Penang

We drove from the Cameron Highlands north to Penang without mishap, fortunately accepting the advice of the locals about which road to take. It was better and shorter than our inbound route. But on the down (in every sense) side, Penang demonstrates customary dangerous Malaysian driving habits on steroids. Georgetown is the main city on Penang island, and the local driving ambience is: run red lights; ignore lane markings; do not signal intention before weaving across lanes; force your way into traffic flow. All this spiced up with numerous motor cycles, some irritatingly slow and some flying through any gap between cars. All this is daunting for the humble AU driver who is worried about local traffic offences or damage to the rental car. But we and the car survived intact.

With the help of our invaluable GPS (whose voice is called Jane and sounds like Nigella Lawson), we arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel (pic below).

This is a trendy modern high rise on the beach, and is part of the Hard Rock Cafe empire. We ate/drank at the Hard Rock Cafe on site. We do not usually engage in such trendiness, but we tolerated the non stop loud pop music for the sake of the happy hour drink specials. The pool was very refreshing after a hot day of tourism (pic below).

Our first major Penang event was the Malaysian cooking class, held at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel (E&O), a grand establishment dating from British colonial times (pic below).

The class occupied a morning, starting with a visit to the local market to buy fresh ingredients. While there we saw preparation of the thin spring roll skins (pic below).

Then followed much chopping, grinding and cooking (see pics below). As the finale of the morning, we consumed the spicy but tasty results at a sit down, formal white napkin lunch.

The next day we returned to the E&O for the high tea (see pic below). This is a common event in flashy hotels in ex British colonies. We have had high tea at the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong (at a higher price).

In Georgetown we did a guided tour of the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion (known as the Blue House – pic below), formerly owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman who rose from humble origins. The tour guide described how feng shui principles were incorporated in the house design, and what life was like in former times for a prominent Chinese with eight wives.

Southeast Asia contains many Hindu temples, Buddhist pagodas, Muslim mosques and Christian churches, and these are part of the tourist trail. In the Little India district of Georgetown, the Mahamariamman Temple (say that ten times quickly) is adorned with the numerous sculptures typical of Hindu architecture (pic below).

On a much more monumental scale, we visited the Kek Lok Si Temple, which stands on a hill overlooking Georgetown. It is possibly the largest Buddhist temple complex in Southeast Asia and is over 100 years old.

Dominating the complex is the 30.2m high statue of Kuan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy) – pic below.

The seven storey pagoda (pic below) in the complex is famous because it is said to contain 10,000 buddhas. Not, as you might imagine, an army of 10,000 statues. Most are representations of Buddha on wall tiles.

We walked up the internal stairs to the top of the pagoda, on the way taking the window view pic below.

From the top of the pagoda there is a fine view of the whole complex of gardens and buildings. The pic below shows part of the complex.

One of the more eccentric temples in Penang is the Snake Temple (aka the Temple of the Azure Cloud). It is famous for the pit vipers which guard the deity, and it is believed they are rendered harmless by burning incense. We do not know whether this has been tested by worshippers. See pics below.

Next stop Langkawi.