Stories from Penang

I stared at the house and the ‘For Sale’ sign for a good five minutes and walked away. And then walked back, and took some pictures. And looked at the sign again and walked away, a shorter distance, and turned around one last time, and took a few more pictures, and then I left the house behind me.

It was on a street in Georgetown in old Penang, shaded by hanging red Chinese lanterns, the second in a series of old rowhouses that look like Chinese apartment blocks out of a Hong Kong pirate period thriller. If you walked west there was the Ho Ping coffee shop, where I had roast chicken and barbequed pork chopped into fine, fatty bits over soft white rice with a clear vegetable broth served on the side, and two fried egg rolls served with mouse chili and plum duck sauce.

If you walked east there was the Sri Mariamann, a fantastic mountain of Gods, devas and demons climbing over each other into the cosmic layout of a perfect South Indian temple, and in the street below the whinny-woony-weeeoooo of Bollywood and all my familiar sights and smells and screaming from the subcontinent – Punjabi drums, thin, high oboes and bargain, hassle, smile where-you-from. I ate in Sri Ananda Bhawan, where I used my hands to scoop up more rice, this time doused in a chicken and okra gravy with a mango pickle as red as blood and hot as the sun adding biting but not masochistic heat, all served on a banana leaf in a cafeteria dining room.

A few minutes walk down from where the house and I are there’s an air-conditioned mall if I need a new laptop or Starbucks if I need a mochacino (even though most local cafes here do much better coffee). Wi-fi is plentiful. People smile. The Malays add a Southeast Asian love of laughing to otherwise savvy and aggressive Chinese and Indiasn.

I haven’t been to a place that mixes the mother cultures of India and China in such close proximity. It’s intoxicating. I was looking at a four word poem written in traditional Chinese characters in an old mansion here; the guide said there were 200 potential meanings of the poem, and I knew: I need to go to China. Later on I smelled fish curry from Andhra Pradesh, my favorite Indian state for food.

The travelers here – some of them – are the only thing pissing me off so far. So many seem to expect a party island and beaches like Ko Phan Ngang – some literally have no idea what Penang’s role has been in history. Others refuse to eat locally in one of the greatest culinary cities in the world, where Malays, Indians and Chinese were assembled to help facilitate the spice trade to Europe: a sure recipe for good recipes. These travelers get burgers at night, which is like going to Manhattan for the pizza and sticking to Sbarro’s.

I imagined myself in that house, noodle soup for lunch, writing on my balcony as the evening and the Heavenly Lanterns come alive, a fan and the wind for air con, sweaty beers under the moon. Like a good summer night.

Plenty of places to walk to. I love it here, but there’s still places to see. That said, I’m glad I saw this one, where all my Asians seem to exist side by delicious, evocative side.