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
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
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.
Hey Adam,
Glad you're enjoying Penang...even though I'm originally from Kuala Lumpur, Penang has always charmed with its modern/ancient idiosyncracies...considering the fact that I'm also a fellow nomad like you are, I'm constantly nostalgic whenever another writer writes about Malaysia. As I navigate through the seas and land, I realised how incredibly difficult it is to sum Malaysia in a word for other travellers-especially when it's so chaotically multicultural.
Great articles on World Hum-strengthens my wanderlust everytime I pour over it.
Posted by: Ying | March 30, 2009 at 07:57 AM