Tuesday January 29, 2019 in Georgetown, Penang Malaysia.
Penang Island (population 5 million) off the North West Coast of the Malay Peninsula forms part of the Penang State of Malaysia and Georgetown is it’s Capital (with a population of 1 Million). It was named Prince of Wales Island after the future King George IV.
Although there are Chinese records far back to the 16th century it was not until 1592 that the first Englishman James Lancaster set foot on the island. However, it’s modern history dates to the 18th century when Francis Light persuaded the Sultan of Kedah to give the Island to the East India Company. He set up the first of Britain’s possessions in SE Asia and Georgetown (named after the reigning monarch of the UK – King George III) as a Free Port to curb French expansion into indo-China and to entice Dutch merchants trading in the spice and pepper trades principally. The Japanese took over from 1941 to 1945 but otherwise it remained as part of the British Empire until Malaysian independence in 1957.
On July 7, 2008 Georgetown was named (together with Malacca) a World Heritage Site by UNESCO because of it’s unique architectural and cultural townscape.
We obtained Myanmar visas before we departed yet the ship said they had to obtain the visas for all passengers, and needed 2 photographs from of us. Not knowing this we had to arrange for pictures and thus miss the tour. However, as it worked out we hired a taxi for 3 hours to take us to the photography place and also to give us a tour of the same places on the cruise tour and more which was very successful.
At the one photo place some 7 minutes taxi ride from the quay we encountered at least 20-30 people from the ship who were in the same situation as us. The picture was taken and we were told to return in 1 hour so
we proceeded to the brightly painted Thailand Temple of the reclining Buddha built in Thai Year 2388 – Wat Chayamangkalaran – with it’s gold leaf covered 108 foot reclining Buddha. In front of that enormous Buddha are various other smaller altars with Buddha and all around are funerary niches many with a glass cover so urns were visible and a picture of the deceased. The highly prized and most expensive niches are those directly underneath the Buddha as those souls go straight to heaven. The closer you are to the Buddha the more direct your route to heaven. We witnessed a young 20 year old with a younger girl and an older woman looking for their niche with their deceased cremated relative in the urn. The interesting part was that the urn was covered in a gold and red satin cloth. It was interesting to see and go into the various other buildings on the grounds: the large gilded stupa, the mermaid like goddess in a pond with fish, the 10 meter (30+ foot) long dragons guarding the temple and indeed the other Buddha temples were spectacular. There was an interesting sign which gives the year you were born and the Chinese Zodiac sign associated with that year – Anne is in the year of the rooster and Roger in the year of the tiger. Each of the buildings we entered required the removal of shoes.
We then crossed the street to the Dhammikarama Burmese Buddhist Temple built in 1803 and the oldest on the island. Here the central Buddha was a 15 meter (45+ foot) gold standing Buddha. The sign above the main temple reads – Sasana Vamsa Sima Shrine Hall & International Standing Buddha. Here again there were some dozen buildings / structures on the grounds all beautiful. It is a working Buddhist monastery and monks were all around. One building which was likely the residential building had the typical brown clothing hanging out to dry. Another was the large kitchen and food hall where the monks enjoyed food.
We tried unsuccessfully to go to the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue (Indigo) Mansion which was built in the traditional Hakka-Teochew style in the 1800’s based on the principles of Feng Shui. We arrived at 10AM and misunderstood the man at the door that the tours started at 11. So we got back there about 11:30 only to be told that the next tour started at 2 PM and not at other times. So went to another spectacular mansion – The Pinang Peranakan Mansion At 29 Church Street. (www.pinangperanakanmansion.com.my). The mansion itself was magnificent with its eclectic mix of Scottish Iron work, English tiles and Chinese carved wood panels. However, the contents were truly mind blowing. One of the halls was filed with well over 2,000 pieces of intricately made gold jewelry and trinkets, anther Hall had several hundred elaborately stitched garments all with gold strands embroidered to the cloth with red stitching and depicting animals and other intricate patterns. The jade, the furniture all inlaid with mother of pearl, the various dining, sitting and bedrooms not only with the finest furniture and gold but marble statues and innumerable other works if art. The gold and cloth collections though were truly unique and spectacular. It was built at the end of the 19th century by one of the local famous personalities, the “Hai Kee Chan” (Sea Remembrance Store) as a store but ended as the residence of Kapitan Cima Chung Keng Kerr.
We stopped and went into the rather simply / understated Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption, beautiful in it’s way with side chapels to Our Lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of Fatima.
We also visited the Te Kwan I’m Teng temple with a queue of some 30 men all lined up outside waiting to be served their tea. The central altar had 5 figures but as this temple is not usually on the tourist route but in the center of a local district we were not able to understand much about the who, what, when and why. Very elaborate roof carvings and internal wood carvings were everywhere. Another beautiful temple.
As we travelled the streets past graveyards, churches, glass condominiums etc were were struck how many colonial large houses / mansions were present and it looked like a prosperous city. Of note is the three dimensional street art that is everywhere. One of the more famous is a bicycle cemented into a wall with painted riders on the wall behind.
While we were visiting the museums and temples with our taxi driver, Judy was with the tour group which after visiting the reclining and Standing Buddha temples saw the clan jetties, so called as they are piers erected by seven families and used as their homes. Descendants of the Org, Lin, Chew, Tan, Lee, New and Yeah families still live in these jetties. The tour then went to the Botanical Gardens and also toured the city.
Overall, a terrific day and back to the ship ready for a 2PM sailing towards our next port – Phuket,Thailand.
The day though was not over as there were two lectures and a port talk before dinner with a friend of Judy’s Althea who is president of the WREN’s and had been with the Foreign Office in Singapore for 3 postings and her traveling companion Veronica also with the foreign office who had lived in Muscat Oman for some 10 years. Both very interesting and well travelled educated and erudite ladies.
The first lecture by Nigel Cox was on recent developments in Malaysian Politics. He discussed the creation of the ruling political party UMNO – United Malaysian National Organization. He then discussed and told stories about the various prime ministers. With the First Prime MInister being – Tuku Abdul Rahman (1903-1990) who was very pro-western and anti communist. He took office at the time of independence through 1970 when Tun Abdul Rasak Hussein (1922-1976) took over until 1976. At which point Tun Hussein Ohn took over from 1976 to 1981; followed by Dr Makathir through 2003 and Abdullah Badawi to 2009 and finally Najib Razak until a couple of weeks ago.
Another interesting point he discussed was the many “Loan Words” in English that come from Malay – Paddy, Ratan, Bamboo, Orangutang, Junk (as in boat), Sarin, Amok to name a few.
The Phuket lecture described the 2 tours one to Phi Phi Islands for a beach and swim / snorkeling time and the other which we plan on taking to Phang Nga by Longtail boat. This was followed by Sandy Primrose (the biologist) talking about plants that affected the economies of the world and particularly those that affected this area most. These include Rubber, Quinine, Gutta-Percha and palm tree oil.
Quinine comes from the Cinchona Bark and the British East India Company spent £100,000 (now about £20 Million) on propagation of Quinine to be used as medicine to combat malaria all over the British Empire. The Dutch, growing mostly in Java has much greater yields and made it a business.
Rubber originally from Amazonia in Brazil thus its name – Hevea Brasilensis comes from tapping trees that are over 7 years old to get the latex which is not that usable so sulphur or other chemicals are added to make it more pliable over the long term. Many industrialists started using it with the auto tire businesses – Goodyear, Michelin and others being the key users. The growth was exponential but has been greatly reduced with synthetic materials. One acre of rubber trees will produce about 1 ton of latex and trees last for about 20 years after their initial tapping.
Gotta-Percha is a slightly different kind of rubber (Palaquium gutta). Two of the main uses were in the manufacture of Golf Balls and insulation of copper wires. Now it’s use is limited to dentistry.
Palm oil dates back
to Egyptian times 3000BC. Today it is used in a variety of ways and it’s growth is becoming a problem as great tracts of land are being cleared to plant the single oil palm species. Plantations in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia are very large each one being the size of Wales or the State of Massachusetts!
Tomorrow Phuket, Thailand
Roger & Anne Travels 