all around the island

one of the highlights of our trip so far has been exploring the island of penang. (yes, we did make it out of the E&O long enough to get some actual culture.) though inhabited by a variety of peoples long before Captain Francis Light "discovered" the island, generally the people here consider the settling of penang to have come about in 1765 when Light landed here as an representative of the East India Company. the main town on the island, georgetown, is still a major port for northern Malaysia. in fact, while we were there the US navy stationed themselves there on a good will mission.

exploring georgetown on foot.

georgetown is a bustling city with very few sidewalks and even fewer safe places to cross the street on foot. we didn't realize it as we set out for the day, but dan and i were taking our lives into our hands when we decided to walk around and do some exploring. dodging motorbikes and songtaos (taxi-esque pickup trucks that carry humans in the cargo bed) we made our way past seemingly impromptu chinese cafes and various service-based storefronts that didn't seem to be open for business but whose wares were laying about available for pilfering, should we have wanted a faucet or something.

after seeing the less-than-impressive fort cornwallis we headed to the tourist office for a map that included crosswalk locations. instead of finding a map we found john khoo, who offered to show us the entire island personally. at 71 years old he is an affable man, not too sure of foot, with terrible teeth, and a beat up old car. but something made us say, "yes, we'd love to spend seven hours driving all over the place with you!"

john is a retired english teacher and lifelong penang resident (except when he was studying english at cambridge). chinese by ancestry, he speaks at least three languages (malay being the third, of course). because of his experience and friendly nature, john knows everyone and everything about penang, and now we do too. during our trek john explained to us how the muslims, chinese and indians live together in harmony, but in seperate little villages. we learned how to hunt for iguanas on the fishing piers (we even saw a 5 foot long water monitor!) and the ins and outs of life for the people living on those fishing piers. while at the butterfly pavillion, john became an instant docent picking up butterflies and insects and placing them on dan and me for all the visitors to photograph. we saw every tropical fruit imaginable growing, and then learned how to eat them (even the stinky durian) at a roadside stand owned by a friend of his.

john and dan climb the hillside to tap a rubber tree.

walking around georgetown was interesting but getting out of the tourist areas and seeing real malaysian life through john's eyes was awesome. this was exactly the kind of experience we wanted when we first planned to travel to asia. though we paid john well for his time, no amount would have been sufficient to show how much we appreciated him. we got a priceless experience.

next stop: beachy paradise on koh samui