penang

The island of Penang, just off the west coast of Malaysia, is the oldest British settlement in South East Asia, and has always had a reputation for attracting the bohemian and the adventurous. I'm not surprised; it really is the most charming place, and the longer I'm here in Georgetown (the capital) the more and more the colonial streets, old churches (built with convict labour), and breezy water front are growing on me.

Raj and I are staying in the heart of the China Town area and have been hunting out a few of the sights and local landmarks over the last day or two. On Friday we made our own walking tour around the Colonial District. This incorporated Fort Cornwallis (where Francis Light first landed in 1786, establishing Penang), City Hall, the Padang, the State Assembly Building, the Victoria Memorial Clocktower, St George's Church, the Cathedral of the Assumption, and the Protestant Cemetery (where Light and all the other famous people associated with Penang are buried). I enjoyed the ramparts of Fort Cornwallis the most, and seeing Seri Rambai, an old large cannon which dates back to 1603. Some local women believe leaving flowers by Seri Rambai will help them get pregnant. They call it, 'the big one.'

Have also taken a tour of the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (Cheong Fatt Tze was a wealthy Chinese merchant known during his lifetime as the 'Rockefeller of the East'), which was built in the 1880s. The powder blue, thirty eight room, courtyard mansion is built in line with Feng Shui principles, and cleverly fuses together both Western and Eastern elements, materials, and ideas. The reception hall floor, for example, is made of Stoke on Trent tile, and some of the windows are designed in Art Nouveau style. Our tour guide unravelled the ideas and reasoning behind Feng Shui, and how it had been applied in the Mansion. She was excellent at her job, and deeply interesting to listen to, but also strangely moody. She would periodically tell us that we were falling asleep or not concentrating enough. Her jokes all had to be followed with the sentence: 'that was a joke uh,' which perhaps gives you a subtle indication of their quality.

Just been to the Georgetown sea front and booked two ferry tickets to Pulau Langkawi, a beach resort island north of Penang. This is where Raj and I will spend Christmas and Boxing Day (possibly sleeping on the beach if all the rooms are booked out). We leave tomorrow morning and will be awash on the Straits of Melaka for about two hours. We plan to stay and relax for roughly four or five days, and will then make our way back down to Kuala Lumpur. This is a slight change to our original itinerary which also included jungle walking in Taman Negara before returning to KL. There just isn't going to be time to fit this in. I'll probably go up there on my own after Raj fly's back.

It's around lunchtime, and the warm afternoon awaits me. It will be spent trekking up Penang Hill for a view out over the island. My powers of clairvoyance are telling me that an ice cream will be bought. The bigger the better.