| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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When we thought we were asking for three seats we were requesting three
bowls of seafood with noodles. Well, so it goes. It was tastier than
yesterday's roti.
After breakfast we headed out for the local botanical gardens.
This is a 75-acre valley. As we got out of the taxi there were kids
selling bags of peanuts to feed to the monkeys. The gardens are mostly
jungle. Not jungle like we saw in Northern Thailand that looked a lot
like a North American forest. This was more rain forest with
broadleafed plants and exotic creatures. There were a number of nature
trails into the jungle. As we were walking I saw a four-inch green
scorpion walking in a gutter. I started to take a picture and Steve
jumped in front and got two or three shots. Then he moved out of the
way and I started to get the picture. 'Buzz,' my camera told me I
needed a flash. I popped up the flash and waited for the light to come
on. And waited. By the time the flash was ready the scorpion had
hidden himself under a cement block. I considered asking Steve to pull
him back out but decided it wasn't any use. We walked a nature trail
but saw no animals. Most of the animals we saw were in the concrete
gutters. We saw a small and harmless snake. We saw ants at least an
inch long and daintily articulated so you could see every part. It was
sort of like seeing 'The Visible Ant.'
The big attraction was the monkeys who were smart enough to come
out of the jungle into the more park-like areas of the gardens. We had
peanuts but could not compete for their attentions with some Japanese
tourists who'd brought the local bananas, which were about four inches
in length--just about the right size for a monkey with a sweet tooth.
When the Japanese had gone, some of the monkeys stayed around to
take our peanuts. There were young monkeys, and mothers with babies
clinging to their chests, and some of the braver males. We soon
discovered that they would pretend to be interested in the peanuts we
were handing out but would grab for the bag and pull at it with
unexpected strength. I was the first to be so mugged by the monkeys and
I only let it happen once. I warned the others and Evelyn never got
mugged. (That's not surprising for anyone who knows her.) Steve was
mugged at least twice. Once he was taken by a surprise attack in spite
of my warning. Once he knowingly left a bag of peanuts in the open to
watch the monkey take it. First he stole my scorpion picture; then he
contributed to the delinquency of a monkey. In his defense I should
also point out that he yelled at some local school boys who were
throwing rocks at the monkeys. They stopped until we moved on or they
thought we weren't looking. We might have thrown rocks at the boys, but
were a little afraid the law would be on their side.
After the botanical gardens we took a taxi to Penang Hill. This
hill is about 2800 feet high overlooking Georgetown--the city of Penang
Island. There is a funicular railway going up the side. I got a soda
when we arrived and in that much time we missed the railway up and had
to wait for the next one about a half hour later. We sat down to rest.
After while we were on the railway. There are really two trains
that meet halfway up the hill. In this way they can have a train leave
each half hour for what is a half hour trip. As you go up the railway
you get increasingly better views of Penang island. For the first
stretch we talked to a Malaysian of Indian extraction who'd been up
three times and was taking a friend up for the first time. Somehow I
found I felt comfortable talking to him and only while talking did I
realize that in spite of being Indian he looked a great deal and had
many of the mannerisms of my cousin Aaron. He was more darkly
complected but he really looked a lot like he could have been from my
cousin's family. Anyway, he was affable. He asked how we liked the
local food. I said we liked it. He asked if it wasn't too spicy. I
said that at homer I had a reputation for liking food spicy but in
Thailand I'd had a couple of dishes that were too spicy even for me.
For the sake of my honor I ate them and pretended nothing was wrong. He
thought that was funny.
On the second stretch we found ourselves sharing our car with,
among others--there were about ten to a car--an older British couple
from Derby. He had been stationed at Butterworth during the war when it
was an RAF base. He was, as he said, a cryptographer. He broke down
under questioning, however. He did not actually get to Malaysia until
after the Japanese surrendered. He was not exactly what I would call a
cryptographer either. He decoded what were then increasingly rare
encoded British messages. He decoded them by formula rather than by
actually trying to break any encoded messages from the enemy.
At the top of the hill it was supposed to be several degrees cooler
and it probably was about ten degrees cooler, but that wasn't enough to
make it comfortable. We took some shots of the city below. There was
also a small mosque at the top of the hill. On the way back I talked
more to the Derby couple. He had been an accountant for the British
Railway and talked about how precise and exact he had to keep the books.
After this we headed back toward the city. We took a cab and
talked to the driver about the elections. To nobody's surprise, the
National Front had won. As I later read about the election, the DAP
party--which represented local Chinese interests--was in disarray. A
popular young politician whom everybody expected to be the future of the
DAP had just resigned. With our government, the leaders have to look
like the best alternative to the people every four years or they get
voted out. In Malaysia's parliamentary government, the prime minister
just has to have his party look good over a fairly long interval, like
thirty years. When he thinks he looks good, he dissolves Parliament and
holds new elections. With the DAP floundering suddenly the Prime
Minister decided it was a good time to hold elections. All over Penang
we saw political ads and cartoons saying, 'This is our only chance to
vote out the National Front.' Well, DAP did make gains in Parliament,
but to nobody's surprise the Prime Minister won the election. Penang
tends to feel they get very little of their tax money coming back from
the government since they tend to back the DAP rather than the
government.
Our next stop was the Penang Museum, a museum of the history and
culture of the island. We had saved this for the hot part of the day
since the guide book said it was air-conditioned. It turned out to be a
small museum with some rooms air-conditioned and some not.
You start with a display of the founding and political history of
the island. Then you go to a section that still has some history, like
a newspaper reporting two rival Chinese gangs, the Teh and the Ghee,
fighting and putting the whole island under siege. One of the guide
books said there were displays of the Tong Wars and if there were any,
this was it, but if so I am not sure these could be called the Tong
Wars. The Tongs, if I remember right, were a single secret society,
like the Mafia. Today the Tongs are still around but they are more
generally called the Triads. In some cases, Triad societies are only
fraternal; more often they are a criminal syndicate featuring Mafia-like
loyalty ordeals. The same newspaper had an article claiming that Jews
were trying to lead believers away from the true Islamic faith. This
was in the 1800s. I did not realize that ill feelings between Muslims
and Jews went that far back. I thought it might have happened
considerably earlier and somewhat later, but I would have thought there
would have been no reason why 19th Century Malaysian Muslims hated Jews.
If one of these two gangs represented the Tongs, there was no such
indication. Other exhibits included a Chinese opium bed, a section on
Chinese opera, a display of railway history, and another on building the
funicular railway up Penang Hill. They had the Rolls Royce that one of
their dignitaries was assassinated in. One room upstairs was devoted to
the kris, a Malaysian style of dagger. The kris is a very special sort
of dagger as important in Malay culture as the samurai sword is in
Japanese. Its odd shape makes it look inconvenient to use when, in
fact, its shape has been described as being ideal for its function. It
is generally twelve to sixteen inches long and highly decorated. It is
bound up in mythology and mysticism. Tradition says each man must have
several, including one he inherits from his forefathers, one he is given
by his father-in-law, and one that is his own. They are ornately
decorated. There are whole rituals for how a kris must be made. Each
kris must have a wooden hilt, also highly decorated. Some krises have
straight blades, others have wavy blades. There is a great deal to
understand about the kris and all its features, and very few real
experts. The kris room would have been one of the major attractions if
the museum had we known we were going to see it and had sufficient
materials to study the kris beforehand. There was, however,
insufficient information at hand for more than modest interest for us.
(The new 'golden' dollar coins show a picture of a kris and its
scabbard, incidentally.) There was also a modest art museum.
Because most of this museum was actually not air-conditioned we
were quite hot and getting hungry, so we decided to head out for a haven
of cool air, the Komtar Centre. Sad to say, we had lunch at A&W where
cold root beer tasted surprisingly good. We also had chili dogs. After
recharging our batteries, Evelyn and I went our separate way from Steve
to see some of the shop-houses of Penang. I got a good price on a stick
puppet to decorate the house. Evelyn went into a used bookstore and
found a very rare piece of Sherlockia, one of the Mycroft Holmes novels
of H. F. Heard. This one was nearly impossible to find. This would be
a good area to look for used books. Since they have much slower supply
and slower demand they might well have some low demand books that have
become rare in the United States and have sat on the shelves a long time
here.
Some of what is sold in the shops is as common as toothbrushes and
razor blades or dinner. Some is more exotic. One store advertises '4
DIGIT NUMBERS FORECAST.' Where else could you turn a random number
generator into a business? Kind of like the old cartoon of a bum with a
pocket calculator and a sign reading, 'Square roots--5 cents.'
We returned to the Cathay. We'd kept one room for a half-day so we
could all get together and clean up. Steve got back first, Evelyn and I
second, and Barbara and Binayak about an hour later. We shared another
pomelo. Binayak was anxious to try the local dish 'Chicken rice' so he
led the way for dinner. We found a restaurant shop-house that boasted
'Famous Chicken Rice.' It turned out to be a fairly uninteresting dish.
It was just what it said without any interesting sauce. Binayak, who
led the way, was the greatest critic, in fact. We also got some
pastries at a local bakery, checked out of our hotel, and taxied to the
ferry to Butterworth.
We'd been looking forward to the ferry ride after sundown as being
a relief from the heat. No such luck, as it was very hot on board and I
drenched myself in sweat. Barbara complained of bathroom smells, but I
didn't notice.
At the other end you get to a station in Butterworth that is both a
bus and train station. There was a little kid, maybe eight years old, a
lot of personality, asking people where they were going and directing
them how to get there. We said we were taking a train and he gave us
very complete instructions on how to get there. We set up camp in an
open train station, little relief from the heat. Most of our group
walked around. There was a grocery and some shops over in the bus
station and B&B went off that way. I bought a bottle of filtered
mineral water. In Malaysia you cannot get distilled water very easily. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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