Playing in Penang, Malaysia

     Welcome back everyone. I apologize for the time between my posts. I still have a bit of catching up to do but as of late I've been pretty busy. Recently I became certified to Teach English as a Second Language. The last week of the course was primarily dedicated to applying what we learned. Two days we spent teaching a group of 40 police officers in training and one day was spent teaching a small group of students at a temple school.

     This post however will be dedicated to recapping the final leg of the trip that Ryoko and I took in early April. When I left off, we just were finishing up with Krabi and starting to head to Penang, Malaysia. Just getting there was an adventure in itself. All the direct buses were booked for several days and we were on a schedule so we had to get a little creative in how we made the trek. Normally, the trip from Krabi to Penang would take only 6-8 hours but we managed to extend it a bit. 

Near our hostel in the City

     Since all the direct buses were booked for several days, we asked around and were told that it would be possible to get there by first taking a short trip to a town a few hours down the road and book the rest of the trip from there. However when we got there, we found that all of those buses were booked as well. So we took another minibus (large van really) to the boarder crossing where there is another town. There again, we found all the buses to Penang booked up for the next two days so we took the old shoelace express across the boarder. We had to walk not much more than half a mile or so with our bags. Once there, we took a taxi 45 minutes into Malaysia to the nearest bus terminal. We thought we would have to spend the night there, as it was getting a bit late, but we were pleasantly surprised to find there was actually one more bus leaving in 20 minutes or so. We hopped on that and an hour and a half later we found ourselves at the city center. After that we took a 15 minute fairy ride to get to the section of town where we were staying (a fairly large island just off the coast). After another shorter taxi, we finally made it to our destination, only 6 hours later than we had hoped, but as far as I'm concerned, all that matters is we made it safe and sound.

     We had three days to explore Penang. This is an interesting region because it is really a diverse melting pot of cultures. The city is bright and vibrant. There's clearly some money floating around this city, made apparent by over the top luxury and sports cars from various decades that occasionally pass by (they stand out quite drastically among the grand majority of clunkers). The architecture and beauty of the location is what really makes it stand out. There are heavy influences of Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, Western and Muslim cultures. The city went through bombing during World War II so on the same street you may see buildings from the 20's, 50's and 90's all side by side. Each era has its own unique style. Many travelers mentioned to me that parts of the city had a very European feel. I'll have to take their word for it seeing as I lack any European experience for the time being.

     As I mentioned before, there are many cultural influences in this city and there is a diverse number of temples to showcase this, coming from all of the cultural heritages I mentioned before. One day, Ryoko and I rented a Moped and spent the whole day just cruising around in the sun, checking out the sites. Although one can hear bells five times per day, indicating time to pray for Muslims, Buddhism is the most wide spread philosophy for the people of Penang. Buddhists generally value complete acceptance and openness to all other "wisdom" traditions (some refer to as religion) so this is a primary reason for the diverse number of practices observed in this region. The same is true for Thailand as well.

     The largest temple in the city is in fact Buddhist but is a perfect example of its acceptance of other cultures. It lies on a forested hill side overlooking the city. It is called "The Temple of 1000 Buddhas" (or maybe it was 10,000... I lost count somewhere around 489 ;-)  ) Its' predominant feature is a statue, perhaps 70-100 feet tall, of the goddess of Mercy. Also, the influence of Chinese culture is very apparent there. There are statues of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, a small Chinese style shrine near the foot of the aforementioned statue. Not to mention the architecture is more Chinese than Buddhist. In front of the statue are two temple guardians that I'm pretty sure are traditionally of Japanese origin as well.

     One of the Chinese temples we visited had some especially interesting art. There wasn't a single painting in the place. Instead, it was adorned with stone carvings that tell a myriad of stories. Personally, I have rarely seen that level of craftsmanship even with wood. It's hard to imagine how much work must have gone into all of the images, so perfectly sculpted.

     Later, we took our bike up a long winding road around to the North part of the Island where there's a national park. Once there, we took a 20 minute boat ride around the bend to "Monkey Beach". We hung out for a short bit in the shade near the sand before snapping some pictures and hiking back through a jungly beach side trail. It was a hot day, not much different than any other day since we've been here, so we enjoyed the tree's protection from the Sun. They couldn't, however, fend off the humidity. As we returned to our bike, we enjoyed an ice cream before heading back to the hostel. Even with the beautiful temples and scenery, I think my favorite part of the day was just cruising around with Ryoko on windy roads overlooking the water. Everything seemed to be either green like the trees or blue like the sky and ocean, two colors that I think put us naturally at ease.

     Our last day, we took it rather easy before catching our afternoon flight back to Bangkok. We haven't been in South East Asia long, but Bangkok was already a familiar location to us and we couldn't help but have the feeling of returning home. The trip to Paneng from Bangkok took more than 28 hours split between a number of days and vehicles, traveling at all hours of the day and night. The two hour flight back seemed more like teleportation than traveling... seriously... "Beam me up Scotty". Overall, this initial journey was an amazing way to start our experience down here. I daresay our future adventures will be a bit less diverse but increasingly intimate with this region of the world as we become more fluent with the language and location. Thank you again for joining me here. I wish you all the best adventures wherever you find yourself on this journey. I hope to hear from you soon!