearby on Tuesday evening, and a beautiful wake-up call, muffled only slightly by the walls of my hotel room, early this morning.
posted by Sara at 1:33 AM
1 Comments:
I feel like I should have warned you. I was hesitant. I thought maybe it had just been me. I figured all other hostels must have been better than D'Budget Hostel. I hoped that you would've had a better time. But despite the rumours of tasty hawker food, Penang had also left a sour taste in my mouth.
That being said, I wouldn't have exchanged my experience there for anything - it was the first place I'd ever been parasailing.
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