Day 30, Year 5: Enjoying Penang
Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Weather: Partly Cloudy Day with No Rain
Location: Windbird at Rebak Marina; Mark and Judy in Penang, Malaysia

Penang reminds us a smaller version of Singapore, just not as clean and shiny. Just like Singapore, Penang is an island, but the island of Penang is only part of the state of Penang, the smallest in size in Malaysia but the densest in population. It is also the only state in Malaysia where ethnic Chinese are in the majority. Thus, all of the very tall apartment buildings that dominate the landscape and the huge number of Chinese temples. Here are some statistics that I find very interesting.

Population of Penang Island-678,000 with a density of 2,000 per sq km
Population of Singapore Island-Almost 5 million with a density of 6,814 per sq km
Population of the United States-Almost 303 million with a density of 32 per sq km
Population of Greater Boston-4,697 with a density of 4,697 pr sq km

Enough of statistics, but I just had to do that comparison to put things in perspective for us. But more important than the statistics is the fact that it is a great little area to explore by foot and by bus. We started our day by walking to the main Banana guest house to apply for our two-month Thai visa. We were also able to get a Western style breakfast there and then catch a bus to take us on our search for canned salmon and canned green beans. This search led us to two ultra modern shopping malls all decorated for Christmas. In addition to salmon and green beans, we found canned spinach and a frozen turkey that we could afford. I brought our soft cooler bag with me, so we bought the turkey and will enjoy that instead of chicken for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. After going back to our little room at the Banana2 to pack our goods in the suitcase we brought with us for that purpose, we set out on foot to do a walking tour of the area. I can’t believe it, but I forgot to bring my Lonely Planet. I never go anywhere without it, but I guess I’m still not into the tourist mode. So we used a little travel brochure to plan our own walking tour.

When we had seen more mosques and more temples than we could handle in one day, we hopped on the bus to ride a few miles south to Penang Hill. We went there to ride the funicular train 830 meters straight up from sea level. A funicular train is a car on a track with steel wheels but it is like an elevator in that it has a cable pulling the car up the incline. A standard train could never head straight up such an incline because the steel wheels wouldn’t have enough traction. And rubber tires probably couldn’t do the job either, thus the funicular train. We were jam-packed into the train with a huge group of people from India. As we climbed the mountain, a couple of the men started talking to us in English. They were fascinated by our story of sailing around the world and we found their story most interesting as well. Their employer, Amway, sent them here with their families to attend seminars (all four hundred of them). Amway! I couldn’t believe it. They wanted to know if I had ever heard of Amway and I told them that when I had a house I was once a dedicated Amway user. This whole group is from southern India and we told them we might be stopping in Cochin in southern India on our way to the Red Sea. Who knows? We might see some of them again as we exchanged email addresses. What an interesting world.

We returned to the Banana guest house to pick up our Thai visas and then we spent our evening walking over to Little India looking for a place to eat. We weren’t successful, but we enjoyed the walk through that part of town. We actually ended up eating at a delightful little Indian restaurant three doors down the street from our guest house.

091125 Day 30 Malaysia–Day in Penang