The Penang Weekend

Shots of the wonderful Sire Museum Restaurant. AK and I had flown to Penang for my cousin's wedding. Besides the usual Hawker Pilgrimage that we make - Char Koay Teow at Kimberley Street, Indian mee at Bangkok Lane, charcoal-toasted bread and amazing local coffee at Campbell Street, we also took the opportunity (since my brothers were around as well - that rare occasion when it's akk five of us and AK) to celebrate a belated Mother's Day (and future Father's Day too) at The Sire. I've been wanting to take my family there since 2009, when I first visited the place, courtesy of a lunch invite from an old friend. You can read all about the rich history of this absolutely breathtaking place here and here. I just love the wall garden, the high white ceilings with their exposed beams, the courtyard pool, the Peranakan furnishings and the abundance of natural light, thanks to high windows and a skylight.

Then we celebrated a cousin's wedding at another wondrously beautiful venue. Casuarina trees, whitewashed colonial architechture (think shutter windows, hardwood floors, 70's style mosaic flooring). I'm so happy that Penang can boast of such gorgeous yet unpretentious places. The wedding dinner itself was one of the most fun I've been to in a loong time - everyone was dancing despite the tropical heat (it was an outdoor tent) till midnight and beyond!

Below, some attempts at capturing the beauty of our surroundings that evening.

Notice how much nicer these photos look than my usual junk? That's because my brother took them :) Credit to him, he tried his best to teach me the technicalities of aperture sizes and what not, but 99% of the time my sorry attempts cannot even better the Auto function. Sad, I know.

We did have a wonderful time, and I can't wait for our next trip back.

Penang Street Market Sweets

Chocolate-covered bananas and marshmallow snowmen.

Adorable.

Upper Penang Road Street Market

Owl-inspired jewellery...love the blue earrings

Impossibly delicate handcrafted jewellery. I got meself two pairs of earrings. :)

Peranakan-inspired necklace.

Sentuhan, a business set up to help single women. Soaps of lemongrass, rice bran and all the good stuff, in hand-woven packaging.

And they come in all colours themes.

At the end of the market, a little exhibition of works by young Penang artists. This is my favourite one right here.

Penang Shots

Take the road round the island - from the Bayan Lepas industrial areas, following the main road southwards past the airport, onto the slopes of Balik Pulau. Follow the signs to Teluk Bahang, passing the old town of Balik Pulau and Malay villages, heading back Northwards on the eastern side of the island.

View from the Balik Pulau road, from the hillside. It stretches onto fishing villages, factories towards your left, to the sea.

Keep on the road as it winds its way up and then down the hills, and eventually one narrow lane will diverge into a wider road. You'll see jungles in your right and the drop into a deeper ravine to your left.

You'll soon reach the Teluk Bahang Dam, tucked in between hills still mostly covered in virgin jungle - who knows for how long.

The same road then brings you to the famed tourist belt of Batu Feringghi.

Shot of the Miami beach.

Then take an excursion into Georgetown.

Penang Street Market shots. Antiques (Peranakan porcelain and enamelware, jewellery, old records, beaded clogs), handicraft (handmade pottery, quilts, jewellery, glass sculptures), art, handmade soaps and candles, baked goods, environmentally friendly rice-husk cutlery, potted plants....it's a riotous monthly affair. I wish I could visit it more often.

I could go on.

I will, later.

Bringing Home Home

Phew! I flew ten times this past 2 weeks, but am so happy - because - I was in Penang!! Here's what I did:-

- Ate chilli rempah crab cooked by mum, chilli clams for RM2(!!), LokLok, Char Kuey Kak, popiah - all the best!! And what made my meals even more wonderful, it's mango season now in Penang. Don't you just love seasonal treats? Makeshift mango stalls have mushroomed all over the island, and I have had my fill and more of sweet, succulent slices of sunshine to end all my meals with. Bliss bliss bliss...

- Went a little crazy at the airport over L'occitane products, like my favourite Shea Butter hand cream, a Verbena Eau de Toilette, and the new Cherry Blossom-scented hand cream for mum. Yes, it's nice to give in to my inner girliness once in a while :)

- Bought a dress from French Connection for church; it's shorter, flouncier and more colourful than what I normally wear, but what the heck, am giving it a try. After all, when I'm old and fifty with 4 double chins, tummy flobbing around, am gonna regret not showing off when I could. Erm, did I mention that the dress was purchased with the intention to wear it to church? ;p

- Roamed the streets of Little India (Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling), listening to the thumping but strangely soothing Indian beats....buying up a storm (a turquoise Punjabi Suit with gold filligree patterns, bronze platters with Lotus and Elephant motifs, rosewater for 90 cents(!!) and asoefetida for cooking).

- Finally bought a bit of art - gorgeous recycled paper patterns delicately etched with Javanese figures, and 2 little paintings of Georgetown shophouses. This is what I mean by bringing home home....bits, depictions and momentos of my island hometown to my home now, wherever it may be.

- Stocked up on Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl and Gray's Anatomy

- Gave money to my Grandma and Dom, who will be starting his industrial training next week. Good Luck, Dom!!

If only all weekends were like this. What fun it was, despite the unrelenting island heat.

This weekend, we're off to another island, this time down south....;)

I *Heart* Penang

I love Penang, even with the heat, the pollution, the thrash, the inconsiderate people and the psycho drivers. Here's why:

View of the sun setting from Bukit Genting, a hilltop restaurant at Balik Pulau, where you gotta muster some courage to drive to. I remember trying to coax my Kelisa up an almost 45-degree slope to reach here, AFTER half and hour of winding in and out round the hill road. But once you reach there, the views of the unspoilt beaches of the South, the paddy fields and the mangrove forests are worth all of the jitters. This is a shot rarely seen of my home state. Sorry for the lousy shot, we were a bit late getting the shot and the sun was already on its way down.

The unspoilt, almost secret Pantai Kerachut. It's inaccessible by car, you park at a fishing village in Batu Maung then hike a narrow path to the beach. It's the ONLY beach in Penang where the water is crystal clear on a sunny day, like the undeveloped Malaysian East Coast. The last time I went there, we took a boat half the way and were rewarded by the sight of dolphins!!

You can glimpse monitor lizards and otters too if you're lucky (and very quiet, which my group wasn't). But there's no thrash, no picnicking families and and no jet skis. Most likely just you and nature.

Shots of Bangkok Lane, a row of conservation houses that the tenants so impressively made their own:

Vintage car in one of the driveways. Just completes the look, doesn't it?

Love the way those climber plants wind their way up the walls and pillars of the house, and the look of those wooden shutters.

Window planter boxes.

The ugly drain covers and covered up, and the entire driveway prettied up by a plethora of plants. Pretty sure the owner doesn't own a car though, or parks outside *grin*. Great inspiration for my future house - didn't realise there were so many shades of green :)

I just pray, that with the Unesco World Heritage status, that the people who we put in charge of Penang would do her justice. A true melting pot of Peranakan, Mamak, Eurasians admist the Chinese, Indians and Malays. Where you can find a mosque next to a Chinese Temple. Where Thaipusam is celebrated big time with kavadee carriers, brass milk pots, coconut thrashing and pilgrims from all of the North. Where people happily sit next to a drain to slurp a bowl of laksa. Where goldsmiths, lion dance costume makers, joss stick makers, songkok makers share the same row of shophouses as they did eons ago. Where stately white, wide-pillared colonial buildings meld with the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue Mansion, with the Khoo Kongsi, with the Kapitan Keling mosque. Shophouses where the tiny tiles are little works of art. Stalls that have been there and run by the same uncles, like, forever. No wonder the NY Times recommends Penang as one of the 44 places to visit this year.

So Mr. Lim, I humbly present my suggestions for the good of my beloved home state:

1) For goodness's sake, you gotta improve the public transportation system. Be it dedicated bus lanes with LPG-powered buses, and we are SO in need of a monorail. Penang is tiny - I would think that a monorail would do it so much good without the need for more roads. There's just too many cars on the road now. My family alone owns four cars, for the simple reason that there is just No other alternative. So much productivity is lost in those traffic jams, and ironically Penang's size makes it so simple to do something to overcome this! Low hanging fruit!!

2) Get the taxis to use their meters! Convert them to LPG taxis like in KL, and make their meter use mandatory. I know from talking to so many taxi drivers in KL that they're earning a couple thousand bucks per month, one of main reasons being that LPG is so cheap. It's a damned shame that we have to pay 30 bucks for 8 kilometers worth of driving. If Penang is so small, then up the cost per km a little, but don't suck their blood so as to turn people off that it's a bane to tourism in the state.

3) NO MORE HILLSIDE DEVELOPMENTS!

4) Clean up Sungai Pinang. Singapore and even Malacca cleaned up their river, Penang can do it too, even if it takes 20 years. Move the squatters into low cost housing in the mainland, and plant mangrove trees on its banks.

5) Fine every soul who dares throw thrash outside of a rubbish bin.

6) Give our faithful hawkers good plumbing and waste disposal facilities, make it mandatory for them to use them so they don't throw their waste into the drains.

Some things to keep:

1) Those gorgeous roadside trees that have been there since the British were here. You can't buy these.

2) Pantai Acheh and Kerachut, and Gertak Sanggul. Compared to the overrated BAtu Feringghi, these are unspoilts paradises. Leave them be, accessible only by die hard nature lovers.

3) The Little Penang Street Market, what a wonderful way to bring crafts, cuisine and culture into a little event! I've been luckly enough to go to one and came away totally charmed by the people and the stuff they sold.

4) E & O Hotel, The Blue Mansion, the Khoo Konsi, Kek Lok Si, Beach Street of international banks occupying heritage buildings.

5) Conservation of heritage buildings like those on Millionare's Row, and Bangkok Lane, Nagore Road.

6) Our Botanical Gardens and Durian and Nutmeg Orchards in Balik Pulau

So We Celebrated (Photo Purge)

Yes, I realise I'm a bit late with this post.

Hope everyone had as Happy and Blessed a Christmas as we did.

Brother Grump#2's ingenious Christmas treetop decoration

- to ensure that the heavy ornament did not cause the sparse treetop to bend over,

he suspended it on the overhead beam

Mum's adorable stuffed Gingerbread Man

Santa overseeing the Holy Birth. It's supposed to be a lightbulb to reflect off the holographic layer but Mum decided that it should be Santa instead :)

Brother's got some skill- nice eh?

Trying to get our cheapo tree lights to work without blacking out the house

Our beautiful tree

And some more scenes of KL in the Christmas mood....

The Curve

Pavillion KL

This post is dedicated to my Mum, Christmas-aholic Nonstop Dynamo who worked so hard this year (as she does every year) to ensure that everything is extra special during the festive season.

Christmas would not be Christmas without the last minute frenzied baking, late night wrapping of gifts in Metrojaya and Watson's wrapping paper, Jim Reeves' Carols playing in the house, ultra expensive Turkey with stuffing and no, not cranberry sauce but sambal tumis, and definitely not Christmas without our homemade Eurasian-heritage sugee cake (to be posted soon)

In the words of Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens):

God Bless Us, Every One.