Four Days in Penang

Our next stop was Penang, an island off the western coast of Malaysia. We took a ferry there, found a place to stay, and ate dinner. The next morning I found something that I had long been missing… a bagel with cream cheese. It’s the simple things in life! I referred to this find in my journal as “like, the highlight of this trip” and “I’m having the same breakfast tomorrow…and the next day, and the next day.” I guess I had really been missing Western food.

We spent the day walking around historic Georgetown. The Hindu temple that we went to was closed, but we went into a very beautiful reconstructed Buddhist temple—the Teochew Temple—built in 1870. We went to the first mosque I’ve ever been to—the Kapitan Keling Mosque, where we donned the veil and a long robe to enter. A man with terrible teeth taught us about Islam and its similarities to Christianity. The main part of the mosque was for men only, and we were guided around the outskirts, not allowed to enter the inside, then taken to a small, closed-off room where women can pray. It seemed pretty patriarchal and was a bit unsettling for me. We also passed by a Christian church and the Goddess of Mercy Temple—another Buddhist temple built between 1728 and 1800 and enveloped in clouds of burning incense. The city really is an intersection for various religious cultures.

We spent about an hour in the Penang State Museum, which was filled with information about British occupation of Penang, the island’s role with the East India Company, World War Two, and more. My favorite part of the museum was a small art wing with paintings of the island during British settlement. The bottom floor was devoted to Malay culture and customs, detailing the practices of the different ethnic groups of Malaysia. After the museum, we walked along the Esplanade to Fort Collins, a historic site on the island.

Our second day in Penang was not as interesting. It rained most of the day, and we spent the majority of the day trying to get tickets to take a ferry to Indonesia which was advertised at many businesses and in the Lonely Planet guide. It turned out that the last ferry had run on June 16, 2010. So we had to book a flight to Indonesia instead, for $70. This was one of the more frustrating experiences of the trip, and showed us that even though Lonely Planet comes out with a new edition of their travel book each year, that doesn’t mean that they’ve actually updated anything. Following that debacle, we took a bus to Penang Hill, which offers an excellent view of the city, only to find that it was closed, so we took the bus back. The third day was also a rainy, uneventful day. We spent some time at the mall and went to see Rango. It was the first movie we’d seen the whole trip, with the exception of movies on the plane on the way there. It’s interesting what you go without on a long trip and to discover what you miss (bagels) and what you don’t really miss (movies).

Our last day in Penang ended up being sunny. We took a bus to Batu Feringgi, a beach on the north coast of the island. The beach was beautiful—broad with pebbly, soft sand; flat, clear, blue water; forest-covered hills in the distance; blue sky and finally some sun; and best of all, quiet. There was hardly anyone there. We rented chairs for 5 ringit each and I sat in the sun and read. Malone and I swam for a little while. I was about to get out of the water and was swimming back to the shore when I was stung by a jellyfish. I could feel its individual tentacles swirling around my leg and I tried to swim away from it, but I just swam into it again, its tentacles spikily swarming on me. I ran out of the water and looked desperately in my bag for Benadryl, which, of course, wasn’t there. The welts on my leg began to swell rapidly. Then a stranger appeared (from I don’t know where) with a leaf of aloe vera. He peeled the outer leaf aside and rubbed the cooling goo on my stings. I continued to use the aloe on my leg as a strange, constricting pain—worse than the pain of the sting itself—moved up my leg, into my stomach, my lower back, my chest, my upper back. I was pretty nervous and felt immobile; all I did was sit there for about an hour, enduring the pain, until it went away. When I finally got up, I ran into somebody else who gave me a peppermint oil that really helped ease the pain. I spent the rest of the day in the shade, eating fried rice and reading Tom Robbins.

Shortly before we left the beach, I took a walk. The sun was getting lower in the sky, making everything glittery and warm-colored. The sky was one of the bluest I’ve ever seen, even after all that rain! I picked up a lot of sea glass on the walk and enjoyed the sun on my skin. We got ice cream before taking the bus back to the city. The next morning, we got up early to catch our flight to Indonesia, the last phase of our trip.