and the road was a properly tarmaced dual carriageway, passing palm trees for as far as the eye could see. Palm oil now seems to be the staple product of Malaysia, mono culture on a huge scale for mile upon mile, and definitely not good for the environment.....
I was visiting friends in Penang, so eventually I arrived and was met off the bus. After a quick swim in their pool we went out to the local hawker stalls for dinner...
The fish was fabulous...
Then the next day we explored and did the tourisy things. We visited the Blue Mansion.... The restored nineteenth century home of Cheong Fatt Tze, a Chinese merchant - "one of China's last Mandarins and first capitalists". The house is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and also a boutique hotel. A mixture of nineteenth century British and Asian heritage..... So beautiful.
We explored Georgetown by rickshaw
And saw all the sights
This had seen better days...
Our rickshaw man took us to Little India for lunch. The food was fabulous!
Another day we went to Penang Hill... Got the funicular train up.....
It was misty at the top
It is showing its age now unfortunately.... However this house was like an English country cottage complete with roses round the door
All very colonial... Complete with VR postbox!
We stopped to look at a nearby house and suddenly a van pulled up and two guys jumped out, reaching down for something only a few feet away from where we were standing......
Scorpion...! They pushed and prodded and put him in the bag with the others they had collected, and the sped off. We hadn't noticed it at all, but were very glad that it had been safely taken away! Scorpion patrol perhaps?!
Another day we went to the National Park and walked through beautiful jungle to a beach just past a natural meromictic lake, one of less than 20 in the world. Even though I'm a geographer I had to look up the meaning of "meromictic"! Apparently the lake is made up of an upper cooler layer of fresh water, fed from several surrounding streams and from rainfall. Below is a denser layer of salt water which comes from the sea. Usually at a river mouth or a delta, both kinds of water will mingle, creating diluted sea water, but here due to the natural geography of the area this doesn't happen. The monsoon wind creates a sandy embankment protecting the lake from the sea and this is broken down by wave action around September each year. During low tides and dry seasons, the lake evolves into a field of mudflats with hardy, terrestrial grass. Some fish have adapted to the unique conditions of the lake, and even when it is dry, plenty of anaerobic micro-organisms survive there. Apparently there are a few scattered boulders in the lake now which were not there before the tsunami hit the area in 2004.
This was the lake when I visited..... Mostly mud flats.
And this the beach... Turtles lay their eggs here, and there is a turtle research station and museum on the beach nestling among the mangroves. Very interesting.
We swam in the sea, lazed on the beach, and got a boat back round the headland to the park entrance where we then caught the bus back home.
The bus went through Batu Ferringhi, the area of Penang where all the tourist hotels are situated. This part of the island was hit by the tsunami and waves crashed into the shore and some of the hotels. But it was not devastated like some of the Thai Islands were. Much of the Penang coastline to the west is protected by mangroves so they helped to minimise the impact, and in many places now they are actively encouraging mangrove and other natural means of protection from the sea.
And this was home.... A flat in a lovely complex with fab pool. This photo was taken just before an incredible thunderstorm.... You can see it in the sky.
And nearby a new shopping mall partly constructed from an old colonial building that had been converted into a school, and was now being preserved in a different guise. It's great to see the blend of old and new, east and west, and the active preservation of some beautiful buildings which are still put to good use....
I went into Georgetown one day on my own, and explored a bit more... This was Fort Cornwallis part of the original settlement in Penang built by the British East India Company in the late eighteenth century.
I also found the old Chinese Clan Boardwalks, originally the home of the many ethnic Chinese who settled in the area.
Penang is a real mixture with different peoples, cultures and religions tolerantly and amicably living side by side. We in the west could learn a lot from south east Asia...
